Weds 1st April: G20 protests - discussion, reaction and chat

[e19896]

If not now when?

The SWP has taken advantage of the political vacuum left by anarcho-inactivity and set up its own Justice For Ian Tomlinson campaign grafting on its usual cronies in the Muslim Association of Britain and Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Meanwhile the ANARCHIST are invisible - failing to take advantage of te biggest anti-police feeling for decades.

If the trots have taken over the campaign, it’s being served even worse by them than usual. Hvaeing seen the protest outside Scotland Yard then the protest outside the City of London Police HQ - both had pisspoor attendances.

There is a choice. ANARCHIST can leave this important matter in the hands of the effete and ineffectual trots, or they can take on the challenge. If they leave this alone, then the trots will make a bollox of it like they do with everything. The trots weren’t fucking there on 1 April - ANARCHIST was - and it’s a fucking insult, not only to poor Mr Tomlinson’s family, but also to those who were out, that they (the trots) have got their hands on this campaign without any difficulty.

<ed: massive cut paste odyssey trimmed>

Source for info here​

 

[kenny g]

No, really, I think it's more some coppers are bastards (SCAB? ), but the culture within the police force is one of omerta as far as showing dissent towards the macho stuff goes, so a large proportion of the force get tarred with the same brush as the dodgy 10% who deserve it, and can't (or won't) speak out. If anything needs changing, I reckon it's that. Somehow *shrug*

Too fucking true. That is what makes it so shocking. They can talk about a few bad apples but if the rest of the ones in the barrel are unwilling to stand up to the shits then it is hardly surprising that they are all seen as rotten

 

[winjer]

The SWP has taken advantage of the political vacuum left by anarcho-inactivity and set up its own Justice For Ian Tomlinson campaign grafting on its usual cronies in the Muslim Association of Britain and Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

This isn't true, as usual Bone is way off target.

 

[paolo]

There were a couple of posters on Police Oracle - both retired - who had a intelligent and considered argument for policing by consent. I've not looked in the last few days, but the far less literate (but more numerous) idiots were drowning them out.

I suspect that these are the 'thick end' of the wedge. Police bods who have to deal with public perception issues must be cringing at seeing such insensitive (and that's being generous) comments in the public domain, in the name of 'them'.

That the moderators have had to either shut access or lock threads makes it worse. Weathering the shit storm is better than pretending it isn't happening. And boy is it happening.

 

[berniedicters]

The SWP has taken advantage of the political vacuum left by anarcho-inactivity and set up its own Justice For Ian Tomlinson campaign grafting on its usual cronies in the Muslim Association of Britain and Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Meanwhile the ANARCHIST are invisible - failing to take advantage of te biggest anti-police feeling for decades.

Source for info here​

OK, great, you're sourcing them now. But do we have to read to the end of a massive cut-and-pasteathon to find out? Is it really too much to post the link and a few relevant snippets?

This is a great thread, partly because it's snappy, pithy and fast-moving. Having massive lumps of someone else's prose jammed sideways in the middle isn't helping that.

 

[berniedicters]

Too fucking true. That is what makes it so shocking. They can talk about a few bad apples but if the rest of the ones in the barrel are unwilling to stand up to the shits then it is hardly surprising that they are all seen as rotten

There are quite a few professions where it is considered Conduct Unbecoming to fail to report something you know about a fellow professional - if you know that someone has broken the professional code but you fail to disclose it, then you can be held liable. This, in conjunction with a supervision regime that both supports and polices practitioners, makes it a lot harder for people to look the other way.

I think that it would be a brave and honourable commitment on the part of senior police officers to implement a similar code of conduct on the police service. So that "not noticing" wasn't, as it is now, the done thing, and doesn't even become merely a desirable thing, but becomes something that simply isn't acceptable any more.

It'd be hard, and there'd be teething troubles, but it would turn on its head the current "sorry, guv, didn't see nuffin'" attitude that seems to pervade some aspects of policing at the moment.

 

[Squatticus]

Lets not forget not one innocent member of the public has been the subject of these G20 news stories. We have the abusive, aggressive, obstructive drunk. Swearing, abusive, agressive Gollum and this aggressive idiot who is unneccessarily close to Police

My nightmare scenario for this affair is that it somehow ends with a rapprochement between the police and the public. But if the above view is representative of police officers, I'm reassured.

 

[paolo]

OK, great, you're sourcing them now. But do we have to read to the end of a massive cut-and-pasteathon to find out? Is it really too much to post the link and a few relevant snippets?

This is a great thread, partly because it's snappy, pithy and fast-moving. Having massive lumps of someone else's prose jammed sideways in the middle isn't helping that.

