Police invade Climate Camp — and FIT are ejected

2.08.2008
The For­ward Intel­li­gence Team made a for­ay onto the field today but were eject­ed from the field by campers.

Police still feel con­fi­dent to wan­der about the site in pairs — fol­lowed and escort­ed, natch — but the arrival of the FIT with cam­eras proved too much.

Accord­ing­ly they were sur­round­ed and eject­ed from the field today by the camp.

Num­bers are swelling — the clmate camp info line is very busy with last minute requests for direc­tions — and we will soon be empow­ered to reclaim absolute own­er­ship of the site.

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Activists dove under police vans and formed human chains to pre­vent them from get­ting on site, and peo­ple scram­bled up the dou­ble tripods — but campers were out­num­bered 3 to 1 by the police.

Although police claimed to be search­ing for mate­ri­als that could be used on the 9th August day of action, they also seized items such as guy-ropes for safe­ly secur­ing mar­quees, radios used in med­ical emer­gen­cies, and build­ing mate­ri­als essen­tial for the con­struc­tion of com­post toi­lets. The seizures went as far as the con­fis­ca­tion of such ridicu­lous items as a bicy­cle repair kit, three board games and a pack of chil­dren’s crayons.

But the real stand off took place over water pipes and wood for the kitchens. In a twist of supreme irony, as the coun­cil dug a pipeline to deliv­er fresh water, activists had to engage in a tug of war with the police to keep the water pipes on site — which they did suc­cess­ful­ly. And as the police brought in a flat-bed lor­ry to remove wood for the kitchens, activists climbed onto the wood­pile and pre­vent­ed it from being tak­en away.

As the police gave in and the lor­ry drove away, a cheer went up and campers imme­di­ate­ly formed a human chain to car­ry the wood up to the kitchens. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is for the time being a small police pres­ence on site.

Every­thing is now calm on site, but the raid has put the set-up back by half a day, so more peo­ple on site are need­ed to get the camp ready for this Sun­day. The big push will be hap­pen­ing over Fri­day and Sat­ur­day as the major­i­ty of mate­ri­als arrive, and there’s plen­ty of work to be done — so come on down!

31.07.2008
This after­noon over 100 police offi­cers invad­ed the Cli­mate Camp, claim­ing to search for mate­r­i­al that could be used for crim­i­nal dam­age. Since there are only around 150 peo­ple cur­rent­ly on site, more peo­ple are urgent­ly need­ed to make the site more secure. There are reports that sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed.

Activists who blocked police vehi­cles were removed in a very heavy hand­ed man­ner. The names and details of many peo­ple were tak­en. Mate­ri­als were removed from site, includ­ing a wet suit. All the while, a police heli­copter was in the sky over the camp.

Police have now left.

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IMC time­line:

19:10 — Police num­bers on site are now sub­stan­tial­ly reduced but they have installed a mobile police sta­tion at the entrance to the camp and there is talk of a per­ma­nent patrol. Campers cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing the return of the prop­er­ty stolen by police, much of which is essen­tial to set­ting up the camp infra­struc­ture.

18.36 — The wood pile has been saved. Peo­ple sat on the wood­pile pro­tect­ing it and even­tu­al­ly the police gave up and sent the recov­ery vehi­cle away. The seizure of water pipe was also attempt­ed but stopped by peo­ple sit­ting on it.

18.15 — Cur­rent­ly the police are remov­ing the pile of con­struc­tion wood using a 24 hour recov­ery vehi­cle. Oth­er con­fis­cat­ed items now include: lots of rope, lots of tools, 3 boardgames, a lad­der, boil­er suits, flares. Police have emp­tied entire vans. Half of the police have gone off-site, the oth­er half stopped the search but are still on-site. So far 2 peo­ple have been arrest­ed, 1 for stop­ping police from going into their tent (obstruc­tion).

16.40 — Over 200 police offi­cers have entered the site with vehi­cles and a police heli­copter is hov­er­ing over­head. Police were issued with a war­rant for the search­ing and seiz­ing of arti­cles for use in crim­i­nal dam­age. Con­fis­cat­ed items have includ­ed: planks of wood, car­pet and a war-on-ter­ror boardgame. Every tent is being searched. Peo­ple are up in the tripods. Some offi­cers are report­ed act­ing aggres­sive­ly towards peo­ple try­ing to resist the search. For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) are walk­ing around the site pho­tograph­ing and film­ing peo­ple.

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Any mate­ri­als relat­ing to the Day of Action, includ­ing things that appear to be innocu­ous (oars, inflat­a­bles, pumps, D‑locks for bikes and so on) may be seized by the police.

You may like to store such items off­site for col­lec­tion at a lat­er date.