London | Paddington Station | Excuse Me Sir | Can I See Your Camera?

This is my first time I set my foot in London, it was among my favorite destination but this is not my destination, I’ve wrote previously that I was in London because flight transit, from Heathrow airport I take Heathrow Connect to Paddington Station in Central London and from there we walk around, unfortunately the weather wasn’t good on that day, it was raining and very hard to find a shelter there. To cut the story short after we are tired of walking around not too far away from Paddington Station, I get back to the station and take few pictures in front of the entrance like the one you see above and later on I was approach by two policeman with a dog, you can see the police in the picture above, those in green.

When they approach me, one of the police officer ask me, whether I’m a tourist or not, yes I said, I’m a tourist and he asked me that he want to look at what I’m photographing, so I show them my camera LCD, I asked them, is it ok with my picture, do I need to delete them, can I keep my picture, after he browse through my picture from camera  LCD, he said ok, there is no problem, I can keep my picture after he take my name and see my passport and I’m free to go, no question asked later.

Those police officer does not touch my camera, I was holding my camera and showed them the picture that I’ve take, I know why those two police officer came after me, there was a case not too long ago where one of the subway get bombed, so they need to know what I’m doing, whether I’m planning something with my picture or not and I’ve read somewhere that there was a story where London Police Officer delete a picture from a tourist who take a picture of a public transport in London. I personally think they have no right deleting someone else picture, if there was a case, it should be brought to the court and if the pictures being deleted, there was no case, no evidence, that was my personal point of view.

One thing that I want to let you all know is that, the police officer that approach me does not harasses me, they are  very polite, they don’t  not push me around, and they  treat me well, after they write my name on his notebook, he let me go, no question asked. Everybody will have a different experience with London Police, and that is my experience.