+1

 

[Treacle Toes]

Blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah, axe to grind about axe grinding, blah.

So we repeat here and agree - to keep the momentum going - Sir Paul Stephenson addresses the first full meeting of the MPA since Ian Tomlinson’s death at 10 am April 30th City Hall. We must be there in the public gallery and outside to kettle him. It’s the very least we can do. BE THERE!

Source for info here​

Couldn't you just have advertised the meeting without the party/non-party politics?

A good example of why folk get put off of getting involved in important stuff like this...too much finger pointing and not enough unity!

The irony is it reads like complaining about axes being ground whilst grinding a fair few at the same time.

It doesn't need to be so bloody complicated, just remove all the sticky labels and advertise the meeting.

*copies and pastes self in an act of anarchy against conformist self*

 

[berniedicters]

Couldn't you just have advertised the meeting without the party/non-party politics?

A good example of why folk get put off of getting involved in important stuff like this...too much finger pointing and not enough unity!

The irony is it reads like complaining about axes being ground whilst grinding a fair few at the same time.

It doesn't need to be so bloody complicated, just remove all the sticky labels and advertise the meeting.

*copies and pastes self in an act of anarchy against conformist self*

I didn't even realise he was advertising anything . I read a few lines, thought "hey, I bet this is another enumbers cut and pastefest", Googled the first line and found it was, then stopped reading. He's his own worst enemy!

 

[Treacle Toes]

I didn't even realise he was advertising anything . I read a few lines, thought "hey, I bet this is another enumbers cut and pastefest", Googled the first line and found it was, then stopped reading. He's his own worst enemy!

Perhaps my over-used teacher skim reading for gist skills helped me here...

But yeah....another reason why the meeting may not be attended. People won't even realise there is one in amongst all that!

 

[editor]

This is a great thread, partly because it's snappy, pithy and fast-moving. Having massive lumps of someone else's prose jammed sideways in the middle isn't helping that.

Spot on, sir! Cut it out please, e19896.

 

[kenny g]

A few quite shocking Police blogs.

http://policecamerapaperwork.blogspot.com/2007/05/section-69-of-ways-and-means-act.html

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/

 

[Mooncat]

A few quite shocking Police blogs.

http://policecamerapaperwork.blogspot.com/2007/05/section-69-of-ways-and-means-act.html

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/

To be fair most of the complaints made on those two blogs are about the politicisation of the police - something I think we all agree on

 

[GoneCoastal]

Climate Camp Legal Team's Report about the Bishopsgate clearing is on the Climate Camp website http://climatecamp.org.uk/node/563
I've just read through it and it's powerful !

 

[david dissadent]

I can really see why the police hate the climate campers. They have had the patience since their protest at Drax in 06 to keep doing the same thing and waiting for the police to fuck up. Joe Plod gets in his armour and gets out his batton and looks across the lines at the ‘fluffies’ and watches minds cleverer than his own, watches strategies when he employs tactics. He knows all his muscle is out thought.
He watches knowing he is being beaten by resolve and pacifism aforethought.

The chickens have come home to roost.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

To be fair, your average plod, summed up as a Durkheimian ideal type probably thought 'Fucking poncy middle-class soap-dodgers, they need a good smacking'

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The media comeback on that smacking, I venture to suggest, based on reading Police Oracle and sites like that, is met with a kind of brutish incomprehension and a deep sense of injustice. If the world has really changed now, and it's no longer ok to give a bunch of posh hippies a sound smacking for being wankers, then it's unfair that nobody told them.

Anyone who gets a good smacking from a policeman clearly deserves it. That's one of them Kantian moral imperatives. How dare the media try to change the rules ...

 

[winjer]

the guy in the last video who goes up to the police line and gets arrested is the same man as is bitten in the first video i think.

Same guy in this at 05:00, I think:

 

[lopsidedbunny]

I am assuming this happen on the 2nd April?

Police Pointing a 50,000-volt Taser at a Group of People Lying on the Floor

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6130949.ece

 

[lopsidedbunny]

10 years of slow building frustration and the creeping terror laws, widening police powers, bogus terror scares, dodgy dossiers taking us to war and the endless pinickety attacks on liberties that have crept into the national culture found a lightening rod in the Tomlinson case that opened up a rich vein of police arrogance.

This is more about how fearfull middle class and working class people feel about where Britain is going than about protesters.

But the journalists who have found themselves harrassed and even beaten by the police covering demos and anti terror stories themselves probibly have an axe to grind.

