Are police camera shy?

When is there a time to ever say that the law has gone too far with their powers? Perhaps when they pressure students who aren’t doing the wrong thing to hand over their personal possessions, this occurred to a Sydney art student who filmed a conflict between light night partiers and police with his mobile phone. He was then charged with hindering police even though he had put away the film when asked and never saved the footage as ordered, but because he refused to let the police take his phone away from him he was then arrested. This was all due to the fact that he was filming them capsicum spraying the partiers, however which law was broken here when the student had in fact listened and got rid of the video footage? Police aren’t given that authority unless it may be used in evidence, however with the footage deleted anyway what exactly was this police officer afraid of? With police powers increasing will this soon become a world run by police? With the increase on police being allowed to stop random people in the middle of the street and search them there is a daunting chance of this soon becoming a place in which police have the freedom to take advantage of innocent citizens, where’s the protection in that?

Source:
Merritt, C 2008, Call to reform police powers, The Australian, South Australia