Arrested for failing to smile!

DafuQ?!?

I mean what has happened to England? This is worse than the state controlled propaganda events in China...

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

And here I was, thinking Australia was a nanny state. Good Grief.

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central

This isn't exactly a standard thing here, but the police force involved actually issued a statement:

[www.surrey.police.uk]

Why you'd go to an olympic event with any number of fake knives is beyond me.

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The dude has Parkinson's disease. Do you know what that is?

It makes total sense that he would be carrying bizarre objects like rubber knives. One of the symptoms of Parkinson's is dementia, which means he doesn't know what he is doing. One of the first symptoms is loss of motoric ability. In essence the guy would be shuffling around like a 90 y/o pensioner. Take a look at this video (before the 5 minute and 30 second mark), if you want to see what the officers had to deal with (the 3 minute and 35 mark is very illustrative):





Yeah... what a menace to society.

No wonder the police didn't want to mention these facts in their statement, lol

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2012 11:15PM by Morbid.

He apparently wasn't carrying the knives due to his illness, he was carrying them because he'd just been instructing a Taekwondo demo.

If he was acting suspiciously, for whatever reason, and I guess attending an event with low security, standing next to a load of protesters, carrying several fake knives plus a real one and looking like he wasn't out there as a spectator is reason enough for at least a good look.

This is apparently his own brother's account:

Quote

Mark had served in Northern Ireland and appreciates full well the stresses involved in assessing responses in tense situations. He was concerned that the newspaper reports (It was in the Guardian as well) were reflecting this as a case of police brutality which, if the full background were known, it would be apparent it was not.

The group of protesters near where he was standing were from Fathers 4 Justice (groan from my Family Law lecturer sister sitting alongside me). To make matters worse, a woman protester next to him trying to join the other demonstrators and who was haranguing the police as imperialist lackeys, etc, looked as if she was with him.

“This is all going to kick off” he thought, and he needed to get to his daughter’s birthday. With that he jumped off the wall to leave. Bad move, worse timing, open to misinterpretation. When he was jumped on, he tried to say he had been to a Taekwondo demonstration and needed to get to his daughter. What the police heard, in the presumably noisy environment, (said the brother), was “demonstration” and “getting to his daughter”- a reasonable impression of a Father 4 justice with access issues.

He would be grateful if I could convey to others a more rounded perspective.

Because I don't know the details surrounding his arrest (such as how he reacted when he was approached), I've no real issue with this event in itself. He wasn't just arrested for not smiling.

The truly sad thing about this is that it's the world we now live in, and events innocenter than this are only going to increase in frequency.

Ye to be honest though, stand around at a high profile event in todays on-edge ways, with a knife (fake or not) you are going to be arrested. You can't expect to have a blade (fake or not) and not be queried about it looool.

Like that Brazilian guy who got shot few years back. If you run away from the police after failing to let them search a backpack in a highly populated underground station, they will shoot lol. Even if you can't speak the language you do not RUN. You stay and wait till there's a translator at the station lol.

Some people don't help themselves unfortunately.