Beyonce: Turns out Houston police sirens go waaaah, waaaah, waaaah

So Beyonce played a gig in Houston last night, and protestors turned up.

Did the police take steps to ensure the protest remained peaceful?

Well, not really. It was the police who were protesting:

Members of the Coalition of Police and Sheriffs (Cops) stood a mile away from the NRG Stadium and shone a blue light towards the venue.

They were protesting about Beyonce's Formation video, which they claim is "anti-police".

This is "anti-police" in the sense of "how dare you criticise the behaviour of any police anywhere", of course. There's a lot of that about, and it doesn't really do anyone any good. If COPS (seriously? That's the name of your protest gang?) want to ensure that the police get the respect they deserve, they might want to think about shining their blue light in the other direction.

Smile, Citizens: Download attendees to be scanned by cops

From the "the innocent have nothing to fear" files of our police state: Download Festival goers are all going to have their faces scanned by Leicestershire Police.

You weren't supposed to know that, though:

We have also learned that the Police Oracle's publication of the interview has caused significant upset for management at Leicestershire Police, who did not want any advance publicity of their "new" surveillance project.

The public would have been informed that it had been placed under surveillance after the event had ended, presumably as part of a "you didn't know, therefore it wasn't intrusive", justification for the scheme.

This isn't really justified by any disruption at Download - indeed, last year Leicestershire Police were rightly proud of how little crime was recorded at the festival.

So, at a mostly well-behaved festival, everyone is going to be treated as a suspect and even have their faces looked at to see if they're 'wanted'.

The official site explains what police will be doing on site. As you'd expect from a sneaky surveillance project, there's no mention that they'll be scanning people to see if they're wrong 'uns.

"Haw haw, looks like you got a criminal record, son. Haw haw haw."

Since Gordon Smart left Bizarre, there haven't been enough awkwardly posed photos on No Rock.

I've just come across this one, which will help fill that gap:

Apparently something to do with Record Store Day and a record attempt, and not the worst Village People tribute act ever.

Anti-piracy campaign produces list of sites where you can make out like a bandit

The anti-piracy people are publishing a list of websites which offer large swathes of unlicenced music and film:

Here's how the IWL is designed to work: the creative industry bodies provide the initial list of infringing sites, which is then "evidenced and verified" by the City of London Police's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), providing a list of undesirables for advertisers to avoid.

PIPCU claims that the pilot resulted in 12% less advertising from "major household brands" on the identified sites. "If an advert from an established brand appears on an infringing website not only does it lend the site a look of legitimacy, but inadvertently the brand and advertiser are funding online crime," said the unit's boss Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hyde.

Now, obviously, if the list was made public, what the diligent work would have done would be offer people keen to get their hands on an m4v of Anchorman 2 the best places to look.

So they're not making the list public.

That's problematic, though - it means the police are circulating documents accusing websites of criminal activity without allowing those site owners a chance to defend themselves, based on a list originally produced by the copyright businesses in the first place. It's not clear what "evidence" is gathered by the City of London police, and it's surely wrong for police evidence to merely be accepted as proof without testing this in an open justice process.

Sure, 'making it hard for pirate websites to profit' sounds great.

But when you realise that means 'private corporations and police working together to undermine websites on the basis of a secret list' it starts to become a little more sinister.

Protecting subcultures

I'm listening to Today reporting on Greater Manchester Police's plans to record attacks on people for being part of subculture as hate crimes.

John Humphrys, talking to Sophie Lancaster's mother, pointed out that it's not a measure which would have saved her daughter from the horrible, hateful attack that killed her.

Perhaps. But it was a hateful attack, and should be recognised as that.

And yet...

I'm just not sure how practical the measure is. When I used to have bottles and stones bounce off me on County Road in Liverpool, the hurlers were assuming that I was some sort of hippy. They weren't attacking me because I was an indie kid; they were attacking me because I wasn't one of them. I would still have been dodging bottles if I had been a hippy, or a banker, or indeed anyone who wasn't wearing sportswear with their socks rolled down.

The violence wasn't motivated by any subculture to which I belonged, but the subculture to which I wasn't.

How do you account for that?

And those times when Merseyside Police pulled me over and searched me, cheerfully admitting it was because I wasn't dressed like the other people round those parts and that made me look suspicious: If attacking people because they're dressed in black is worth recording, should the police also be looking at why they use 'wearing other clothes' as a basis for a stop and search?

