A film about gang life in Birmingham, 1Day, is to be launched this week. But something rather bizarre has been going on; a police officer in Birmingham has gone around tcinemas in the city trying to persuade them not to show the film. Hopefully this is just an exceptional case but two local cinemas, acting on police advice, have decided not to screen the film.
A West Midlands police spokesperson explains:
This may not be as serious as the Tomlinson case, nor as startling as the community support officer (also with West Midlands police) who warned Christian preachers off evangelising in an area with a high Muslim population, but it is still a troubling matter.
Individual cases like these are disturbing enough, but the real problem is the existence of a culture which seems to allow police officers to believe that they have unlimited powers. It is this which must be addressed in the forthcoming HMIC report into policing of protests, not just the most egregious examples of where the police have overstepped the mark.