On The Ground, Ireland: New Cops, New Violence Parts One & Two

Mon­day morn­ing, 12 March 2007, saw the trans­fer of a new con­tin­gent of guards to police the Shell gas ter­mi­nal refin­ery con­struc­tion site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, North West Ire­land.

Video 120307_New_Cops — video/x‑ms-wmv 12M

Mon­day morn­ing, 12 March 2007, saw the trans­fer of a new con­tin­gent of guards to police the Shell gas ter­mi­nal refin­ery con­struc­tion site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, North West Ire­land.

Video 120307_New_Cops — video/x‑ms-wmv 12M

Sev­er­al pro­tes­tors, both young and old, stepped in the road to peace­ful­ly block­ade trucks and bus­es going into the site. The guards imme­di­ate­ly jumped on them with increas­ing vio­lence, end­ing in all out unpro­voked attacks.

Many of the new guards are list­ed as “U” on their lapels. This jour­nal­ist was informed by a local this means the guards have been draft­ed in from Dublin.

Offi­cer U235 was the guard who drop-kicked the young man at the end of the video.

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Tues­day 13 March, the sec­ond day of new guards at the Shell Gas Ter­mi­nal con­struc­tion site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, North West Ire­land, again saw police vio­lence esca­late fur­ther.

Video 130307_New_Cops_P2 — video/x‑ms-wmv 14M

One pro­tes­tor attempt­ed to block a bus car­ry­ing Shell work­ers into the site.

In response the guards attacked every­one, knock­ing Mary, wife of Ross­port Five Willie Cor­duff, to the ground. Peo­ple suf­fered var­i­ous attacks from shoves, punch­es, kicks and grabs to the throat, includ­ing this jour­nal­ist.

Again the main aggres­sor was guard U235, who was the hand that pushed Mary and insti­gat­ed a sec­ond attack on an elder­ly gen­tle­ma, who was thrown to the ground with a spe­cif­ic mar­tial arts leg sweep. The man fell back hit­ting his head and his glass­es were bro­ken. Luck­i­ly he sus­tained no seri­ous injury.