its all well and good trying to big ourselves up but unlicensed ravers are fast becoming a despised minority like travellers – last year people our own age were grassing up the parties in our area. This is as much as or more so due to the actions of a minority (litter, damage, “real” crime) as the media hysteria.
Elraveon is a “free party veteran” whom I know IRL and is not the sort of person to give in lightly – we have to accept though the anti-rave lobby have won a few battles recently and change our tactics so as not to lose the war.
What is happening is that the old bill are now using a mixture of advanced intelligence gathered by overt and covert surveillance, evidence gathering of damage/disruption caused by events, and they are using qualified lawyers to push cases forward rather than just detectives. CJA, PEL and ASBO prosecutions are all being used.
PEL prosecutions were also used in the earlier days of raves before CJA was passed (they have a higher burden of proof, but now with the photo and video surveillance of events its easy to prove who was where and when, particularly helicopter footage which contains GPS locations and timecodes as well as visual data). Remember also cops have lots of nice camera and computer kit that was rare even 5 years ago.
IMO the whole PEL thing has come about again because underground raves peaked in 2003 with that hot summer, the numbers attending them increased as did the times these events went on for, and the rest of society balked at the disruption caused.
Another aspect of PEL is that it is supposed to ensure large music event promoters “pay their way” by contributing towards emergency service costs, consider the effect their event has on others and provide appropriate amenities [toilets etc].
Pulse 8 did the “publicity” thing, (got Anglia TV, mixmag and all involved), for
their free parties in Essex.A friend of mine was seeing a girl from that area at the time and used to attend their parties, he mentioned that because of the publicity they attracted way more “townies” and violence was routine, rather like a London event.
Essex police subsequently worked out a protocol between themselves, the council and Fire and Rescue to ensure these events were swiftly dealt with and prosecuted. At one of the next Essex free parties they used a building with an unsafe floor (upper level with holes in it!) – they got busted on PEL and the organisers served 3 months prison.
The hasn’t been much resurgence in the Essex free party scene since then.
Elraveon.
You seem to know a fair bit about the use of this weapon. Don’t suppose you can answer a few queries of mine?
Forums: Am I correct in thinking that making a forum (or parts of) membership only means placing any information about any party becomes a private issue?
Partylines: Have these been used as evidence in a case of prosecution for PEL? Or are they still a viable way to communicate directions to the private invitees? Obviously the number will not be publicly viewable anywhere and will only be given to friends and friends of friends.
Thanks.
You seem to know a fair bit about the use of this weapon. Don’t suppose you can answer a few queries of mine?
Forums: Am I correct in thinking that making a forum (or parts of) membership only means placing any information about any party becomes a private issue?
Ok bio tech the law as you know is often up for interpretation and as far as I know that point hasn’t been tested. I would argue so but I fear they may contest that now.
And if we have to face an attack from this law, we need to have some defense, membership or no posting publicly should help. at the moment advertising on public forums is being used as evidence.
Partylines: Have these been used as evidence in a case of prosecution for PEL? Or are they still a viable way to communicate directions to the private invitees? Obviously the number will not be publicly viewable anywhere and will only be given to friends and friends of friends.
Same answer as forums really, I cant see how a private number can be public if it has not been in the public domain , especially if everyone is clued up and understands they must not say the number is public or the party is for the public.
The way I see it if they don’t follow up with even more summonses, we can continue with only the odd case getting fined but its likely that this is the thin edge of wedge.
Better to take some precautions so we can fight it because it could have a devastating effect on the scene if we cant.
Hope that has been of help
one way of informing the people (regaring private inviations) is the sending of text messages. if you include private party in the text and send it to friends and they send it to others and stuff that would amount to good enough evidence showing that its private. only problem…gotta know the organisers or friends of them.
One problem though.. SMS between different mobile networks have no guarantee of timeliness or service standard – it can take several hours for a text to be delivered, particularly when networks are busy. Some people may miss out on the party because of this…
Incidentally even private parties can be closed down if they get out of hand (noise, damage, disruption etc) although usually this is the classic scenario of a teenagers’ house party which gets out of control due to gatecrashers so neighbours, parents or even the kids themselves call 999…
Hi all
have been followinbg this one with sum interest and concern. Know 10 individuals/rigs pleaded guilty re beacon hill moot last summer. Am trying to find out more abt other summonses that have been issued since – think heard on SJ that another 12 pple have got their day in court, for parties in wales and elsewhere. can anyone tell me a bit more abt these plse? have heard some were for small aprties, which is very worrying. if pple dont wnat to talk on forum, plse PM me.
need to know background to prosecutions – for parties in which part of counrty, how was ‘evidence’ gathered, what arguments used in court etc?
can anyone help – got friends that NEED to know asap!
PLUR
M
have been followinbg this one with sum interest and concern. Know 10 individuals/rigs pleaded guilty re beacon hill moot last summer. Am trying to find out more abt other summonses that have been issued since – think heard on SJ that another 12 pple have got their day in court, for parties in wales and elsewhere. can anyone tell me a bit more abt these plse? have heard some were for small aprties, which is very worrying. if pple dont wnat to talk on forum, plse PM me.
need to know background to prosecutions – for parties in which part of counrty, how was ‘evidence’ gathered, what arguments used in court etc?
can anyone help – got friends that NEED to know asap!
PLUR
M
These are the facts as I know them. This may not be all the events that have happened as I am only aware of the ones from SE England.
