Category: Action Reports

Chan­nel 4 com­men­tary on what hap­pened to Ian Tom­lin­son just before his death — the lat­est ITN footage com­bined with the first footage pub­lished on the Guardian web­site. On the ground, pro­tes­tors try to help before being cleared out of the area — counter the media-bot­tle-throw­ing hype, watch two eye wit­ness­es.

New inci­dent of sys­temic police vio­lence — when an offi­cer slaps the face then batons the legs of a woman — cap­tured on film.

Even new­er video evi­dence of yet more police vio­lence — shields and fists used to punch with­out provo­ca­tion — more details.

Newest footage which shows Ian Tom­lin­son’s head hit the ground from the push by police.

Police charge press pho­tog­ra­phers.

Col­lec­tions of videos of police vio­lence: 1 | 2
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Lon­don assem­bly and pro­ces­sion:

East­er ris­ing!
Reclaim the City, Sat­ur­day April 11

* 12.00 noon Sat­ur­day — 12.00 noon Sun­day
* Wear Black
* Assem­ble 11:30am, Beth­nal Green
* Lay your flow­ers where Ian Tom­lin­son died
* Bring pop-up tents to stay with Ian through the night

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Edin­burgh protest:

Four months ago it was a 15-year-old school­boy in Greece – today it’s a 47-year-old news­pa­per sell­er in the UK.

Enough with the state mur­ders!

Whether civil­ians’ deaths are caused because of “heart attacks” (most like­ly due to police ter­ror) or head injuries (due to police bru­tal­i­ty) or “mis­fires” (due to police stu­pid­i­ty), we say we had Enough!

Enough! Of your lies in attempt­ing to cov­er up your mis­takes
Enough! Of your “Robo­cop” atti­tude
Enough! Of your “to serve and pro­tect” fake masks
Enough! Of you being the guardian dogs of the priv­i­leged elite

We say Enough! and we are going to say it out loud so every­one can hear us.

Sat­ur­day 11th of April at 1:30pm in Bris­to Square (Edin­burgh)

Bring friends, ban­ners, can­dles and some­thing to make noise with (drums, whis­tles etc.)

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Red­ditch protest:

The polic­ing at the G20 protests was extreme­ly vio­lent and aggres­sive. Peace­ful pro­test­ers were attacked and beat­en, many of them suf­fer­ing injuries. We’ve all seen the videos of police lay­ing into the cli­mate campers who stood there with their hands in the air calm­ly stat­ing “this is not a riot”. And now we see film evi­dence that Ian Tom­lin­son, who was not even a pro­test­er, was bru­tal­ly attacked from behind with a baton, before being shoved hard to the ground by a vicious cop. Ian Tom­lin­son died min­utes lat­er — I call this MURDER and it hap­pened on Jacqui Smith‘s watch!!

This is a call out for a Nation­al Demon­stra­tion in Red­ditch, the con­stituen­cy of Jacqui Smith, the Home Sec­re­tary.

Demon­strate against the increas­ing­ly vio­lent and aggres­sive polic­ing at peace­ful protests. Demon­strate against the ero­sion of civ­il lib­er­ties in our so called democ­ra­cy. Demand that Jacqui Smith ensures that the offi­cers who mur­dered Ian Tom­lin­son are brought to jus­tice.

Let‘s see how Jacqui Smith likes it when 1,000s of pro­test­ers turn up in her home town demand­ing JUSTICE!!!

Sat­ur­day 18th April — 12 noon out­side Red­ditch Town Hall.

The town hall is about 10 min­utes walk from the train sta­tion.
http://www.multimap.com/s/QKjPxY9S

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A protest against the death of Ian Tom­lin­son and the grow­ing use of vio­lent tac­tics by police against pro­test­ers will take place 1 pm Sat­ur­day 11 April, Grey’s Mon­u­ment, New­cas­tle

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Legal call-out

G20 LEGAL UPDATE
First, thank you for all the emails. We are read­ing them but not acknowl­edg­ing them at the moment due to the quan­ti­ty. Our apolo­gies. For the time being, if you would like us to respond — please send us anoth­er email request­ing a response.

HOW THE POST-PROTEST LEGAL PROCESS WORKS:
Lots of peo­ple are writ­ing to us with evi­dence of police mis­be­hav­iour and there cer­tain­ly seems to be grounds for com­plaint in many of them.
How­ev­er, cru­cial­ly com­plaints and legal claims need to be brought by indi­vid­u­als: we can’t do it on your behalf. Also, do NOT make a com­plaint if there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that you will make a legal claim, or could sup­port some­one else doing so — com­plain­ing to the IPCC before suing the police will com­pro­mise the case.

