Stokes Croft Freeshop Eviction

7th July 2011

The pop­u­lar squat­ted Freeshop and attached Empo­ri­um Gallery on Stokes Croft were evict­ed this morn­ing. Bailiffs entered the build­ing with sledge­ham­mers at around 6am, sur­pris­ing the occu­pants, and had man­aged to secure the build­ing before sup­port arrived.

7th July 2011

The pop­u­lar squat­ted Freeshop and attached Empo­ri­um Gallery on Stokes Croft were evict­ed this morn­ing. Bailiffs entered the build­ing with sledge­ham­mers at around 6am, sur­pris­ing the occu­pants, and had man­aged to secure the build­ing before sup­port arrived.

One occu­pant was arrest­ed inside the build­ing. The rest were allowed to leave with a sin­gle per­son­al bag each. Bailiffs, with the full sup­port of the police, then refused to fetch a bag con­tain­ing vital doc­u­ments for an occu­pant who had been out at the time. One sup­port­er was arrest­ed for hold­ing up a ban­ner out­side, and the ban­ner was con­fis­cat­ed. The arrestee was man­han­dled by an unbadged stew­ard from Delta Secu­ri­ty, and peo­ple attempt­ing to help or advise were threat­ened with batons and pushed into the road. Police also pre­vent­ed a pass­ing traf­fic war­den from tick­et­ing the ille­gal­ly-parked Sitex vehi­cles near­by.

The build­ing has now been ful­ly evict­ed, but the project will con­tin­ue in a new space, and plans to buy the build­ing may still go ahead. Both arrestees have been tak­en to Trin­i­ty Sta­tion, and we’ve made sure they have access to solic­i­tors. Par­ties direct­ly involved in the evic­tion seem to be the local Coun­ty Court Bailiffs, Delta Secu­ri­ty (not sure exact­ly who as SIA badges hid­den), local police, and our old friends Sitex Orbis.