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I shared the concern of Andy Hayman former-Assistant Commissioner Special Operations at the Metropolitan Police when he said today "the commissioner must ask serious questions about the style of policing. If left unchecked, we have a more violent crowd in uniform than the crowd demonstrating."
After the reports, the emotion and the scandals over policing of the the G20 protests, we need a full independent criminal inquiry into police action which establishes what happened, how it came to pass. It must attempt to establish accountability with reference to the command structure of the Metropolitan police for misinforming the public (some statements already retracted) over the events.
We then need a long hard unbiased academic think about police tactics around political protests in Britain, working partnership with the IPCC and the Metropolitan police.
This is why:
"From outside the camp looking in we could see young people, hands in the air to show they were non-violent, being pushed around and in some cases beaten by police. According to reports from inside the camp the officers carrying out the beatings were covering their ID badges so they couldn't be identified. As well as violence and intimidation, the protesters in the enclosures, including women, had to suffer the indignity of urinating in public. "
"On the way we heard on the radio that the situation in Bishopsgate had suddenly become ‘tense’. This surprised us as the atmosphere when we left, about 15 minutes before this radio news report, was entirely peaceful and convivial. It also seemed surprising since at 6pm, the scheduled activities in the Camp were:
(1) Buddhist meditation;
(2) how to fight climate change with poetry; and
(3) activist trauma support.
We decided that we’d take a careful look back at the Camp once we’d finished the important business of having our dinner.
When we approached the Camp for the second time, at around 7.15 pm, the situation had changed completely. Approaching from the Liverpool Street station end we were confronted by a line of police vans, nose to nose, completely blocking entry to the Camp. Police officers in riot helmets were lined up behind the vans. Gradually, they formed a line in front of the vans.No-one allowed in; no one allowed out. We thought of the family with the toddler. Had the police allowed some people, e.g., those with young children, to leave before they drew up their lines?
Why were the police doing this? One answer: “It’s the superior powers, I’m afraid”, said one policeman in good temper (rather in the spirit of the WW1 infantry song, ‘We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here’).
Another police officer (something like): “I don’t have to give you an explanation because I am acting on information which is not available to you.”
A third police officer: “There was violence inside the Camp.”
So I looked the policeman in the eye: “That’s bare-faced lie - I was in the camp just before this started and I know it wasn’t violent.”His reply? He immediately conceded, with a bit of a laugh, that, yes, he had indeed lied. Feeling a rush of republican self-righteousness hitting me, I asked him if he thought that this is how police officers properly serve the citizenry: by telling them bare-faced lies. Obviously hoping that I would just shut up and go away, he sort-of laughed again and agreed that, yes, this is how police officers properly serve the public.
Some officers were wearing balaclavas under their riot helmets. I pointed out to one officer that this meant I couldn’t see his face properly. (I later learnt from another officer that they are worn because of their flame-repellent properties.) I then also noticed that he had no identification number on his jacket. Thus, if things got nasty, and he ended up in a tussle with a protester, the protester would have no way of identifying him: no face, no number. I reported this to the Legal Observer on the scene. About ten minutes later, another officer hastily tacked on some identification numbers to the offending jacket."
"Another demonstrator had already called 999 and was getting medical advice from the ambulance dispatcher. “Four police with two police medics came. They told her [the first aider] to ‘move along’”, said Peter Apps. “Then they pushed her forcibly away from him. They refused to listen to her [the first aider] when she tried to explain his condition.”
The first aider, who did not wish to be named, said, “The police surrounded the collapsed man. I was standing with the person who’d called 999. The ambulance dispatcher wanted to talk to the police, the phone was being held out to them, but the police refused.”
Another witness, Elias Stoakes, added “we didn’t see them [the police] perform CPR.”
"Within an hour of arriving, the same police who had stepped back and let me through closed in around the camp and refused to let anyone in or out. I then watched the police push forward into the crowd with a brutality that was not only shocking but utterly unnecessary. All the protesters put their hands in the air and sat down collectively on the road. Yet as the crowd lowered I saw a young man stagger back with his head split open, another boy with a broken nose, a girl next to me had been kicked between the legs.
Despite our repeated requests to be searched and allowed to leave the space, we were held there for six hours with no access to water, food, toilets or medical care. Proudly, throughout all this, not one person in the crowd reacted with violence to any person or property. People shared the little they had and held public meetings about the aims of the G20 summit. There was little show of anger, but much unhappiness. When, finally, we were herded out one by one at midnight, I felt cold to the core, chilled by the unprovoked aggression of those who I had been brought up to trust. I am deeply ashamed of my state, in which reasonable and calm protesters are criminalised and provoked in such a manner."
To the riposte that there is nothing that can be done, that this is inevitable and that blanket violence against anyone present is necessary when private property is under threat as it was at
RBS that day, I would say have more ambition for our police! Look how effectively they have learnt to manage football crowds, which were renowned as the most violent in Europe not long ago, and look how police elsewhere in Europe still fail to strike an effective balance and clearly make violence inevitable through heavy-handed approaches. We can do better with political protests as well!
The need for a reappraisal of violent tactics is obvious and will I'm sure be examined in detail in good time. Yet there are more options to consider, if we are to learn from failure here and successes elsewhere.
- Perhaps there needs to be closer liaison between protest organisers and police.
- Perhaps we need more coordinated and codified organisation of entrance and exit to political protests as an alternative to 'kettling' which seems to have made the police's job of avoiding harming innocents harder.
- Perhaps we need a greater emphasis on clear public information before and throughout the event to avoid frustration which can be the seed of conflict.
- We at least need makeshift toilet facilities and drinking fountains if the movements of private individuals are to be so severely restricted.
UPDATE: "The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), Sir Paul Stephenson has requested that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) undertake a review of the MPS in terms of its response to the policing of events whether planned or spontaneous and the associated potential for public disorder."
LINK
Bozza published an attack on the Government's "soak the rich" budget on Monday.
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