Why do police seize photographers' cameras? Take a wild guess

What have the police got to hide? Two more incidents have come to light about officers seizing cameras from press photographers and deleting images.

In one, reported by the National Union of Journalists on its website, Hackney Gazette photographer Carmen Valino claimed to have been forced to hand over her camera while taking pictures of a crime scene.

She was standing outside the police cordon and identified herself as a journalist by showed her press card.

But a police sergeant told her she was disrupting an investigation and demanded that she give him her camera. When she protested, she said he grabbed her wrist and pulled out his handcuffs.

She immediately handed him her camera. He then left for five minutes before coming back, took Valino inside the cordon and asked her to show him the images, which he deleted. Valino was told that she could come back in a few hours to photograph the scene.

In a second incident, reported by the BBC, freelance news photographer Paul King had his camera seized by a police traffic officer after taking pictures of a car crash in Wokingham, Berkshire.

The images were later deleted, which King claimed cost him up to £400 in loss of earnings.

King, who has 25 years' experience as a photojournalist, has made a formal complaint to the police, arguing that he was acting within the law.

A Thames Valley police spokesman said the incident would be "fully investigated."

These kinds of high-handed police action against photographers require a coherent response from journalists. I am pleased that Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors is going to raise concerns about the issue when he meets representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers on Thursday.

Doubtless, ACPO will say all the right things to Bob. They will reiterate that it isn't police policy to harass journalists going about their lawful work.

But what do they do about it within the forces across the country? Not enough, clearly, because there are too many cases of officers on the ground doing all they can to make life difficult for photographers.

There is, to use a well-worn phrase, an anti-journalist institutional mind-set within the police that encourages officers to treat reporters and photographers with disdain.

Then again, maybe every police officer now fears the attentions of the press following the video of the incident in which a policeman clubbed Ian Tomlinson to the ground during the G20 protest in London in April last year.

Hat tip: journalism.co.uk