London Olympics’s security guards trained to deter photographers

Apr 24, 2012

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Wow, according to The British Journal of Photography, security guards from private security firm G4S recently ran out and harassed photographers taking pictures of the Olympic site from public land, going as far as shouting at them, grabbing the cameras and pushing them back. The guards’ manager approached the photographers, explaining that they had been trained to deter people from taking photographs, whereafter the photographers asked for police to attend, who confirmed that the photographers behavior was entirely lawful.

“The guards are very poorly trained by G4S,” claims Hoffman. “The blame should be on G4S and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games whose penny-pinching attitude and contempt for the media is already causing us problems and is certain to cause us a great deal more problems unless we take a stand.”

(Photo courtesy of J@ck!, CC BY 2.0)

Read The British Journal of Photography, via PetaPixel

London 2012

Comments

2 responses to “London Olympics’s security guards trained to deter photographers”

Andy

April 24, 2012

Why trawl around the Olympic park and then take pictures outside the security screening area of the north plaza if not to deliberately get a reaction.. We’re they challenged anywhere else? No probably not. Take any camera you want. I take everyday 2 cameras inside the park to document the build from the inside a compact and a Canon DSLR with large lenses and have done since 2008 and have never been told to stop etc.. I regularly walk the edges taking pictures and video and again never been stopped. I don’t out of principle take images of the security checkpoints as there’s no need to. Yes they were on public land but were taking pictures of the security check point.. Why? To provoke this reaction that’s why.. If you want to see my 4,000+ pictures inside and outside the site go to http://www.insidelondon2012.blogspot.com none of which I have been stopped from taking..

Reply
1. rokur
  
  April 24, 2012
  
  Ah, OK … thanks for explaining. We’ll see how it goes .. there seems to be others that have experienced the same, judging on comments on that photography site.
  
  Reply