What we are doing is:

1. We are mak­ing sure we have the evi­dence avail­able to us sort­ed so we can locate sup­port­ing evi­dence for those arrest­ed or those who bring com­plaints of assault and so forth against the police.

2. We are explor­ing whether there is a legal chal­lenge strate­gi­cal­ly worth bring­ing this time. If so, we will be look­ing for poten­tial lit­i­gants.

3. We are prepar­ing report and film on the Camp and may be in con­tact with some of you to use your state­ments. We have made no deci­sion as to what we will do with the report at this point.

4. We have a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in how those with injuries or ill­ness­es were treat­ed by the police — so if you have rel­e­vant evi­dence there please let us know. Depend­ing on the evi­dence, we may focus on this as an area of con­cern.

What you could do:

If you were wrong­ful­ly arrest­ed, or assault­ed and injured by a police offi­cer, you may be able to bring a case against the police. Please con­tact Bind­mans Solic­i­tors in the first instance: 020 7833 4433. If they do not have the capac­i­ty then we can rec­om­mend oth­er firms of solic­i­tors who have worked with activists in the past. We may have sup­port­ing evi­dence so let us know if we can help. Please keep us informed of the out­comes — legal@climatecamp.org.uk.

If you were arrest­ed and charged, let us know as we may have sup­port­ing evi­dence that may help with your defence. You will need to give your solic­i­tor your con­sent to them talk­ing to us or they will not be able to tell us about your case. Please keep us informed of the out­come — legal@climatecamp.org.uk.

N.B. If you have pre­vi­ous­ly left any impor­tant legal infor­ma­tion on an answer­ing machine or sent to a dif­fer­ent email address and nobody got back to you, please try again using the email address above

Mean­while write up any­thing rel­e­vant now and email us, let us know if you have footage and we will send you some infor­ma­tion on how to share it with us, keep copies of any orig­i­nal notes, pho­tos and film (and keep them for 12 months).

Final­ly, if your wit­ness state­ment relates to the G20 Melt­down protests at Bank, there is a sep­a­rate legal sup­port process. Please con­tact the Legal Defence and Mon­i­tor­ing Group — email ldmgmail@yahoo.co.uk or post to Legal Defence and Mon­i­tor­ing Group, BM Box HAVEN, Lon­don, WC1N 3XX .

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Pub­lic Order strate­gies to not get ket­tled and beat­en by the police

For how to sur­vive police tac­tics in big pub­lic order sit­u­a­tions such as the G20 protests, and still do what you want to do, read the Guide to Pub­lic Order Sit­u­a­tions — any com­ments or ideas please send them in to manchester@earthfirst.org.uk

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Video of police rush on cli­mate camp — why you should read the above, rather than lis­ten to some­one on a mega­phone sug­gest­ing peo­ple put their hands up AND link arms! The same charge but clear­er and more bru­tal can be seen here. Oth­er clips and reports from the day are all here.

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Jour­nal­ists removed from cov­er­ing G20 protests with ille­gal use of laws and through injury — see the com­men­taryhere.

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Beau­ti­ful & incite­ful G20 pho­to essay — chap­ter 1: the anar­chists are com­ing! | chap­ter 2 part 1: storm the banks? | chap­ter 2 part 2: a tale of ket­tles, and death | chap­ter 3: police work

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Cor­rect­ing the media nar­ra­tive of the G20 protests on April 1, 2009

The media cov­er­age of the G20 protests has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly biased, writes Musab You­nis — ignor­ing the vio­lent polic­ing, the tac­tic of open-air impris­on­ment of demon­stra­tors, and the real chronol­o­gy of events. “It has tak­en remark­able obe­di­ence by the press,” writes Musab, “to refuse to ask some sim­ple and obvi­ous ques­tions.”

#1 – The rever­sal of events

“Anti-cap­i­tal­ist pro­test­ers embarked upon a wreck­ing spree with­in a City branch of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land today,” shrieked The Times on April 1, “and engaged in run­ning bat­tles with police as G20 demon­stra­tions turned vio­lent. Police were forced to use dogs, hors­es and trun­cheons to con­trol a crowd of up to 5,000 peo­ple who marched on the Bank of Eng­land, in Thread­nee­dle Street, on the eve of the Lon­don sum­mit.”