As some court cases have already been heard and the events have been widely discussed on SJ and other public places I feel it is now safe to compile this list for the benefit of all concerned.
Event A – August bank Holiday 2004, held in North Wales Police / Heddlu Gogledd Cymru force area by crews mostly from SE England.
The Police attempted to stop this event – and issued a Section 63. This was ignored by the crews, and there is an allegation the Police and landowners took matters into their own hands by throwing one or more generator sets off a cliff in order to destroy the source of electric power.
Various scuffles broke out, and objects were thrown at the Police. One constable was seriously injured and lost the sight of an eye. At that point the TSG units seized the sound equipment.
There is now an ongoing investigation at detective level between North Wales and Thames Valley Police forces (the crew which set up there are allegedly from the TVP area) – but the onus of this appears to be to ascertain the individual responsible for the serious injury of the Police officer, with any further charges relating to PEL, unlicensed events being a secondary issue.
That said, given the circumstances I am hardly surprised the cops have seized the rig and can’t TBH blame them – the loss of a few grands of equipment is nothing compared to the permanent injury sustained by the constable.
Even if you do not always like what cops do, you cannot expect them to stand back whilst one of their team is injured and let those “responsible” get away with it..
Event B – Summer 2004, Beacon Hill Moot- held in Hantspol (Hampshire Constabulary) force area
This multi-rig event was held on land belonging to a wealthy land owner who is (unsurprisingly) hostile to events of this nature. – the land had also been earmarked for an equestrian event (pony trekking for kids/inexperienced riders), which had to be diverted due to the presence of the rave.
The evidence was gathered using video footage from Police aviation (the spotter plane G-SJCH/”OC99″) and a 3-level containment (roadblock) which ensured that all vehicles exiting the site had to pass a mobile evidence gathering unit. All this had been specially deployed to the site to deal with the rave.
Events C/D – October 2004, Reading/Wokingham – held in Thames Valley Police force area
Event C was held in a warehouse that had been used 3 times before since 2001 for raves. This was however the largest rave held there, which may have had up to 10 rigs at high power.
It was possible to scale the roof of the building, and if you were up there you could clearly hear the music vibrating the metal shutters of a nearby bingo hall; and a number of ravers who lived on the nearby estates were able to find the rave without dialling the party line!
There was also a substantial amount of damage to the inside of the building, including the destruction of a newly repaired plumbing system. I saw a CID officer (who has been present at many raves in the area) note down all these details and radio them back to the control room.
This particular rave was just monitored by the cops, but again the Police Helicopter was deployed to overfly the area and obtain video evidence. By the morning a large contingent of traffic cops and other units arrived, and filtered the exiting vehicles through a cordon where they were all videoed and photographed. the event made the local press, and there were many complaints from locals (some as young as their 20s!) who said the cops had let the rave go on too long.
Event D was attempted two weeks later in another warehouse about 6 miles away from that used for event C, which had also been used before and had received press coverage. this event was stopped by the largest deployment of TSG units that TVP have ever used in that area – beyond the presence used to police Reading Festival, Womad and the football matches held at the nearby Madjeski stadium. The building was evacuated by force, all sound equipment confiscated and those present charged with a number of offences ranging from abstracting electricity to criminal damage and unlicensed entertainment.
Anyway these are the facts of what happened last year – TBH I think its as much because rigs have got so much larger and louder as any other factor..
Thanks GL! thats exactly the kind of info i was after, and has put my mind at rest somewhat. Am now starting to think that this PEL thnig may be a lot like the CJA, while authorities may have increased powers, they aren’tt always gonna use em, especially if parties are done on a small and sensible scale. Had heard pple had summonses for small/single rig aprties, which worried me most – maybe that was the wales cliff party thing?
Friends i know are taking steps to keep within the new (or old, but newly applied) laws – not that difficult i reckon anyway with the way they do things.
Thanks again for the fine reporting – if u hear anymore, plse dont hesitate to post it up, assuming it wont jepodise anything! PM instead at first?
Keep on keeping on!
down our way a “small single rig party” can be a 5-10k stack! Us southerners actually do have (compared to lots of other people) shit loads of disposable income and resources to buy rigs, TBH I’m not that surprised theres a backlash from non-ravers.
When cops see people with thousands of pounds worth of equipment who just break into someone elses land or property its hardly surprising they think “hang on, they can afford all this stuff, why can’t they pay their way and get a PEL?”
OTOH one reason the thames valley area is targeted so often is that all the legal rave venues were systematically closed down over the last 10 years; but the cops would only argue that “we gave you your chance, but drugs were sold and used at these places. Drugs are illegal. End of discussion”.
But I think a lot of crews underestimated the disruption their events caused – even a small rig badly placed can be heard for miles around and 100 cars down a country lane is fucking blatantly obvious.
We had a “lucky” time from 2001-2003 where the resources of the Police were diverted due to stuff like the foot and mouth emergency, the after-effects of 9/11 which also increased racial and other tensions on the streets – and the crack/guns epidemic in cities this led to cops having to deal with far more pressing stuff like real violent crimes so they couldn’t attend to raves that quickly.
Now cops have had their resources reorganised, and are finding links between raves and some larger crimes and large raves are making an impact on their surroundings due to secondary problems such as injuries and violence; so its become more of a priority stopping these events.
the days of big multi-riggers and taking over villages are probably over – but this doesn’t mean that a decent friendly small party in a well chosen venue can no longer happen.
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