On getting arrested in the UK

As is well known, since the 1990s the United Kingdom has become the country most densely populated by CCTV cameras. In all major cities, everyone is being watched almost every moment of their lives – when they are in public, and often even while they are in private.

Still, many people do not perceive just how rapidly the UK is turned into a surveillance and police state (defined as a state in which the police – and other intelligence agencies – are largely uncontrolled and left to do as they please). To everyone with a sense of history, the situation must be reminiscent of the build-up to totalitarian rule under Nazism in 1930s Germany.

Laudably, the “Guardian” newspaper continues to expose the worst excesses of British policing. Here a selection of articles published in the last few months.

On the powers of British police to arrest anyone for any reason whatsoever:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/mar/06/civil-liberties-police

According to this article, “[a] retired senior police officer has expressed concern about the 'sweeping power' that he claims is being abused on a daily basis in all of the 43 police forces” of the country. He, a former police man himself, even started a petition “against police powers to arrest any person for any offence” – including “not wearing a seatbelt, dropping litter, shouting in the presence of a police officer, climbing a tree, and building a snowman”:

petitions.number10.gov.uk/PowersofArrest/

As he explains, under section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 no arrest has to be justified by police anymore.

A similar statement has been made by Dame Stella Rimington, former head of intelligence agency MI5:

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/17/government-exploiting-terrorism-fear

It is not me but Rimington who calls Britain a “police state”.

On the driving force behind such sweeping powers of arrest, the Association of Chief Police Officers – a private company that is not subject to any public scrutiny, but nevertheless runs its own secret intelligence unit –, see this article:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/feb/10/police-civil-liberties

The website of the ACPO:

www.acpo.police.uk/about.html

“Why was ACPO so keen to make every offence arrestable? Look no further than the DNA database. The more people the police arrest, the more profiles they could add to the database. [Already] the profiles of more than 7% of the population, including one million children[!], are on the DNA database”:

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/27/dna-database-children-criminal-record

Half of those on the UK's DNA database have no criminal record. As everyone arrested is entered into the database, one can conclude that half of those arrested are never convicted of a crime. People falsely arrested and then not prosecuted or found innocent will not be removed from the database.

In his petition, the former senior police officer writes: “young and inexperienced police officers, (and soon, PCSO's [police community support officers]), are being trained that arrest and detention of a suspect is the first option in most encounters with the public. This sweeping power is being roundly abused ... and puts you, your wife, husband or partner, your children and your friends at risk of arbitrary action by the police”.

The situation is even more dire for foreigners (such as students, doctoral candidates and postdocs, but also occasional visitors) in the UK: Reportedly from April 2009, the new UK “e-Borders” scheme will be collecting the biometrics – including fingerprints, DNA, iris patterns, and face recognition – as well as travel information and credit card details of everyone entering or leaving the UK, by air, sea, or rail. Information on an estimated 250 million journeys a year into and out of the UK will be stored in one central database for up to 10 years. Moreover, foreign residents in the UK already require an identity card that contains biometric data. This scheme is to be expanded to British nationals and European residents by 2012. The “national identity register” will be yet another database containing information on millions of people:

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/25/data-surveillance-identity

This obsession with surveillance and data collection is bound to lead to consequences such as those experienced by some UK residents of Muslim origin, described by a court as “of good character and well-respected in their communities” that have been prohibited, under UK anti-terrorism legislation, from spending any of their own money – with no way left to them to challenge the measures imposed on them. Such persons are rendered “criminally liable for activities as mundane as spending the change in their pockets” and will be punished with up to seven years' imprisonment if they do. One of the men reports asking his solicitor whether his “son was allowed to buy me milk from the shop ... The answer was no”. No one in their households is allowed to work because any household income “would count as the transfer of funds which could be used for my benefit”:

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/03/terrorism-welfare-spending-law

If you are a foreigner it may happen to you that you get arrested on an occasional visit to the UK on the basis of some wild accusations, totally unproven, simply so police can question you, search you, fingerprint you, and take your DNA sample for entry into a plethora of databases – all of which they cannot do without an arrest, for which, however, they need no justification whatsoever. There has to be no intention of charging you with a serious offence or crime and no evidence against you. Police may then release the foreigner, who is neither a UK citizen nor resident in the UK, on police bail and expect him to return after so many months (of investigations that start only after the arrest!) to the UK at his own expense. If he decides not to follow up on such highly questionable arrest, he may become wanted in the UK. However, it is then up to UK police to request such a person's extradition from another country. In which case UK police will have to make their case in a foreign court – where they can't exercise the sweeping and uncontrolled powers granted to them in the UK.