At the moment, the proposal seems to be more about gathering data than making a difference, so it's a first step. But it's been half a decade since Sophie Lancaster was murdered; you'd have hoped five years would have been time for something a bit more thought-through to have be proposed.

Bookmarks: Rap and hip hop

Lisa Wade over at Sociological Images reports on work by Kevin Steinmetz and Howard Henderson. They've tabulated hip-hop lyrics to explore the claims that rap is violently anti-cop. The results? Not so much:

Steinmetz and Henderson conclude:

We actually found that the overwhelming message in hip-hop wasn’t that the rappers disliked the idea of justice, but they disliked the way it was being implemented.

These communities, then, have a strong sense of justice… rooted in the sense that they’re not getting any.

George Galloway springs Pete Burns

Apparently George Galloway keeps in touch with his reality TV chums - he says he got Pete Burns released from a police cell. The Telegraph reports:

“I got him out of jail,” he says. “I had to go to a police station and pay a sum of money, of surety, to get him out of the cells.”

Pete Burns' spokesman (I suspect this might be Pete Burns pretending to be his own staff) confirms to the Telegraph that Galloway did help during an incident, but insists that no charges had been laid.

Which does raise the question: what sort of surety would Galloway be paying to spring someone who hasn't been charged with anything? My - admittedly limited - understanding of the law is that although you can be released on bail while an investigation continues, such a bail release wouldn't require a cash sum to be laid down.

Boston bans the mosh pit

Boston Police seem to be setting out to recreate Footloose, only more messy. After a Flogging Molly gig at the House of Blues, the city has decided that there will be no more moshing in Boston:

According to police, 60 concertgoers engaged in an “aggressive mosh pit dance,” during which people were running and “colliding into each other,” including some who were “knocked to the ground.” No injuries were reported.

So that sounds like a pretty typical mosh pit. Sure, not to everyone's taste, but enter at your own risk, surely?

The cops, though, can't believe that security didn't intervene:

“Dancing is a First Amendment right, but the behavior itself is a violation, especially when it becomes dangerous and a public safety hazard,” Boston police spokeswoman Officer Nicole Grant said.

The city’s licensing board took the matter under advisement after a City Hall hearing yesterday, while the club was ordered to put up illuminated signs saying moshing is not allowed.

If they really want to get involved, couldn't they focus their energies on stopping people talking during the support band?

Brian Harvey against the State

You want evidence this nation is slowly turning into an Orwellian police state? Hey, look no further than Brian Harvey's video - snatched from under the very nose of The Man. He's fighting a one-man, rearguard action against erm, having to pay your electricity bill.

For reasons that remain unclear - although possibly related to not exactly being busy on the work front - Harvey hadn't paid for his electricity, and the courts ordered that he be put on a prepaid meter.

Given that he wasn't entirely co-operative, a warrant had to be obtained and, as is not unusual, police went along to make sure there was no trouble when the warrant was executed. "Executed", right, like AN ENEMY OF THE STATE. Harvey grabbed his video camera - which, luckily, had a fully-charged battery - and filmed this last erosion of a proud Briton's right to not pay for his electricity:

In the seven-minute clip, posted online, Harvey remonstrates with officials from the electricity company, claiming the warrant to enforce the installation of a pre-paid meter was obtained "illegally".

As at least three officers stand guard outside his home while the device is fitted, Harvey says into the camera, "Just to let everyone know, the police are now enforcing civil matters. Southern Electric are in my house now, fitting a pre-paid meter unlawfully."

Once the workmen are finished, they leave the scene as Harvey tells them: "Dogs, mate - the lot of you. Dogs. And there's the police enforcing it. Unbelievable... communist China springs to mind. Police state."

Thank God Brian is here to bring us the news that police help execute warrants by ensuring that there is no breach of the peace in the process, something that I think will shock and surprise us all. And when I say "us all", I mean "anyone under the age of seven who doesn't have any grasp of how these things work."

Still, it's exactly how Communist China started - one minute, you're making people pay for the electricity they use, the next you're holding large chunks of the American national debt. Let's all consider ourselves warned.

The Game - he's a card

The Game came up with a funny prank. He tweeted a number and invited his fans to call it for an internship.

There was no such internship - but how funny to make your fans think there was, eh? Big laughs there, straight away.

