UK Police Raid Party After Seeing "All-Night" Tag On Facebook 628
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently the police like to spend their time trawling our private information on Facebook looking for criminals. 'Riot police stormed a man's 30th birthday barbecue for 15 guests because it was advertised as an "all-night" party on Facebook. Four police cars, a riot van, and a force helicopter were dispatched to a privately-owned field in a small village near Sowton, Devon in the UK on Saturday, ordering the party shut down or everyone would be arrested. The birthday barbecue was busted up before they even had a chance to plug the music in, reports the BBC. It was about 4pm when eight officers with camouflage pants and body armor jumped out of their vehicles and ordered everyone out about an hour into the party.' The event's organizer, Andrew Poole, said, 'The police had full-on camouflage trousers on and body-armour, it was ridiculous. There were also several plain-clothes officers as well ... they kept on insisting it has been advertised it as an all-night rave on the internet. The times on it were put as "overnight" in case people wanted to sleep-over, but after being explained this they were still banging on saying it was advertised on the internet. They wouldn't accept it wasn't a rave. It was in a completely isolated field.'"
Re:What a good idea (Score:1, Informative)
For some reason police squads seem to get completely, over the edge, stupid on an all too regular basis. And it is not just in the UK. In Miami Florida we had a police raid in which the cops simply got the wrong address. In the middle of night they knocked down the front door of a home and tossed the sleeping couple up against a wall and then one of the cops tore off the female residents top and began playing with her teats while making racial remarks. It just happens that the home owner in question was a minister in a substantial church and the naked teats that were being fondled by the cop belonged to the reverend's wife. OOOOPPPPPS!
Even if it was a rave... (Score:3, Informative)
What's worse, even if it was a "rave" (*gag*) it technically shouldn't have been illegal. While ravers and raves are probably one of humanity's least finest inventions there's nothing inherently wrong with listening and dancing to shitty techno (a redundancy?), waving around glowsticks like a fruitcake, and taking a drug that hurts no one 'cept yourself. Ravers in all their idiocy are like modern retardo hippies; it's not like raves are an assembly of violent people. The root of this all is the War on Drugs.
So it's doubly-wrong.
(sorry for any possible ravers that read this, 'though I suspect most ravers don't know how to read)
Re:Even if it was a rave... (Score:3, Informative)
Started with a barbeque, but.. (Score:4, Informative)
Frankly I am old enough and bitter enough to just want kids like that off my lawn, my neighboors lawn, and if they are loud enough, the field next to it as well for that matter.
From BBC news [bbc.co.uk] - "But local people, fearing a rave was going to take place after previous events with loud music at the same premises, alerted the police."
In other words, this bunch were notorious around town for partying all through the night, playing loud music and generally being a pain in the ass to everybody else. They may have been just barbequeing when the police showed up, but the locals knew what was comming and decided enough was enough.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Started with a barbeque, but.. (Score:3, Informative)
Kids? The guy whose birthday they were celebrating just turned 30.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
I cant take credit for this info though, shamelessly stolen from the discussion on reddit [reddit.com] yesterday.
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$100 BILLION (Score:3, Informative)
High ranking police all over the planet have built beuracratic kingdoms around the idiotic idea of declaring war on a social problem. In the US where this moronic idea came from it costs $100 billion/year to police just pot alone, yes $100 BILLION every YEAR just to stop people smoking pot. $10 billion of that goes directly to the DEA who LOBBY legislatures to keep the status quo. One american is arrested and has their life ruined every 18 seconds just for smoking pot. UK, Australia, etc, are no different.
Oh, please. The entire DEA budget is only $1.9B, so I kind of doubt they spend $10B a year just on pot prevention. And where is the other $90B coming from? /rolleyes
Facts - your new best friend: http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/2010summary/pdf/dea-bud-summary.pdf [usdoj.gov]
Sure, there's other things like the National Drug Information Center, and the ICDE, but their total budget is penny change, maybe $0.5B or so.
