UK thought police arrest woman for silent prayer

[Bomb#20]

They didn't ask her if she'd accompany the police without arrest -- they asked her if she'd come with them voluntarily.

How are these two things different?

In English law, arrest has a specific meaning, and that meaning doesn't include voluntarily attending a police station to assist police with their enquiries.

In U.S. law, we have an institution called the "Selective Service". During times when the government feels our military is understaffed, it sends people instructions that they must show up at some appointed place and time where government officials will evaluate their suitability and may induct them into the Army. If people who receive these instructions don't comply they are arrested.

The point is, in English, "voluntary" has a specific meaning. That is why the people who receive these instructions and follow them are called "conscripts" or "draftees". We do not call them "volunteers". The U.S. currently has an "all-volunteer army". What that means is that since the government feels our army is adequately staffed, the Selective Service hasn't actually sent anybody one of these instructions in about fifty years. The Army is staffed by people who are there voluntarily -- i.e., by people who joined even though the government would not have arrested them for not joining.

That is how these two things you asked about are different.

She was given the choice of volunteering to be removed from the PSPO area and taken to the police station; OR of being arrested, with all of the various other procedures - such as being searched, for example - that an arrest implies.

Congratulations on your outstanding imitation of Kanye West!

Whether or not you feel that it is Orwellian or Kafkaesque that they arrested her when she refused to accompany them voluntarily, it is nevertheless a real and legally important distinction in English law whether a person is arrested or is voluntary accompanying police to an interview.

I.e., the English legal system commits language abuse. What a surprise. Abuse of the English language by people governing England is precisely what the term "Orwellian" was coined to refer to.

 

[Bomb#20]

In countries with rule of law, the citizens have rights and the police have legal bounds on them. You do not automatically have to do whatever the police tell you to do. The police know this, and it's a nuisance to them. It makes their jobs harder. To deal with this source of exasperation, police have evolved strategies for manipulating people into not exercising their rights.

This, of course, leads to another arms race. The people vote for legislators who will put restrictions on the police, the police find ways to make the restrictions less onerous, the people observe these efforts and come up with new ways to counteract police manipulation, and around and around it goes.

The background relationship between the police and the policed being what it is, it's perfectly reasonable for a citizen who hears "Will you accompany us voluntarily?" to suspect that this might be one of those expressions police use in order to get people to be more compliant with what the police want from them than citizens are actually legally required to be. A citizen who doesn't happen to have her noble solicitor at hand to consult as to the precise way her country's legal system abuses the word "voluntarily" may therefore quite sensibly be uncertain as to whether the police's use of the word was an indication that she is in one of those situations where the police lack grounds to make her come, or contrariwise an indication that England has become Keith & Co.'s submarine, where "All in favor say Aye." was a phrase that meant compliance was compulsory. So when the only expert on police limitations who both knows whether the citizen must accompany them and who is also Johnny-on-the-spot is the policeman himself, giving the policeman a conditional answer to his question and leaving it up to the policeman to supply the missing information on which her answer depends is a logical response.

 

[bilby]

The point is, in English, "voluntary" has a specific meaning.

The events in question aren't under the jurisdiction of the English language; They're under the jurisdiction of English law, which uses language in idiosyncratic ways. The law makes a clear distinction between "voluntary questioning" and "arrest", and that the former circumstance can (in casual English) be apparently involuntary, does not make it indistinguishable in law from an arrest.

That the law uses language in ways which have precise and consistent meanings, which may be dramatically different from the casual meanings of the same language, should surprise nobody.

It keeps lawyers in a job.

That a person unfamiliar with the law might misunderstand the meaning is also unsurprising, particularly if that person resides in a jurisdiction that uses the same words in very different ways.

Casual American English, or even the legal English employed by the US Government and/or military, is a very poor guide to the legal English used by the West Midlands Police.

If you think that there's no difference, but an officer in the West Midlands Police thinks there is a difference, I am strongly inclined to believe the person more qualified to understand, and more likely to be familiar with, English law.

 

[Rhea]

Moreover, I am absolutely certain that the arrested person who violated the public order very definitely knows exactly what the law in her jurisdiction does or does not require and what it means. This is what she does for a living.

If she were to claim that she didn’t know what the police officer was saying or meaning, I would call her a liar.

 

[bilby]

Moreover, I am absolutely certain that the arrested person who violated the public order very definitely knows exactly what the law in her jurisdiction does or does not require and what it means. This is what she does for a living.

