Catching up on emails...and a few stories in last week’s SchNEWS made me really quite angry tonight.

COPS, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE AS SUSSEX POLICE RAID BRIGHTON FILM MAKER

Given the amount of aggro handed out to those brave enough to document Babylon’s excesses we wondered how long it was before we started getting our collars felt. Of course they’d need a task force to batter down the steel doors of the SchNEWS bunker - let alone take us alive - so Sussex Police took a more indirect route.

At approximately 8.30am on Tuesday 2nd June, Sussex cops arrived at the home of Paul Light, now revealed as one of the SchMOVIES collective. (For anyone thinking that SchNEWS was still stuck in the Dark Ages with just a scrappy sheet of A4, we’ve moved right into the twentieth century and have our own slightly estranged film-making department.) Paul’s arrest has wide ranging implications for anyone who reports on controversial issues.

When the cops came round Paul was getting his ten-year old son ready for school. He was immediately arrested on suspicion of being involved in the ‘decommissioning’ of the EDO ITT weapons factory in January (see SchNEWS 663). The actual charge was ‘conspiracy to commit criminal damage’.

This vague charge was enough for the police to launch into a full-blown fishing expedition.’The only evidence they [Sussex police] have is that someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to film the police response,’ Paul told SchNEWS, ’I said I couldn’t because I had my son and his friend sleeping over that night. That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. As a film maker I frequently get phone calls about possible incidents to film - this was one shoot I couldn’t and didn’t make.’

Paul was held and questioned for eight hours and his home was raided. The police took Paul’s son to school in a police car, where he burst into tears due to the stress. His father was released on bail and is awaiting the outcome of the arrest.