What happens when you film a comedy sketch in a North London park using fake guns? Don't be surprised if specialist armed police turn up and tell you to "get on the fucking ground":
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That's what happened to a group of men filming a comedy sketch in a park in Enfield on 29 November.
One of the four men was Kevin Stephens, 30, aka Stevothemadman, a former professional footballer who played for Leyton Orient, QPR and Newport County but struggled with injury, who has built up a following on Instagram, Vine and Snapchat.
The group was filming a sketch in which Stephens pretends to be disabled in order to avoid being mugged by armed thieves.
In the video, the first officer, from the Metropolitan Police's specialist SC&O19 firearms unit, can be heard telling the group to "get down on the fucking ground!", followed by the same request again, but louder, after one of group says: "This is just unnecessary man."
At one point, one of the men says: "You didn't have to kick me in the face, officer."
More officers and police dogs then turned up and the men were arrested and taken to a nearby police station in East London.
They were later released without charge after several hours.
The maximum sentence for possessing a firearm or imitation firearm with intent to cause fear or violence is 10 years in prison.
The Metropolitan Police said in a statement:
Enfield Police and officers from the MPS Firearms unit attended the scene.
Four men aged 27, 28 and 30 were arrested at the scene and taken to an east London police Station.Two imitation firearms were recovered at the scene.
All suspects were interviewed and provided the same account. They explained that they were using the imitation guns to make a film.
The suspects showed remorse and were later released with no further action being taken.
Police in Enfield would like to remind the community that imitation and toy firearms can cause fear to others. Possession of imitations firearms in certain circumstances may amount to an offence. All calls that are firearm related will be treated seriously.
Stephens, 30, pictured right, is originally from Enfield but is now based in Lincolnshire. He tells BuzzFeed News:
We were there at the scene for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour, waiting to be picked up. They was gonna put us in separate vans, but in the end they put us two in each van.
I think it was about seven hours (at the station), I don't really know to be honest. It was a long old day. Once I showed them the footage on my phone in the interview, it made it conclusive that we was just filming and we wasn't just trying to offend the public or scare them. It was just silly and a lack of knowledge. I'm just a normal guy, I'm a normal geezer. It's a lesson learned man.
There was much discussion on YouTube and Reddit over whether the video of the police arresting the group was real, which Stephens can understand too:
On Snapchat, I do a lot of stories where I'm pretending I got stabbed and I use fake blood, or I'm dying, in these little sketches. And people saw this and were like 'oh, another Stevo story', but no, not this one man. Credit to my acting though, eh?
And he is no doubt that he was in wrong by using guns in public and isn't critical of the police:
I can definitely see why they turned up. You know people moan about the force and say 'they didn't need to go that mad'... I can't lie, listen, if you've got a guy with a gun – and don't forget we were filming a robbery scene, one of the guys had a balaclava on his face – if you get into their shoes I can fully understand.
I just think once they saw it was a plastic gun and they knew, then the force after that wasn't necessary. But telling us 'get down, stay down, f-ing this', yeah, you get down, trust me, it works. I understand that.
There are a series of clips showing the group messing around before the police turned up.
Stephens, who played for several lower league teams after leaving Orient before getting involved in car sales, has been taking his online videos seriously since the summer and says he hopes his videos can lead to more exposure and a possible media career, perhaps involving his contacts in football. He also claims to be in talks with a TV channel about a possible sketch show.