If she were to claim that she didn’t know what the police officer was saying or meaning, I would call her a liar.

She can call her own. And in England, it's spelled "lawyer".

 

[Bomb#20]

The point is, in English, "voluntary" has a specific meaning.

The events in question aren't under the jurisdiction of the English language; They're under the jurisdiction of English law, which uses language in idiosyncratic ways. The law makes a clear distinction between <etc.>

Why on earth would you imagine I'm in need of yet another point-missing lecture on the not-in-dispute well-trodden-upthread topic of words meaning different things in legalese from what they mean in English?

That a person unfamiliar with the law might misunderstand the meaning is also unsurprising, particularly if that person resides in a jurisdiction that uses the same words in very different ways.

Yes! Bingo! What on earth has deluded you into thinking that's a point in support of your contention?

If you think that there's no difference, but an officer in the West Midlands Police thinks there is a difference, I am strongly inclined to believe the person more qualified to understand, and more likely to be familiar with, English law.

What the heck is your problem? What possessed you to write an antecedent as reality-avoiding as "If you think that there's no difference..."? Of course there's a difference, I said there's a difference, and you know I said there's a difference.

The point, which you keep evading over and over, is that when an officer says "voluntarily" in the West Midlands Police dialect of British Government Legalese, and a common citizen who doesn't speak that language hears "voluntarily" and processes it using a brain language center whose native tongue is plain English, so she answers the officer as if his words had been in plain English, "she declines to accompany the police without arrest" is not an accurate characterization of her answer. This is not rocket science.

 

[Bomb#20]

Specific defined geography? I don't understand what that means nor what it has to do with her right to pray in her head being taken away.

There is a map in the PSPO which defines the borders of the exclusion zone. Within the borders, the PSPO applies.

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So....what? Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights or it doesn't.

It doesn't. Because if she walked around the block and stood in front of MCdonald's praying in her head she wouldn't have been arrested for violating the PSPO. So yes, she still had the freedom to pray in her head. Now if praying in her head was banned across Australia then we can talk. Until then it's a fantasy argument.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

 

[bilby]

What the heck is your problem? What possessed you to write an antecedent as reality-avoiding as "If you think that there's no difference..."?

...and she declines to accompany the police without arrest, which they offer her as a courtesy, so she is arrested.

People keep claiming this; but that's not what happened. They didn't ask her if she'd accompany the police without arrest -- they asked her if she'd come with them voluntarily. She didn't say she wouldn't come without arrest -- she said "If I've got a choice, then no."

 

[bilby]

when an officer says "voluntarily" in the West Midlands Police dialect of British Government Legalese, and a common citizen who doesn't speak that language hears "voluntarily" and processes it using a brain language center whose native tongue is plain English, so she answers the officer as if his words had been in plain English, "she declines to accompany the police without arrest" is not an accurate characterization of her answer.

It certainly is. Unless we are to assume that this serial abuser of the law, who heads an organisation that persists in intimidating people, despite an escalating range of legal actions to protect their victims, is such a blithering incompetent that she hasn't bothered to learn the law as it pertains to the likely consequences of her actions.

She wanted to be arrested, and ideally to make her arrest appear as unjust as possible - ideally, to make it look like an assault on her basic human rights - as a publicity stunt. It's worked too, lots of people, particularly in America, believe her to be a martyr and will now donate to her cause.

Taking the opportunity to desist from her illegal intimidation, without being arrested, didn't suit her agenda. But it was certainly an option for her, and she knew it. Just as she knew that she was being filmed, and that it would play better to her audience if she made the police carry out a search and, if possible, handcuff her (she failed to get that last one, but I would be surprised if that didn't disappoint her).

 

[laughing dog]

Specific defined geography? I don't understand what that means nor what it has to do with her right to pray in her head being taken away.

There is a map in the PSPO which defines the borders of the exclusion zone. Within the borders, the PSPO applies.

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,

But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.

 

[Bomb#20]

You're kidding, right? Are you trying to play a semantic obfuscation game?

The alleged crime was violating the PSPO, which she appears to have done by i) being in the PSPO exclusion zone and ii) praying in her head. It's like saying Mx. Aldrich was not arrested for shooting and killing Club Q patrons, but for violating the statute that forbids first degree murder.

The alleged crime was violating the PSPO. Her admission she was standing where she was because "it's an abortion center" provided sufficient evidence she was doing it with intent. Given her position within the group whose actions led to the PSPO being imposed, there's more than enough reason to believe she was deliberately violating the PSPO in order to push her agenda.

