Was standing in Central Station this morning waiting on my train* when two police officers strolled over to a guy standing next to me with his video camera. No beating around the bush, they proceeded to question the guy about why he was filming, where he was from, what he did for a living, where he was staying and asked him to get his ID. Turns out he was a dentist from Germany and was just filming part of his holiday. The police didn’t seem too happy when he said his passport was in his hotel but, luckily for him, he had his passport on him.

I know that their job at the moment is to check out any suspicious behavior, I just wasn’t keen on the way they went about it. The poor guy they were questioning seemed terrified at these two big policemen towering over him asking him all sorts of questions. They even went for the scolding question approach of asking him, “do you think it’s a good idea to be filming in public when the county’s on this state of alert?“. The guy looked totally nonplussed. At any rate, I don’t think he’ll be in a hurry to come back to Scotland any time soon for another holiday.

Maybe if they’d tackled it in a slightly nicer way, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much. What would have been wrong with an opening of, “Excuse me, sir, but, due to the recent terrorist activities, we’ve been asked to investigate anything out of the unusual - could we ask you some questions about what it is your are filming?“. Then, if the guy got ratty with them, they could switch to the intimidation.

So, next time you whip out your camera phone to take a pic of something, make sure you’ve got your reasons ready.

* as I had missed the previous one by about 2 minutes due to my bus being stuck in a bloody traffic jam, so had to wait a full half hour for the next one, so was half an hour late for work because the bus was stuck - that’s annoying. If I’m late ‘cause I slept in, fair enough, but I was up at 6:20. You would think that would be enough time to make it to Cardonald.