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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

Happened in 2023 in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_paper_protest

The UK case involved him being "lead away" by police and "detained" when he returned and spoke so not really an arrest for holding up a blank piece of paper. Not good by any means, but not quite "for holding up a blank piece of paper". The other UK case was about a threat of arrest if he wrote on the paper - that is under the law that bans protests in Parliament Square. Again, not good, but not for holding up a blank piece of paper.

I thought detainment was a lighter kind of arrest. Seems that I’m wrong and they are distinct concepts (I’m not too familiar with the English terminology here, my bad)

When someone is detained, they're just a person of interest wanted for questioning. When they're arrested, it's because they've actually been charged for something.

In the U.S. you can be “detained” for days or weeks for having brown skin.

It’s called a Kavanaugh Stop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanaugh_stop

Its more complex than that. Arrest is fairly straightforward, but you can be arrested and released without charge (e.g. Peter Mandelson was).

Detaining is not something I really understanding, but from what I have read it is using restraint of some sort without arrest and not really something police seem to have any special powers to do (whereas their powers of arrest are greater than those of other people).

The facts in your link contradict your post

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