The number was actually for the LASD. Yes, the police. They weren't thrilled with hundreds of people clogging their lines, and are threatening to pursue The Game.

How does Mr Game react? Not by saying sorry:

Yall can track a tweet down but cant solve murders ! Dat was an accident but maybe now yall can actually do yall job!!! #ispeak4thepeople

Yes, Game. Because asking one of the hundreds of people "why do you think there is an internship here?" and "solving" this case was a massive logistical challenge compared to something as simple as solving murders, isn't it?

I love the way he tries to hashtag a suggestion that wasting police time in this way was somehow actually a campaigning attempt to force police accountability. And he might have gotten away with it too, were it not for his simultaneous attempt to say it was an accident.

Pete Doherty: No Munchen go-back

Pete Doherty was supposed to be playing Munich last night, but the gig was pulled.

Could this be anything to do with the still-unsettled story about the German record-shop break-in, and the police cars sitting outside the venue in Munich keen to have a word.

Doherty had got as far as turning up and getting his guitar out, when it sounds like the police heard he was in town, and then he heard that they'd heard. Backstage worker Hans-Georg Stocker told the Suddeutsche Zeitung:

"At some point, he's jumped into a taxi and disappeared."

One step ahead of the law. For now, Pete. For now.

Death From Above cause 'riot'; CBC vanishes article

Nasty scenes as overexcitement and undersized venues combined to turn Death From Above 1979's comeback show into a riot.

Consequence Of Sound's Jeremy D Larson was inside:

From inside, we witnessed firsthand a man being repeatedly punched in the face by a police officer. This was all happening as the band played. As DFA 1979 finished “Romantic Rights” (I believe), two or three police walked on stage, followed by a man in charge of the venue.

“The alley needs to be cleared in ten minutes or the show is over,” said the man. He was met with a mixed reaction from the crowd — no one wanted the show to end, but those of us inside — or at least myself — had no problems with the people watching. During the ten minutes, police stood by as those in the alley reluctantly dispersed. A report came back that two to three people were arrested, and as of posting, this is still unconfirmed. Meanwhile, Grainger told some yuck-yuck jokes and jawed with the audience about their rehearsals and previous setlists. It was unnerving but commendable.

CBC's Radio 3 blog also had a story on the riot, which appeared about an hour ago but has since vanished from their site. What's interesting about the CBC story is it suggests there wasn't actually any need for cops on horses to turn up with pepper spray:

I, like many, got close to the gaping space when the fence came down. I shot photos, took video, so many did. It was scary, but after no one rushed the stage, I felt a bit relieved. It was obvious the fans outside wanted to be there, wanted to be cooperative, wanted to dance around and experience the bands first show since 2005.

The security at Beauty Bar also did a great job of securing the fence, holding it up with their bodies, and even some rope. From what I saw, they were trying to accommodate fans on both sides of the fence.

Things seemed to be going well, the band resumed playing, everyone started dancing. Then the riot police showed up on horseback. They sideswiped the crowd, pepper spraying and even tasing some fans. The band stopped playing, the fans were given 10 minutes to clear the alley, if the fans didn’t leave, they would have to cancel the show.

From this, it sounds like a not-unusual crush at an overpopular gig was turned into a riot by the addition of heavy-handed policing - although the unnamed fan's account doesn't condemn the police:

Did I get scared? Yes. Did I think the fans, band and security handled it well? Absolutely. Do I blame the cops for showing up? No. I understand why they were called. If fans did rush the stage, cramping hundreds of excess people into a small fenced in space, their presence would have been definitely needed.

Maybe that's true, but did waving tasers round and spraying pepper into fans eyes' really help?

There's some footage on YouTube:


It's important to note that, once the cops had been, the gig continued to a peaceful conclusion, which is something that wouldn't normally happen after an actual riot.

[UPDATE: The CBC blog has reappeared, credited to Lana Gay.]

IFPI comes up with plan b (or, more like it, plan z) to "end piracy"

The IFPI - which is the RIAA pretending to be an international body - has come up with a new plan which it reckons will bring about an end to online music piracy.

This time, it's going to get British police and the credit card companies to do the job for it.

The idea is that it'll find a website which is flogging tracks online; details will be passed to the police; public money will be spent investigating the sites and, if the police agree there's something dodgy going on, Mastercard and Visa will be alerted and they'll stop processing payments for the site.

