No I haven’t. If you are in the back of an ambulance and the door is shut then you can’t just go up and open the door and start taking pictures. If the door is open then feel free to shoot away at what you can see.
Lets look at this example:
The back of an Ambulance is 'deemed' as a public place under certain criminal laws in the UK. You assume that if the door is open you are free to take photographs of the occupants. This is not correct.
As Mark quite rightly points out the Public Order Act 1986 covers the behaviour of people in Public Places but it also covers the behaviour of Public to private and private to public.
Section 5 of the Public Order Act covers harassment/alarm/distress and it's 'judgement' is what any reasonable person who is present at the time would consider as causing the harassment/alarm or distress (the actual person doesn't have to be present). You could be/probably would be arrested for committing this offence as I would certainly expect a Court to rule that photographing an injured person in the back of an Ambulance is likely to cause harassment,alarm or distress.
Following this I would seize your camera as it is 'the article used in the commission of the offence' and could also contain evidence you were in fact taking those pictures. I would then ask for a destruction order for your photographic equipment, if found guilty the Court can issue that order (Yes it has happened and the Courts usually issue orders the Police ask for.)
Section 19 of the Police and Criminal evidence Act 1984 covers the seizure/retention of Property and is very 'wide ranging'.
Likewise the Public Order Act doesn't just cover Public Places - e.g. you can not display a racial sign in your house that is visible from a public place.
I can give examples where your understanding of the Law is incorrect but I don't think the thread would benefit from 'showing you up'.
It all comes down to common decency at times - would you be happy with some 'tog' shoving his/her lens into the back of an ambulance whilst the life ebbed from one of your loved ones?
You are trying to generalise and you simply can't; there are numerous occasions when you could be breaking the law by assuming that because you are in a public place you are 'free' to take pictures of what you want.
Andrew Smith said:
So let’s get this straight. How exactly did you enforce these ‘operational orders’ which are highly likely to be in direct conflict with statute law in public spaces?
Please provide the 'statute law in public spaces' that it is in direct conflict with?