The video link posted earlier in this thread shows her admitting to being where she was because "it's an abortion center". It also shows the police officer informing her that there are allegations she violated the PSPO on other occasions. Either one of those are sufficient cause for the arrest and appear to be what she is charged with having done.

"Praying in her head" is not the reason she was arrested. If you think it was, show us the charging documents or other evidence. ...

It's regrettable that this discussion has gotten so hung up on semantics and on the opposing perceptions of whether the cop finding out she was praying and then arresting her for breaking a PSPO that bans prayer in a no-prayer zone counts as evidence she was arrested "for" praying, because that doesn't get to the central issue -- the specific prohibition of prayer is merely the most egregious lunatic-fringe element of all that was wrong with that PSPO. So let's set silent prayer aside. Suppose the PSPO hadn't even mentioned praying, or had said "loud prayer". Well, enacting an ordinance against "engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval" is still a civil rights violation all on its own, regardless of what specific examples the council decides to enumerate. A rule prohibiting individuals from standing silently, blocking no one and menacing no one, doing nothing to any other person besides looking on with disapproval, is not something governments should enact.

An awful lot of communities have been disrupted by an awful lot of protests. Of course governments need the authority to keep them from getting out of hand. Of course the longer they go on the more strict the justifiable limits on them become. But come on! If Minneapolis, catering to its residents who were frustrated over massive George Floyd protests by Black Lives Matter, issued an order forbidding any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval in some region normally open to the public, and then the police arrested some BLM protester for standing alone and silent at the edge of a sidewalk outside a police station with a disapproving expression on his face, how many of you here would be rushing to defend the city and the police? Or back when Occupy Birmingham was making life miserable for a lot of people just trying to go about their business, suppose the city had reacted to all the complaints by prohibiting all protesting within a hundred yards of a bank. Would any leftist here be defending the police and the city when they arrested a guy standing alone in the vicinity of a closed bank looking like he disapproves of bankers? Yeah, sure you would.

 

[Bomb#20]

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,

But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't. Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.

 

[laughing dog]

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,

But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't.

Gospel was clearly making a point about this particular person not some hypothetical example, so unlike you, my point was relevant.

Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.

Clearly in your case it is. Too bad you haven't found any yet.

 

[Bomb#20]

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,

But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't.

Gospel was clearly making a point about this particular person not some hypothetical example, so unlike you, my point was relevant.

Oh, is that why in post #350 you snipped out my second quotation from Gospel? Remember that one? It's the one where he wrote:

So....what? Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights or it doesn't.

It doesn't. Because if she walked around the block and stood in front of MCdonald's praying in her head she wouldn't have been arrested for violating the PSPO. So yes, she still had the freedom to pray in her head. Now if praying in her head was banned across Australia then we can talk. Until then it's a fantasy argument.

He was quite clearly making a general claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights unless it's a very large jurisdiction.

 

[laughing dog]

Oh, is that why in post #350 you snipped out my second quotation from Gospel? Remember that one? It's the one where he wrote:

So....what? Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights or it doesn't.

It doesn't. Because if she walked around the block and stood in front of MCdonald's praying in her head she wouldn't have been arrested for violating the PSPO. So yes, she still had the freedom to pray in her head. Now if praying in her head was banned across Australia then we can talk. Until then it's a fantasy argument.

He was quite clearly making a general claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights unless it's a very large jurisdiction.

You are mistaken.

But he is correct - restricting a right in a specific location does not take away the right in general. Duh.

 

[ZiprHead]

She can pray in her head outside of those borders? Then her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away.

So does this mean you're okay with W's having the Secret Service make protesters bug off to his so-called "free speech zones"? They could still say Bush sucks outside of his defined borders so their right to speak out against him wasn't taken away? If they walked around the block and stood in front of McDonald's holding anti-Bush signs instead of where the TV cameras would see them they wouldn't have been arrested, so forbidding them near Bush didn't take away rights? Really?

You’d have a relevant point if Bush protesters were serial harassers with intent to intimidate civilians from accessing some legal service in the UK and creating a long standing disturbance in a specific neighborhood,

But they weren’t, so you don’t. I’d say better luck next time, but that would be an example of hope over experience.

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't.

Gospel was clearly making a point about this particular person not some hypothetical example, so unlike you, my point was relevant.

Oh, is that why in post #350 you snipped out my second quotation from Gospel? Remember that one? It's the one where he wrote:

So....what? Either forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction takes away rights or it doesn't.

