It's a very worrying question, with an extremely worrying answer coming from some members of the police force and even more so from Police Community Support Officers. Having several friends in the police, I know for a fact that nowhere in their training
does it state that officers should censor this country's free press.
As long as members of the press aren't breaking police cordons, or on private property after being asked to leave, the police (and I include PCSOs in this) have
no power, nor rights to interfere with a photographer going about doing their job of gathering news. In fact, our country goes to war to help people being oppressed by various regimes, yet we find on occasion that we are being oppressed much closer to
home, not by fundamentalists or dictators, but by our own police services up and down the county.
Sadly the court case at the Old Bailey, where two of the racist murderers of Stephen Lawrence were finally jailed, illustrated just
how ill-informed some members of the police and PCSOs are. Just what is the motivation to stop a story like this being covered? Did these officers in question want to protect the racist murderers from the photographers' cameras or not allow the same
cameras to record the dignified Lawrence family after the verdict? This behaviour is absolutely baffling.
It's a very worrying question, with an extremely worrying answer coming from some members of the police force and even more so from Police Community Support Officers. Having several friends in the police, I know for a fact that nowhere in their training
does it state that officers should censor this country's free press. 