A group of Met Police officers are called out to a migrant hotel on the pretext that a person has made threats to kill. The man they confront is live streaming to his YouTube channel, Laine Audits. His bio states that he is a citizen journalist and auditor of migrant hotels across the UK, who also provides live, on-the-ground coverage of protests and major events.
What struck me watching this video is how incendiary and indignant the female officer behaves. She seems to think she holds rank over members of the public. Her manner is overbearing and vexatious. It is clear from the outset that she was demanding his details in retaliation for the way he had spoken to her, not because she genuinely believed he was engaging in anti-social behaviour. This is typical of hypersensitive police officers who believe that anyone who refuses to engage with them in the manner they are accustomed to can be dealt with by force of law.
Laine had every right to refuse to provide his details on the basis he states. Furthermore, the male officer wrongly interprets s50 of the Police Reform Act 2002. ‘Suspicion’ is not a requirement of that provision; ‘reasonable belief’ is. Reasonable belief requires a greater degree of certainty than mere suspicion. An officer’s opinion that anti-social behaviour has occurred would not suffice. Reasonable belief could have been acquired by following up any one of the sources Laine suggested. Instead, the officers fixate on preserving their authority and threaten arrest if he does not provide his details.
I suspect, from watching this video, that the allegations the police claim to be acting upon were a fabrication and the officers knew it. It could be they were providing a stock excuse to disperse him from the area – that is, if a s35 dispersal order under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 was actually in place. Threats to kill migrants in a hotel would not be treated as ‘anti-social behaviour’; they would be treated as a substantive offence. The fact that the officers eventually gave up trying to obtain Laine’s details proves that their ‘suspicions’ were unfounded and that s50 was being used maliciously by the WPC – a woman who is clearly a product of the declining standards of recruitment in the Metropolitan Police.
I advised Laine to make a Subject Access Request for the radio traffic that prompted the officers’ arrival. He should also request the incident log and a copy of the s35 dispersal order they allege was in place. This will prove whether the officers were telling the truth about the allegations and their powers to disperse.
For comprehensive information on how to deal with police in similar situations, what information you can extract from them via subject access, how to hold them to account and bring legal action against them, Copper Stopper – the book – can provide you with everything you need to know.
If you have a video of police misconduct that you’d like me to deconstruct to determine whether their actions were lawful, send me a link. If it’s of interest, I’ll publish my response and embed the video here.
