I watch the Alex Belfield: Voice of Reason channel on YouTube. I don't always agree with his point of view, but anything he does is done with good humour and is eminently watchable.
One of the things to come to a head in the past few weeks is that Alex is being hounded by the Police at the behest of the BBC. Watch his videos for more details.
The very interesting thing was that last week, he was yet again arrested without being charged by Nottingham Police. See the video here:
The interesting thing on the video is to look at the officers. None of them are wearing identifying marks: not a Name tag, not even an epaulette with the officers rank and number on it, which is I believe is at the least against the rules. Officers are allowed to remove name tags where they feel the name might allow them to be targeted, but rank and number epaulettes should be worn at all times.
I'm not sure that by making themselves anonymous, they lose the protections afforded to Police officers. After all how could you identify them as Police officers? Without identifying marks they could be anyone. A van full of Strippergrams with a chainsaw and a fetish for sawing doors down.
By being anonymous does that make any of their actions unlawful?
Certainly according to Alex they arrested him without reading him his rights. That should surely make his arrest, subsequent detainment and strip-search unlawful.
Oops!
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