Rarely has there been a more pathetic arrest than that of 23-year-old university student Paul Saville, who was confronted by four members of Britain’s new breed of petty minded police officers after writing in chalk on a pavement, “Liberty: the right to question. The right to ask: ‘Are we free?”‘

With a wonderful lack of irony, the officers told him to stop writing. When he added one more letter they arrested him for criminal damage. The second year sociology and criminology student told the Daily Telegraph: “The whole reason I was writing in chalk was because I wanted to get my message across without causing lasting damage.

“I was merely highlighting the point that we are losing civil liberties in the UK,” he added. “This is something we should be thinking about.”

Discuss.

CFH, reading the Guardian? Know thine enemy, and all that?

he was arrested for criminal damage. I’d like to see the damage. too many police are seemingly above the law these days.

What does the law say about graffiti? Does it cover the indelibility or otherwise of the medium used?

If I’d been the copper, I’d not have arrested him tho. Seems petty. After all, it wasn’t just a gang tag or something. Sounds like a pig on a bad day perhaps.

Do they arrest pavement artists too?

It also doesn’t say whether he was a mouthy gobsh1te who enjoyed winding the coppers up. I seriously doubt whether common bobby would go through the pain of an arrest and subsequent paperwork if they didn’t fell the fella deserved it/brought it upon himself.

Should have just kicked the sh1te out of him like in the good old days

Good to see that the Guardian is better at their quotation marks. That’s the real issue here.

The Guardian should write all that secret Barclays tax-dodge stuff on the pavements.

comrade: https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/The_Guardian:_Censored_Barclays_tax_avoidance_leaked_memos,_16_Mar_2009

Pathetic people.

IHN, I’m sorry, but we don’t pay these clowns to go around arresting people who “deserved it” for disrespectin’ ’em innit. Beign “mouthy” is not (yet) a crime.

Ta comrade – I knew it was on the web… I just liked the idea of it chalked up out on the streets. Or perhaps projected onto Barclay’s HQ, in the manner of Gail Porter. 😀

. I just liked the idea of it chalked up out on the streets.

it is exceptionally dull stuff. I can think of better things to write on the streets 🙂

BD your wrong. ive been done for being mouthy.

noteeth, GMG may need to be a little careful, given their own Cayman Based tax dodgind exploits…..

Anyway, back on topic;

Surely there needs to be some right of peaceful, non-damaging protest, which is what this chap was doing. Anyone knows that chalk written on a pavement in London will last about half a day at most as people walk all over it. I do wonder if the police involved were real police or CSOs.

cant be doing the chalk thing.

The fuzz “have form” on this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-447419/Police-order-boy-5-stop-chalking-hopscotch-graffiti-street.html

A boy who put up posters to find his missing cat was ordered to tear them down – or face an £80 fine under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act.

🙄

Discuss.

Thin end of wedge. Fascists, etc.

GMG may need to be a little careful

Oh, I’m well aware of the cushty little set-up at GMG (with Apax etc).

But the Grauniad ain’t a bank… at least not yet.

I can think of better things to write on the streets

When it comes to pettiness, the people that have been allowed to become PCSO’s or police officers in the last few years mostly have something akin to a “God complex”.

I’m not even sure it’s symptomatic of the police being used as a tool of oppression particularly, just of their profound institutional uselessness.

Despite unprecedented manpower and budgets public satisfaction with what ever it is that they do is remarkably low.

They appear, at the most basic level, to have little interest in preventing crimes from occurring, and little ability to detect those who have committed crimes and bring them to justice. The fact that public dissent is a crime which, almost by definition, you have to make sure someone sees you engaging in just makes it a very tempting area to focus on. Imagine! An unarmed criminal, actually committing a crime, who will not resist arrest, bite you or even deny that he was doing what he was doing.

El-bent – Member
When it comes to pettiness, the people that have been allowed to become PCSO’s or police officers in the last few years mostly have something akin to a “God complex”.

Aye it’s a swine when people chose to help society and stop crims/bad people

I suppose that depends on if you define drawing hopscotch grids on the pavement as a crime I guess.

Yeah, the police a useless waste of money. It’s ranks filled with brown nosed politically correct work-shy numpties.

When I next get mugged/burgled/raped I’m not going to call 999 and ask for the highly trained professional understanding police force, instead I’m going to call the STW force.

When you next get mugged, it will be by someone who reckoned he stood little chance of being caught for it. He will, by and large, be correct.

Meanwhile, someone writing in chalk on the pavement is successfully apprehended by four of these highly professional crime fighters, and will be severely dealt with. No-one will be any safer or happier as a result.

When I next get mugged/burgled/raped I’m not going to call 999 and ask for the highly trained professional understanding police force

lets us know how you get on with that, as I reckon it might take them a while to find someone who fits the description.

No-one will be any safer or happier as a result.
Not entirely true. A chief inspect will be very happy and feel safe in his position knowing that he’s been able to add another star in his target crime detection rate wall chart 🙂

I read somewhere recently that showed that the Police in this country had the the biggest budgets in Western Europe, and their crime prevention and detection rates were one of the worst. Go figure.

The Daily mail probably…

Who will argue what to do while you’re dying.

Independent, I think sofatester. I’ll see if if the article is on-line.

Please do…

Comparables are interesting. It may simply be that in most developed countries the amount of money a police force is capable of absorbing is theoretically infinite, there is always crime, there is always fear of crime and there is always widespread dissatisfaction with the police.

That does not necessarily mean that that dissatisfaction is not well warranted.

Hands up everyone who has called 999 only to hear a answerphone message?

Sofatester, you are arguing at cross-purposes. I do not think anyone seriously denies that it is a good thing to have a police force. It’s just that the one we have appears to be bad value, and not very good at many of the things we want it to do, while being excellent at a number of things no-one cares about.

It is very good at responding to 999 calls, certainly. It is by and large useless at responding to any public engagement short of an emergency.

Hands up everyone who has reported a bike stolen to a police officer who gave a monkeys? 😕

I supect more of us have reported minor thefts than have dialled 999.

Dialling 999 gets me an ambulance quite quickly as well. I am still allowed to complain about infection rates in hospitals or long waiting times at GPs surgeries.

how much were plod on the ball when this site was criminally hacked and details of the hacker were passed to them?

Maybe that’s because they are dealing with some real crime? Not something that happened because someone thought it would be a good idea to leave there bike unattended.

Are you hungry BD?

Real crime, like writing in chalk on the pavement sofatester? 🙄

The only good thing about this is that it’s going to rebound on them spectacularly, and so they might be less inclined to be so stupid in the future. That does presume that the police have the capacity to learn from their mistakes…

Yep, that’s the one.

Criminal damage, shocking.