I love hyperbole as much as the next guy, but seriously, being off by two orders of magnitude is just ignorant.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Since Thatcher took exception to the actual all-night raves that went on in the early nineties. The government take a dim view of anyone having fun, Thatcher (and Blair and Brown for that matter) take a dimmer view of spontaneous communities forming for the purpose of socialising, dancing and casual drug-taking. This is due to the neo-Liberal tenet that people are entirely selfish entities, plotting and scheming against one-another, the only way they should be able to express themselves is through the free market.[1] The point being that these raves were legal, but were not taking part in government-approved capitalist venues, people there were not consuming government-approved drugs (such as alcohol) and even more galling: they went against the principle that people are essentially selfish.
So. Thatcher had to shut them down, because they went against the government's philosophy of how the world should look. It was an amazing time though, and if you meet a 40-something Brit, who wears a suit to work, has two point four children[2] and you assume they're a boring old git, think again. Chances are a few years ago they were standing in a field, listening to great old school rave[3], and enjoying a sense of community the population of Britain can now only dream of. All thanks to the jackbooted thugs who have been forcing their Cold War derived ideologies on our fair isle for too long.
One of these days we're going to go Wat Tyler[4] on their arses.
[1] See The Trap [wikipedia.org].
[2] British idiom Two point four children [tvtropes.org], referring to the average number of children per-household in the UK.
[3] Just a small example: Prodigy - Out of Space [youtube.com] (not for everyone, but that's not the point)
[4] Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants Revolt [wikipedia.org].
(captcha is 'corrupts', how apropos!)
Re:What a good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Raving is not a crime.
TFA: "[...] section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which grants police powers to remove persons attending or preparing for a "rave" (defined as playing amplified music "wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats," during the night)."
Well, apparently it is.
RTFA - misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
2) The helicopter was out anyway, and they just asked the helicopter to fly over the site to really check if there was a party on its way back
It was not police scouring facebook and dispatching a helicopter.
It embarrasses and annoys me that this happened in my own country, which I do love dearly, but I wont let the usual anti-UK/US/Australia facebook crowd exaggerate it further.
Re:RTFA - misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, they had caused problems before and were told to get a license before having the next party.
They acknowledge this by saying they pointed the speakers away from the village to reduce the noise.
If you have ever lived in the country, you know how far sound travels at night. Pointing the speakers in any direction would have little effect.
They knew they had caused problems before, and were told they had to get a license befoe having another party. They failed to observe the warnings. Enough is enough. I would have them boiled in oil.
It is amazing how Slashdot publishes articles with such misleading descriptions. It is becoming a useful exercise to try to analyze the facts as stated, then figure out what to look for to find the truth.
Mike Monett
Midland
Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)
The police have plenty of "power". What they have the right to do is something else. If you want a really good example of police doing as they please, watch the following link:
http://hamishcampbell.com/2009/03/investigation-of-policing-at-climate.html [hamishcampbell.com]
Worth watching for a few minutes in to see some of the more absurd examples of the police abusing their power.
That doesn't seem to line up.... (Score:3, Informative)
Thatcher did this, four years after she left office the prime minister's office (1990), and two years after she left parliament (1992)?
Really? Because everyone else is blaming a 1994 law. John Major (1990-1997), also of the conservative party, was the prime minister when this law passed, but you don't even mention him. Tony Blair took the reins in 1997.
Perhaps with all the citations and links you could have at least made sure your leading claim lined up with some dates. All your grand ideas about 'government approved this' and 'capitalist that' seemed like the drug-induced foggy ravings of someone who doesn't even have their dates right.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)
Wow indeed. You have been watching too many Adam Curtis movies. Even taking that into account it is still remarkable how many errors you can put into a few sentences.
Neo-liberals (or libertarians as they are called in the US) are as a rule against laws banning drugs. Their main tenet is that individual liberties should be maximized and government influence minimized. So they are generally vehemently to government regulations - be it of drugs or of the market. Saying that neo-liberals see people as "entirely selfish entities, plotting and scheming against one-another" is a very slanted and twisted version of the of their core belief: that each individual is an end in himself/herself. Put in other words that your life belongs to you and that nobody has the right to enslave you, be it for the benefit for one other individual or a whole society.
As for raves going "against the principle that people are essentially selfish" - i think it's rather difficult to find a more selfish activity than getting stoned and listening to music that you like. It certainly isn't something that neo-liberals would find offending.
