Man filming/taking photos of children

[Burnthurst187]

I was in a local park today with DP and DD (twenty months). We were sat on a bench eating some lunch for around twenty minutes.

Soon after we arrived I noticed a guy nearby hanging around, he looked to be having a conversation on his phone but by the way he was holding it it must have been on loudspeaker. I didn't think too much of it

Later on DD went to see the ducks and DP happened to be close enough to said man to be able to see that he was either filming or trying to take photos of children. All were no older than two

The guy seemed to move away soon afterwards. The thing is, we weren't sure where you stand with somebody doing this. We've since came home and I've looked into it online and it looks as though he wasn't breaking any laws! It seems the laws only cover "indecent" images

We had a nice time in the park but knowing that a guy was filming young children and he hadn't even broken any laws has left me feeling a bit let down by the law I guess. Were MNers aware of this? Have you ever experienced anything like this? Hopefully cases are few and far between but I have my doubts

Yeah...it’s not illegal .

It’s a difficult one. It’s a strange thing to film and photograph other people’s children. Most of us have the common decency to know it’s not ok. But any weirdo can legally take footage of them in public.

You could log it with police but they most likely will just take a note of it. However if they upped patrols and saw this person and they just happened to be someone with a concerning past that’s already on their radar they probably will be able to do something (I.e sex offenders register, not meant to be around children, filming them would be a major issue). But if it’s just a random person with no history doing this then...nada. It is most possible it could be innocent. But it’s definitely discomforting.

If it feels safe, I’ve found saying “excuse me, you don’t have my permission to film these children. Please stop and show me that you are deleting the footage.” usually works and elicits a “sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it etc”. Whenever they’ve got start with me,
I’ve said “There are safeguarding reasons why one/some of these children are not allowed to be photographed. It’s for their protection.” This is when I’ve been out as a teacher.

This was happening at a boating Lake when I was a teenager. You could feel everyone had the same gut feeling that he wasn't just innocently taking pictures of the scenery though. Police were called by someone and he got arrested. It's not actually illegal though so I think he was not allowed to be around children already.

I would inform the police, you dont know what hes doing or who he is and it's better to have a record of these things. I would have also told said "excuse me, are you taking pictures of the children" just to see what he said and if he seemed dodgy.

Considering we had to fight to get upskirting made illegal im really not surprised

If it made you feel uneasy, maybe log it with the police non-emergency number