It doesn't. Because if she walked around the block and stood in front of MCdonald's praying in her head she wouldn't have been arrested for violating the PSPO. So yes, she still had the freedom to pray in her head. Now if praying in her head was banned across Australia then we can talk. Until then it's a fantasy argument.

He was quite clearly making a general claim that forbidding something in a certain jurisdiction doesn't take away rights unless it's a very large jurisdiction.

Societies take away rights all the time when someone violates the rules and laws of that society. We have jailhouses and prisons full of such people.

 

[Rhea]

So, I see the point you are making Bomb, I think. You’re trying to discuss, “honest question, what’s the difference”?

When we say that one shop isn’t selling cakes to gays, we complain that it harms their rights, even though they could go to a shop in the next town (maybe)

When we say that decreased voting booths in certain precincts make the lines too long and therefore it harms voters rights, even though they could have voted absentee.

When we say that Bush creating no-speech zones around his appearences harms free speech, even though they can go behind the fence on the far side of the parking lot to say what they want.


So what’s the difference?

Maybe we should make a chart with a list of examples and why this one harms rights and that one doesn’t. I think people have been trying to fill in those blanks for you, but maybe it’s hard for us all to use previously answered examples when they are hard to all see together. We forget that one’s been answered - or not answered previously.

I’m all for starting a chart; what counts, what doesn’t. What do we (any of us) support and what don’t we and why. That way no one wastes time bringing up something for the 10th time after it’s already been addressed. One can see the answer to “but what about” before just posting the same query again. And one can examine, “well maybe I didn’t defend that one very well.”

Some themes that we’ve seen throughout this thread:

• Unlike the cake maker who is trying to not do business with certain people and saying that’s a matter of “compelled speech”, the protesters are trying to STOP someone else from going about their business. Their “free speech” can happen anywhere and get the message across, but it has to be in this area to force an impact on another person. Free speech does not provide a guaranteed right to force an impact on someone going about their own protected-right business.
• Unlike the removal of voting booths, in fact what makes the removal of voting booths JUST LIKE the bullying outside of the clinic, the attempt is to prevent people from exercising their rights. So both the removal of the voting booths AND the ongoing every other day protests are both violating other people’s rights and the stopping of those two does not harm those stopped.
• Unlike Bush’s rallies, this is in a residential neighborhood and affecting medical clients. The protests are intended to STOP them from going about their rightful business COMPLETELY; to make it so daunting that they don’t get care. Bush still had his rallies, he would have just had to share the media time with another view. But his rallies were not impacted. Moreover he is a public figure doing a public thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't. Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.

The whole point of the PSPO is serial harassment. Thus said harassment is a given.

 

[Rhea]

You'd have a relevant point if Gospel had argued she was a serial harasser so her right to pray inside her head wasn't taken away. But he didn't, so you don't. Having relevant points isn't a matter of luck.

The whole point of the PSPO is serial harassment. Thus said harassment is a given.

Indeed, any question of whether the arrest or the law is correct in this thread about this woman needs to acknowledge:

• GIVEN that this order is in response to 4+ years of protests twice a week plus 40-days-straight twice a year, and
• GIVEN that this order is in response to people in a residential area accessing rightful, legal and time sensistive medical attention, and
• GIVEN that this order is temporary for the purpose of addressing ongoing noise, harassment, intimidation and approaching children with flyers, and,
• GIVEN that more than 2000 people in the neighborhood have weighed in on the problems,
• GIVEN that this order was intended to be only large enough to protect people’s access to the clinic for legitimate legal medical care, (they are now reporting that it needs to be larger because of the continued actions of this group) and
• GIVEN that this particular person is the head of the organization doing the harassing

and craft your “but whatabouts” so that no one has to repeat any of the undisputed givens above. If you want to debate a restriction that does not include those givens, maybe a separate thread would give you room to not sound like you are arguing that this woman should be allowed to continue her harassment of medical clients, staff and neighbors. If you’re thinking in your head, “But I’m not talking about serial harassers,” then you appear to be in the wrong thread.

 

[Learner]

Loitering would best suit the charge, for standing silently, if you're praying in your head, i.e. just hanging about in a restricted area, for no proper reason - otherwise this sounds quite correct as the title of the thread suggests, being technically a 'thought' crime! I think someone on the thread mentioned test case or something, which it could well be. Thirty thousand plus people signed a petition against the arrest; naturally there would be concern to some, in the sense that other silent thoughts could gradually be added to the list etc..