This nar­ra­tive of events is entire­ly typ­i­cal. Under the head­line “Police clash with G20 pro­tes­tors”, the BBC report­ed that “pro­test­ers stormed a Lon­don office of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land”, lat­er adding tha: “offi­cers lat­er used ‘con­tain­ment’ then ‘con­trolled dis­per­sal’” (BBC, April 1). The Guardian report­ed: “The G20 protests in cen­tral Lon­don turned vio­lent today ahead of tomor­row’s sum­mit, with a band of demon­stra­tors close to the Bank of Eng­land storm­ing a Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch … [S]ome bloody skir­mish­es broke out as police tried to keep thou­sands of peo­ple in con­tain­ment pens” (The Guardian, April 1).

What is inter­est­ing about this nar­ra­tive is that it pre­cise­ly revers­es the events of the day.

Eye­wit­ness accounts of the day agree that the police began the now-infa­mous tac­tic of ‘ket­tling’ pro­tes­tors – refus­ing to allow any­one in or out of a con­fined space held by police lines – as soon as the four march­es had con­verged on the Bank of Eng­land, at around mid­day. An arti­cle in The Times a day ear­li­er by a for­mer Assis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police, Andy Hay­man, sug­gest­ed that the police had planned to use this tac­tic well in advance: “Tac­tics to herd the crowd into a pen, known as ‘the ket­tle’, have been crit­i­cised heav­i­ly before, yet the police will not want groups splin­ter­ing away from the main crowd. This would stretch their resources” (The Times, March 31).

Note that the “vio­lent out­burst” (Tele­graph) of win­dow-break­ing took place hours after the police had decid­ed to “herd the crowd” of at least 5,000 peo­ple “into a pen” with­out access to food, water or toi­let facil­i­ties – and with­out allow­ing them to leave.

The press was sure­ly aware of this. The Guardian’s live blog from the day not­ed at 11.57 a.m. that “the bar­ri­ers designed to fence in the pro­test­ers are not big enough”, an hour lat­er it con­firms that there is “a ‘ket­tle’ at the Bank of Eng­land”: half an hour lat­er they report “clash­es” and final­ly, at 1.30 p.m., “a win­dow has been smashed.” An objec­tive observ­er of the sequence of events here might ask whether the police ‘ket­tle’ had in fact been respon­si­ble for the “clash­es”, “vio­lence” and smashed win­dow.

But this idea – that the ket­tle might have pro­voked the “clash­es”, and that the police might there­fore be respon­si­ble for the “vio­lence” – is remark­ably absent from vir­tu­al­ly all of the reams of press cov­er­age of the protests. We do, of course, have a spec­trum of opin­ion: where­as the right-wing Dai­ly Mail sees the pro­tes­tors as “a fear­some group of thugs”, a “bizarre group of mis­fits” fuelled by “Dutch courage” and a “will­ing­ness to use vio­lence” (April 1), for the left-wing Guardian only “a minor­i­ty of demon­stra­tors seemed deter­mined to cause dam­age” whilst “much of the protest­ing” was “peace­ful” (April 1).

Again, the notion that there was not a “vio­lent” core of demon­stra­tors at all, but that peo­ple were pro­voked into “clash­es” with the police due to police tac­tics, is absent. Even the arti­cle which is by far most crit­i­cal of the police actions – a piece by Dun­can Camp­bell in The Guardian titled ‘Did police con­tain­ment cause more trou­ble than it pre­vent­ed?’ – only goes as far as to say: “As for the vio­lent clash­es that led to cracked heads and limbs, how much was inevitable and how much avoid­able?”. Camp­bell con­cedes that “some demon­stra­tors were bent on aggro” but adds: “so were some of the offi­cers.” He also crit­i­cis­es the con­di­tions inside the ket­tle and sug­gests that it will make peo­ple think twice before embark­ing on a demon­stra­tion in future. Thus Camp­bell sug­gests the “clash­es” were avoid­able, but does not indi­cate that the ket­tles actu­al­ly led to the “clash­es” – though, to give cred­it where it is due, his is the only piece in the press which dares to sug­gest that the police were them­selves vio­lent.

#2 – Jus­ti­fi­ca­tions

Well before the protests, the press had been report­ing with glee the “vio­lence” pre­dict­ed as “Lon­don went into lock­down” and “pro­tes­tors issued a call to arms” with “police fears” of pro­tes­tors “intent on vio­lence” (The Lon­don Paper, 31 March).

