UK Police Raid Barbecue Because it was Listed as “All-Night Event” on Facebook
By Brad TaylorPublished: 20 July 2009 Posted in: Minor features, NewsUK Police recently broke up a barbecue celebrating a 30th birthday because it was advertised on Facebook as an “all-night” event.
The celebration, with all of 17 confirmed guests, was to be held in an isolated field in Devon last weekend. The event was listed on Facebook as being overnight, in case any guests wished to stay over. Unfortunately, police in riot vans, body armor, and a helicopter (!) crashed the party at 4pm, ordering everyone to leave before the hosts had a chance to turn on the music.
The birthday boy, Andrew Poole, was understandably quite surprised by all this: “It was on private land. We were nowhere near anyone. We weren’t even playing any music. What effectively the police did was come in and stop fifteen people eating burgers.”
Police in the UK have been granted special powers to stop “raves.” A rave is defined as “a gathering on land in the open air of 100 or more persons (whether or not trespassers) at which amplified music is played during the night (with or without intermissions) and is such as, by reason of its loudness and duration and the time at which it is played, is likely to cause serious distress to the inhabitants of the locality.” Of course, there don’t actually need to be 100 people for the police to shut down a rave. An officer simply needs to believe that two or more people are preparing for a rave, or that ten or more people are waiting for a rave to begin.
The police are defending their actions by saying that if they hadn’t stopped the party early, more police resources would have been used to break up the inevitable hamburger-fuelled (sic) riots. Don’t you feel safer, Brits?
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