Note: For those of you who haven't seen any Adam Curtis documentaries: He's like Michael Moore, but without the humor and with less fact checking. The documentaries are similar in style and quality to "Moon Hoax" documentaries and have the same ratio of facts to speculation.
Re:$100 BILLION (Score:2, Informative)
Makes you wonder how they can afford those spiffy jackets and caps.
You should read your history... (Score:5, Informative)
You should read a bit of history, matey. "Never had any kind of revolution or defining moment"... "never had to struggle to get (freedom and liberty)"....
Take a bit of time out to read some history and you might find out why you've got the right to vote, what habeus corpus is, why we we're allowed to move from parish to parish without getting permission from our lords and a whole lot more.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
£800 for a tent, mobile sound system, barbecue food and booze for 20 friends sounds cheap. I've spent more money on a Christmas dinner for a few friends. I think you just dont like people who break laws against people having fun. He publicized the event to his friends, not to the whole of facebook. What exactly is this Rave thing the law was designed to ban anyway? From what I remember it was introduced because entrepreneurs were organizing parties where they sold drugs and booze on land with out the owners permission with the pull of all night music. Well no one is going to make much of a fuss about putting a stop to littering peoples fields, potentially with dead teenagers. But this was a thirty-th birthday barbecue with music and a tent to hide under when the rain got too bad, set in a field so that alcohol could be consumed and slept off in your own tent. There used to be a pub in Exeter which allowed much the same deal in its field. The pub has been bought by a national chain now and camping in its field is no longer allowed. This country is becoming a vile place to live, no strike that, this country is a vile place to live.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
As for that other pub, I assume you're talking about the Double Locks - that place is crap now anyway. I don't know anybody who would go there for a night out now. They used to have about 20 different real ales and ciders, now they have 1 real ale, 2 ciders and the rest is processed crap.
Local paper link (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fuck 'Em, And Their Law (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8155441.stm [bbc.co.uk]
That doesn't excuse what the police did after the fact. It should have taken at least a low grade moron to see that these people were having a BBQ. It's kind of frightening how far out of control things have gotten across the pond. It seems far worse than the US. They have surrendered some very basic liberties to the government and they don't appear to be screaming to get them back which is also confusing. This is obviously some very bad legislation that needs to be revisited. Are the elements that got this type of legislation passed still in control over there?
They are in a very slippery slope.
Re:Fuck 'Em, And Their Law (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fuck 'Em, And Their Law (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I'm not normally one for ad hominem attacks, but you really are completely and utterly clueless.
Significant numbers of police units in the UK now routinely carry firearms, not just the odd specialist firearms car, and plans to deploy weapons like tasers to non-specialist units are well advanced in some forces.
And no, people cannot possess big sticks and bring themselves into line with what the police have. Carrying anything made or adapted for use as a weapon will fall under catch-all legislation and get you arrested, carrying anything that can be used as a serious weapon (sharps, firearms, etc.) will probably get you an automatic several years in prison, and even wearing body armour but being unarmed on an estate notorious for gang violence among its young population will get you a visit from a police officer telling you to take off the armour.
This is all a matter of public record, but if you want to see how things really work, just go read the stories about the use of kettling tactics by the Met at the recent London protests, and take a look at the videos that show police officers in full riot gear assaulting completely non-violent people, in some cases those who were just passing through the wrong place at the wrong time on their way home from work and didn't even have anything to do with the protests. One such person died, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission received hundreds of complaints and are actively investigating several cases of alleged police brutality where the video evidence captured by others present seems pretty hard to see any other way.
Seriously, if you think the public are allowed even close to the level of force the police use (and, it is now clear, abuse) here in the UK, then you need to watch the news a bit more often.
Re:Fuck 'Em, And Their Law (Score:3, Informative)
However if similar allegations were made against members of the public (especially if the alleged victims were police officers) they would undoubtedly have been arrested and their names and pictures splashed all over the media. Ditto for gangsters who gunned someone down in a tube train.
Re:Fuck 'Em, And Their Law (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, just ask Jean Charles de Menezes [wikipedia.org].