Its as if a huge part of the country has had this appatite for a story that can run and run.... from de Menzies to the Forrestgate terror arrests, to the use of anti stalking legislation against the Oxford ash tipping protester to RIPA laws being used against people getting kids into the right school.

The best statement I read so far

 

[e19896]

Meanwhile the IPCC, that well known cop biased whitewasher, have called for a debate on police violence whilst they, ahem, 'maintain public order.'

Surely this should have been instigated 25 years ago following the despicable violent tactics used by police against the miners, or 20 years ago relating to the deaths of 96 people at Sheffield’s Hillsborough football ground on 15th April, 1989, and there is Blair Peach nither must we forget

The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on the afternoon of Saturday June 1, 1985 when Wiltshire Police prevented a vehicle convoy of several hundred new age travellers, known as the Peace Convoy, from setting up the fourteenth Stonehenge free festival at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England after English Heritage, the custodians of the site, persuaded a High Court Judge to grant an exclusion zone of some four miles around the Stones. The incident became notorious for accusations of a police riot that were reported to have taken place.

Those in the Convoy insist that, after a stand-off of several hours, police attacked their procession of vehicles by entering the field where they were being contained, methodically smashing windows, beating people on the head with truncheons, and using sledgehammers to damage the interiors of their coaches. The Beanfield was the next field down from where the vehicles were; and when a large number of police entered the first field, many of the Convoy vehicles tried to escape by going through the Beanfield, where they were pursued and arrested by police. The police stated that they responded after they had earlier come under attack, being pelted with lumps of wood, stones and petrol bombs. The full account of events remains in hot dispute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beanfield

There is nothing new with what happend at G20..

 

[winjer]

A little old(?) but I assuming this happen on the 3rd(?) April? Pointing a 50,000-volt Taser at a group of people lying on the floor http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6130949.ece

It was April 2nd, around 12:30pm, just when the press might otherwise have been covering the Ian Tomlinson solidarity vigil at Royal Exchange, coincidentally I'm sure.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

I don't understand where that was filmed - was that at Ramparts?

 

[winjer]

The G20 convergence centre, squatted specially a few days before April 1st, Payne House on Earl Street, just West of Liverpool Street Station.

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/city_poet/sets/72157616276864038/

 

[winjer]

I think that it would be a brave and honourable commitment on the part of senior police officers to implement a similar code of conduct on the police service.

They actually alrready did (only in December 2008):

"Challenging and Reporting Improper Conduct

Police officers report, challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues which has fallen below the Standards of Professional Behaviour."

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20082864_en_8#sch1

The previous code of conduct had nothing similar:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2004/20040645.htm#sch1

 

[berniedicters]

They actually alrready did (only in December 2008):

"Challenging and Reporting Improper Conduct

Police officers report, challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues which has fallen below the Standards of Professional Behaviour."

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20082864_en_8#sch1

The previous code of conduct had nothing similar:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2004/20040645.htm#sch1

It's a start, but it looks awfully like most of the terribly earnest Policies one of my employers is so proud of having, and which get mentioned at every opportunity, but are so idealistic and rarefied that they and the practicalities of day-to-day activity rarely meet.

What it needs is less statements of intent and more of an embedded approach to tackling this kind of thing. "An officer who becomes aware, or who could reasonably be expected to have been aware, of discreditable conduct, but who fails to act on it by reporting it to a senior officer or other appropriate authority, shall be deemed to have been complicit in that conduct". Type thing.

Noble platitudes will forever stay just that, and nobody's behaviour will really change.

 

[kenny g]

I disagree. The Regulations look like pretty powerful stuff. Police witnesses who do nothing regarding breaches of the Regs would themselves be in breach. In the case of the woman who got battoned an Inspector can be seen witnessing the action in a couple of photos. It would be interesting if someone made a complaint that he was in breach of the Regs by failing to act.

Challenging and Reporting Improper Conduct
Police officers report, challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues which has fallen below the Standards of Professional Behaviour./QUOTE]

 

[winjer]

Pity the (at least) one FIT officer who witnessed both the shoving of Ian Tomlinson, and the slapping of Nicky Fisher...

 

[berniedicters]

I disagree. The Regulations look like pretty powerful stuff. Police witnesses who do nothing regarding breaches of the Regs would themselves be in breach. In the case of the woman who got battoned an Inspector can be seen witnessing the action in a couple of photos. It would be interesting if someone made a complaint that he was in breach of the Regs by failing to act.

Challenging and Reporting Improper Conduct
Police officers report, challenge or take action against the conduct of colleagues which has fallen below the Standards of Professional Behaviour./QUOTE]

Well, I hope you're right, and I hope my cynicism proves unfounded...