Tuesday, 10 March 2009

Police and immigration at Vauxhall station

There were about 50 Police / Community Service Officers and British Transport Police, plus one immigration official at Vauxhall at about 14:10 today when I passed through. Why might this be? Could the use of 50 policemen/women just to check oyster cards be described as "overkill"? And why an immigration official? Are they worried about people escaping from South London to Pimlico or something?

I might have been conservative in my estimates. If you click to enlarge the picture below, you'll see at least 25!




Another 6 or so officers in this one. The guy with his back to the camera has something like "Border Control Agency" on the back of his jacket in this one:

I ran away quickly before anybody stopped me taking any more photos. And I am aware of the irony of a surveillance society itself being surveilled :)

Posted by SE11 Lurker at 16:52
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Three Wheeled One,

Could we please add a link to Lurking about SE11 at the Vox Web project?

http://voxweb.typepad.com

Please contact us at voxwebcontact@gmail.com.

Matt (VoX WeB)

13 March 2009 at 11:57
Anonymous said...

A tip: apparently Amici, which owns two restaurants in Kennington, has leased/bought the now shutdown Franklins and will open a third restaurant. This from the lady next door at the Thai restaurant.

15 March 2009 at 12:40
Mark said...

The police do this quite often across the region.

You can't stop someone randomly on the street and ask them what their immigration status is. However if someone has committed an offence (for example, not paying their bus fare), then it is entirely legitimate for the person to then be asked about their immigration status.

So essentially they're using ticket checking as an opportunity to find people here on shaky immigration grounds.

17 April 2009 at 13:31

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