The BBC post­ed a sym­pa­thet­ic arti­cle titled ‘The chal­lenge of polic­ing the G20’ (30 March) which point­ed out that: “police offi­cers spend their pro­fes­sion­al lives try­ing to play down the pub­lic order impli­ca­tions of demon­stra­tions — it’s in their inter­ests to keep things calm.”

“The secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy of the day,” they report­ed breath­less­ly, “resem­bles a three-dimen­sion­al ever-chang­ing puz­zle” where “the unknow­able fac­tor is the demon­stra­tor bent on vio­lence”. The arti­cle end­ed with a quote from Com­man­der O’Brien: “If any­one wants to come to Lon­don to engage in crime or dis­or­der, they will be met with a swift and effi­cient polic­ing response.”

This flur­ry of media cov­er­age pre­dict­ing “vio­lence” from “anar­chists” was clear­ly ini­ti­at­ed by the police, who released a bar­rage of press state­ments before the protests which served to pre-emp­tive­ly quell crit­i­cism of their actions on the day – actions which had, of course, been planned well in advance. The G20 polic­ing was to be “one of the largest, one of the most chal­leng­ing, and one of the most com­pli­cat­ed oper­a­tions” ever “deliv­ered” by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police, accord­ing to Com­man­der Simon O’Brien, who hit the press cir­cuit with gus­to in the days pre­ced­ing the G20.

The press obe­di­ent­ly played their part by report­ing police “fears” word for word, with com­plete sym­pa­thy, and with no ques­tion on ask­ing those who planned to protest whether they thought the police reac­tion might be over­ly vio­lent. After all, “the police have had to pre­pare for every pos­si­bil­i­ty” on April 1, not­ed the Times: “from ter­ror­ism to riots” (The Times, March 31).

With ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to ques­tion an unusu­al­ly talk­a­tive police force, bare­ly a sin­gle sen­tence in the press asked whether the police prepa­ra­tion for the protests might be heavy-hand­ed or that a vio­lent reac­tion by the police to the protests might lead to seri­ous injury or death. The pro­tes­tors, of course, were to be “vio­lent” “mobs” (based on police “intel­li­gence” gleaned from “social net­work­ing sites”), but the police were to be calm, mea­sured and under­take only nec­es­sary mea­sures.

The effect of this press cov­er­age was to jus­ti­fy in advance all police actions whilst de-legit­imis­ing any actions by pro­tes­tors. End­less pre­dic­tions of “vio­lent pro­tes­tors” meant that all the day’s “clash­es” were sure to be blamed on the “minor­i­ty” of “intent on vio­lence” – even if evi­dence sug­gest­ed that “clash­es” were actu­al­ly insti­gat­ed by police, and that vio­lence was in the main inflict­ed by the police on pro­tes­tors. With­in the press nar­ra­tive, the police are mere­ly reac­tive; forced to respond to a “vio­lent” sit­u­a­tion and “keep things calm”; the notion that they could have active­ly encour­aged and pro­voked “clash­es” seems patent­ly absurd.

#3 – So what’s miss­ing?

There are a num­ber of impor­tant ques­tions which sim­ply didn’t appear in the press.

a) Did the police intend to ‘ket­tle’ demon­stra­tors in a con­fined space regard­less of whether there was any vio­lence or not?

All the evi­dence, includ­ing past cas­es of the police using this tac­tic, sug­gests this was the case. (At the Cli­mate Camp protest at Bish­ops­gate on the same day, the police beat pro­tes­tors back into a ket­tle despite them hold­ing up their hands and chant­i­ng ‘this is not a riot’, as can clear­ly be seen on the Indy­media video ‘Riot police attack peace­ful pro­tes­tors at G20 cli­mate camp’).
Is there a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the police were not in fact “forced to use dogs, hoses and trun­cheons” due to “vio­lent” pro­tes­tors, but that they inflict­ed vio­lence on peace­ful pro­tes­tors?

b) Was there real­ly “vio­lence” from the pro­tes­tors?

