UK Prosecutors Apologize For Pursuing BS Charges Against A Photographer

Legal Issues

from the things-you'll-never-see-in-the-US dept

Cops hate being watched, no matter where they’re located.

In the United States, we’ve seen several arrests and prosecutions of journalists and citizens for daring to record public officials performing their public duties. The case law isn’t completely settled in the United States, but in most parts of the country, it’s understood the First Amendment covers these activities.

That fact hasn’t stopped cops and prosecutors from pursuing everything from obstruction charges to alleged violations of state wiretapping laws against people who hold cops accountable simply by documenting the things they do.

There’s no First Amendment in the UK. But that doesn’t mean UK law enforcement officers are free to arrest people who do nothing more than document their actions. Given this lack of built-in protection, it’s extremely surprising to see UK prosecutors admit they’re in the wrong when it comes to shielding cops from accountability efforts that don’t involve government employees.

A journalist who did nothing more than try to document a criminal investigation taking place in full view of the public has received an apology of sorts from the UK government, as Steven Morris reports for The Guardian.

The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted it was wrong to press on with a case against a news photographer arrested as he tried to lawfully take pictures at a crime scene.

Judge Walters at Swansea crown court described the case against Dimitris Legakis, which was dropped on the eve of his trial, as “disturbing” and said it seemed “the high point” of the prosecution was that a police officer “took offence” against someone whose job was to take photographs.

The journalist did nothing more than show up at the scene of a car fire last year. He attempted to document the police response, only to get arrested by UK police officers, apparently because he was the only one in the crowd operating a camera. That this later turned out to be a murder investigation (allegedly a man beat his wife to death with a hammer before setting fire to the car with her in it) doesn’t really matter. At that point, it was just a normal police response to a potentially dangerous situation.

At some point during the police response, an “altercation” between some members of the crowd began. For whatever reason, officers decided to single out the journalist as the problem. He was arrested “with considerable force” and detained for 15 hours, supposedly for assaulting a first responder and “obstructing” a police officer, despite the fact no obstruction or assault was captured by any cameras operated by responding officers. The lack of evidence was admitted by the prosecution prior to its dropping of the charges.

The trial was due to start on Tuesday but at a hearing on Monday prosecution barrister Alycia Carpanini said no evidence would be offered in the case. The barrister said it had also been decided that it was not in the public interest to pursue the obstructing a constable matter, a summary-only offence.

Asked by Judge Geraint Walters why the decision to offer no evidence had been taken on the eve of the trial, the barrister said the original statement taken from the police officer “does not coincide” with what he later said in his victim personal statement, and she said the alleged assault itself was not captured on bodycam. The judge said having read the papers in the case it seemed to him “the high point of the prosecution case” was that somebody employed as a photographer was taking pictures and a police officer “took offence” to it.

When faced with taking this case to trial, the CPS finally admitted it had no evidence. But it took a court calling this out as a bullshit “contempt of cop” prosecution for that to happen.

And while there’s a very rare apology here, it comes couched in exculpatory language that suggests the CPS was completely in the right until it was forced to admit it was completely in the wrong.

A spokeswoman said: “We take assaults on emergency workers incredibly seriously. In all cases, including those resulting from police charge, we have a duty to continually review the evidence. In a review prior to the recent hearing, we decided that there was no longer sufficient evidence to continue with the prosecution and it should be stopped. We acknowledge this should have been done sooner.”

Maybe the CPS should divert some of its resources to investigating police officers who cook up bogus charges for the sole purpose of deterring public accountability. And, very definitely, the agency employing the officers who arrested the journalist and concocted a host of criminal charges should act quickly to punish the officers involved in this potential miscarriage of justice. It shouldn’t take 15 hours of detention and the run-up to a criminal case to finally have the truth come out. Because if that’s what it takes for the government to finally admit it’s in the wrong, the harm has already been done and the chilling effect on public accountability remains intact.

That being said, it’s still a step ahead of the status quo here in the United States. Even when governments pay out settlements to people whose rights have been violated, the payments are almost always attached to legal verbiage in which the government refuses to admit any wrongdoing. At least in the case above, the government acknowledged it was at fault. And that’s something, even if the lack of consequences means CPS and the cops that provide it with cases to prosecute are free to make the same “mistakes” over and over again.

Filed Under: crown prosecution service, dimitris legakis, journalism, photojournalist, uk