Hi, sorry for the lengthy post.
So I’ll preface that I pick litter locally as does my dad and we’d spent 3 hours picking litter along one particular road that week.
A few days later, I was driving along the same road and I caught a group of people flytipping. Like a right mess! I was livid! I turned my car around and drove past again, pulled over and took photographs.
There were several vehicles and people involved and I got great, clear shots of all of their faces & reg plates. They looked like absolute wrongens!
Anyway, they caught me taking the pics and one driver chased me down and basically shouted at me saying I was illegally taking pics, they were doing nothing wrong and to delete the pics. I refused and said if the mess was collected I’d delete the pics. He took photos of me threatened with with his mate and drove erratically by me shouting profanities. I had many sleepless nights imagining I’d just aggravated a top mafia boss - I know I was catastrophising but I was so scared, they had my reg and I think while he was angry, he backed off somewhat, I don’t think he let total rip as my two kiddies were in the car.
The initial mess was cleaned up but little did I know the extent of the flytipping - a lot was left hidden!! I did nothing with the pics. Scared.
Anyway fast forward and I’ve received a warning letter from the police as a witness has reported me using my mobile phone in my car. It’s literally a warning but says it’ll be logged against my name. It’s the same date as this incident, about 40 mins later but the wrong road and time - I can prove where I was at that time as used my phone to pay for something in a different area. They’ve clearly put that address down as they either a) don’t know the area or b) trying not to highlight the road they flytipped on.
What a joke though? What if I’d have gotten done? What do I do? They’ve clearly used my reg to damage me when they did wrong.
Do I see it as they’re scaremongering and just let it lie or do I contact the police in case they take further action against me and do worse? I’m scared if I report them they’ll do worse. Police don’t care about flytipping anyway but I was threatened with ‘his mate’ they’ve also now used my details illegally to pervert the course of justice. My DH says leave it, it’s my word against theirs anyway which is why I wasn’t done.
I’ve got a clean record, pulled over to take pics and have never done anything wrong and they clearly have no evidence of my wrongdoing as I wasn’t even on that road at that time anyway.
I think I’m catastrophising again and think if they can do this, they can do more. Can they get much from my reg?