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police state that “small groups of pro­tes­tors intent on vio­lence, mixed with the crowds of law­ful demon­stra­tors” (Met Police, 2 April) and The Guardian quotes Com­man­der Simon O’Brien as claim­ing there were “small pock­ets of crim­i­nals” with­in the crowd who attend­ed a memo­r­i­al for Ian Tom­lin­son on April 2. Again, eye­wit­ness accounts of both days state that vir­tu­al­ly all of the vio­lence came from police. Despite hours of ket­tling and media reports of “mis­siles” being thrown at police (trans­la­tion: plas­tic bot­tles), the only tan­gi­ble evi­dence of pro­tes­tor vio­lence at either of the two main protest sites seems to have been some smashed win­dows, which of course is dam­age to prop­er­ty and not “vio­lence”.

The Guardian reports that a small group of demon­stra­tors were “seek­ing con­fronta­tion as they surged towards police lines.” Of course you’re expect­ed to sit qui­et­ly when you are being held against your will behind police lines and peri­od­i­cal­ly beat­en with batons. But is it con­ceiv­able that those who “charged” police lines sim­ply want­ed to leave? And why is it con­fronta­tion­al to “charge police lines” with­out using any weapons, but not con­fronta­tion­al to hold thou­sands of peo­ple in an area, keep­ing them there with kicks and batons? That the pro­tes­tors could have actu­al­ly showed remark­able restraint when being pro­voked in an unbear­able sit­u­a­tion is laugh­able accord­ing to all the press. Yet this is what eye­wit­ness accounts point to. Only the Let­ters page in the Guardian gives any cre­dence to this: one per­son writes that “the few scuf­fles we did wit­ness were caused pre­cise­ly at the frus­tra­tion of peo­ple not being allowed to come and go as they pleased”; anoth­er states that: “an ugly mood devel­oped after those who had come to exer­cise their demo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest were detained against their will” (Guardian, April 3).

c) Were the police tac­tics respon­si­ble for the “vio­lence” of the day?

Because the press has been admirably obe­di­ent in revers­ing the course of events, this is an impos­si­ble ques­tion – accord­ing to the media first there was “vio­lence” from “anar­chist” pro­tes­tors, then the ket­tle began. Yet once we estab­lish a more accu­rate chronol­o­gy, and take into account police pri­or plan­ning, it seems that it had always been intend­ed to shut thou­sands of peo­ple into an enclosed space with­out being able to leave.

d) Was the ‘ket­tling’ tac­tic intend­ed to make peo­ple think twice about demon­strat­ing in future?

The most crit­i­cal piece in the press, by Dun­can Camp­bell in the Guardian, states that those “peo­ple think­ing about embark­ing on demon­stra­tions in the future may have to decide whether they want to be effec­tive­ly locked up for eight hours with­out food or water and, when leav­ing, to be pho­tographed and iden­ti­fied.” Yet it does not sug­gest that this may have been the ini­tial inten­tion of the police in adopt­ing this tac­tic, even though it is absurd to sug­gest the police might have planned to use this tac­tic with­out imag­in­ing it would lead to anger and frus­tra­tion on the part of those trapped in the ket­tle. In con­junc­tion with the exten­sive restric­tions to free­dom of protest under the New Labour gov­ern­ment, amply doc­u­ment­ed else­where, it might be rea­son­able to sug­gest that the police tac­tics were in part, at least, designed to deter pro­tes­tors.

e) Were the police vio­lent and should any offi­cers face charges?

Remark­ably, this ques­tion is absent from vir­tu­al­ly all the press cov­er­age – despite hun­dreds of injuries to pro­tes­tors, the death of some­one appar­ent­ly trapped in a ket­tle, and video footage show­ing baton charges direct­ed towards crowds of peo­ple with their hands in the air, the use of riot shields as an offen­sive weapon, and the beat­ing with batons of pro­tes­tors sat on the ground (see, for exam­ple, ‘Riot police attack peace­ful pro­tes­tors at G20 cli­mate camp’ on Indy­media). The ample ground­work laid by the police sug­gest­ing there would be pro­tes­tors “intent on vio­lence” hap­pi­ly accounts for all the vio­lence of the day and makes easy to ignore eye­wit­ness accounts that state that peace­ful pro­tes­tors being ket­tled, charged, beat­en and pro­voked by the police. Giv­en the num­ber of wit­ness­es and video evi­dence, it has tak­en remark­able obe­di­ence by the press to refuse to ask this ques­tion – and for a media so obsessed with vio­lence, it seems strange that the over­whelm­ing vio­lence of the day, that inflict­ed by the police on pro­tes­tors, bare­ly mer­its a men­tion.