The idea of targeting people who are selling tracks they don't own online is a fair one - there's a clear difference between people who share music out of love of music, and people who sell things that aren't theirs out of love of money.

Mind you, anyone who can get past that rubbish Verified By Visa "security" box probably deserves to download half the internet as a reward anyway.

It's unlikely the scheme will be a success - it's being run through City Of London police who are unlikely to do more than scratch the surface of the problem; there are other ways to make money online than just taking credit card details and this won't have an effect on sharing where no money is changing hands - which seems to be most cases. But at least the IFPI are mounting their Quixotic efforts against people who are diverting money that might otherwise have been spent on official products.

Latitude: Police appeal for witnesses

Suffolk police investigating the rape at Latitude are keen to talk to anyone who can help with the investigation:

DCI David Cutler, who is overseeing the investigation into the rape, said: “We know there will be people with information that can help this enquiry and we are appealing directly to the group of males who met up with the young woman on Thursday night around 10pm - 10.30pm.

“There will be several men in this group who were not present when the rape occurred and we need you to come forward to give an account of what happened. We are working to trace those involved and we will do everything we can to locate you so if you are reading this appeal please do the right thing and come forward.

“If you were at Latitude on Thursday night, and particularly if you were in the red campsite area around this time you may also be able to help our enquiries. If you saw a young woman wearing denim leggings, a yellow and white check shirt, a black cardigan and Wellington boots you may well have seen the victim of this incident and it is important that we hear from you too.”

Suffolk Police are on 01473 613500.

Michael Jackson: Finally, someone pays

AEG and the Michael Jackson estate are busily trying to make their grudging, belated, inadequate payment towards the massive costs of the Jacko back catalogue relaunch party ("memorial event") appear as an act of unprecedented generosity:

AEG President Timothy J. Leiweke and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday in a joint statement that $1 million will be provided to the city's general fund, and the rest of the money will go to the Los Angeles Police Foundation for crime-fighting equipment.

"It was important to us that all parties agreed that this was not an obligation but a choice we believed was important to make at a time when thousands of city employees are being reduced," Leiweke said in the release.

The 'rest of the money' is $300,000. In total, the payment from AEG and the estate doesn't even cover the overtime the residents of LA had to pay police to look after the concert; and it's barely a smidge of the profits made from people buying Jackson records when he died.

Perhaps now AEG have had a chance to choose to do the right thing, it's time for them to be asked to make up the rest of the costs?

Gordon in the morning: N-Dubz spraying for Easter

Normally, yobbish louts firing paint pellets at innocent bystanders would be the sort of thing The Sun would rail against - broken Britain, don't you know? - but what do you when it's one of Gordon's chums doing the shooting?

The result is a slightly strained report into N-Dubz firing on their own fans. Not a word suggesting that it's a bloody dangerous thing to do, or that people who aren't earning money for old rope might be less than thrilled that their gig-going outfits have been destroyed by rich kids with paints "having a laugh". Gordon restricts himself to just the facts:

Northumbria Police said: "Police were called to a coach at the back of the O2 Academy following a complaint that pellets were being fired.

"The two people involved had been firing plastic guns at each other which discharged a 6mm-sized pellet.

"They were very apologetic and handed the toy guns over voluntarily.

"No complaint of injury has been made.

"No arrests were made. Advice was given to the parties involved."

You'd have to wonder at the sort of twits who fire paint at their own fans. Most bands at least try to disguise the contempt they feel for the people who pay their wages.

Strawberry Fair axed by police

It might be unfair to suggest that Cambridgeshire Police deliberately decided to appeal against a licence granted to the Strawberry Fair in order to leave organisers no choice but to abandon this year's event, but they do seem to have been insanely fixated on stopping it happening.

There's a statement from the organisers:

We have been grateful for the many messages of support for the Fair - it is very heart-warming to realise how many people appreciate and enjoy the hard work that goes into the Fair year after year.

We would like to give a little more detail about our decision, and in particular why we felt it was impossible to fight the appeal and continue to organise an event for this June.

At the licence hearing that the police spent a great deal of time and money attempting to get the fair closed down, employing a London-based law firm and barrister to present the evidence they had gathered at significant cost to the tax payer.

Strawberry Fair is almost entirely reliant on income from traders. With no event there is no income and the battle through the magistrates court is going to cost us dearly so we are appealing to the people of Cambridge to come along to our fund raising events, for example the Band Competition final on Thursday 15 April at the Junction (more to be announced soon) and possibly to donate a few pounds via our website.

As a voluntary group we don't have access to the kinds of legal resource or the public finance used by Cambridgeshire Police in their objections to the license. It is going to be an very tough task for us to prepare for the appeal hearing both in time and money, we hope that the people of Cambridge will support us in our mission to secure the fair for 2011 and onwards and give generously whilst not doing anything to exasperate the situation unnecessarily and damage the future of the fair. We would also welcome people to come up with their own fund raising ideas, please contact us if you want to get involved. community@strawberry-fair.org.uk

At last years fair, Cambridgeshire Police invested a significant amount of time and money into information gathering activity at the Fair. Despite several written and verbal requests from the Committee, they declined to share important information they had gathered other than the overall assessment they published in the press. It appears to the committee, therefore, that the purpose of that information gathering activity was not to help improve the event, or assist our planning processes, but specifically to object to a license for the Fair.

In spite of this lack of information the committee had implemented a raft of changes that were widely accepted to be moving the fair in a good direction. We have regular meetings with the council, residents groups and police and we have made massive changes to the event in recent years in response to the concerns raised. We feel it would be more productive for the police to raise any specific concerns they have with us about the event at these meetings rather than pursuing it through the courts.

It would have been an impossible task to fight the appeal whilst also being able to maintain the high standards of event planning and management necessary for a successful and safe Strawberry Fair. We are surprised that the Police had not realised what the effect of their decision to appeal would be. The timetable for the appeal process is well known, and will take us to within weeks of the Fair. They are also fully aware that the Fair is a community rather than a commercial event, with all the work carried out by volunteers.

The committee would like to stress that much of the work the police have done with the fair in previous years has been very constructive and helpful and we would very much like to build on this but it is hard to see the constructive input from this year?s objection to our licence and the appeal against a decision by publicly elected officials.

It's only fair that anyone should have the right to appeal against a decision they disagree with, but it seems unfair that Strawberry Fair should win a licence, only to not be able to use the event because an outstanding appeal made further investment unsafe.

Alan Ellis: Oink man not guilty

The not guilty verdict in the case of Alan Ellis, found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud in charges relating from his Oink website, isn't entirely comforting news for the music industry.

The Crown Prosecution Service and the Police are also trying to put a brave face on things:

Chief Superintendent Mark Braithwaite, head of crime operations for Cleveland Police, said: "This has been a fair investigation.

"The jury has been presented with all the evidence and we abide by their decision."

The Crown Prosecution Service defended the decision to prosecute Mr Ellis.

"We believe we were wholly right to bring the prosecution against Mr Ellis and that there was sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and that evidence was put before the jury," a spokesman said.

Perhaps someone should be asking why the public purse was funding this case, and not the copyright industry. This seems to be the sort of thing that civil courts are set up for. If EMI and Warners want to piss away their own money trying to shore up an outdated business model, that's their choice. At a time when public spending is facing a big squeeze, I don't see that the State should be joining in the cash-pissing.

Newsround 2: Myleene and the knife

The non-story about Myleene Klass being "warned" by police about "defending herself" with a knife didn't stand up even the first reading. However, that's not to say there isn't a story here. Marina Hyde has done some digging, and what turns out is not a tale about the woman out the bikini advert being threatend with the law, but... well, something else entirely:

Lost in Showbiz discovers that the initial call to police was not placed by Myleene but by a man believed to be her agent or publicist, to whom she was naturally on the phone at the time. Truly, the fourth emergency service. It was one or other of these men who called the Met in London, who then passed the matter on to the Hertfordshire force who attended Myleene's address in the small hours of Friday, by which time she had also been in touch with police. As for the story's appearance in the Sun the very next day, Hertfordshire police state: "We believe the media found out about the incident following a phone call from Ms Klass's publicist to Emma Cox from the Sun."

So, Myleene was in such danger she felt the need to ready herself to stab someone's face off, but rather than calling the police, she got somebody else to ring a force in a different county entirely. You wonder when the Tory-happy story about being warned off stabbing people was generated.

JLS too much for West Midlands police to handle

According to Twitter, it looks like the big turn-on of Christmas Lights in Birmingham has been cancelled by West Midlands Police, who were afraid they couldn't control the crowds who'd turned out to catch a glimpse of JLS.