Police Raid on Newly Opened Squat, Bristol. Occupants evicted within 40 minutes.

27.04.2009
Thank you to every­one who came down in sol­i­dar­i­ty. Big thanks to all.

This is what occurred: Reliance secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny respond­ed to an alarm that went off inside the build­ing. The police were then called. The first cop­per on scene was pre­pared to depart say­ing that ‘they have squat­ters rights and it is a civ­il mat­ter’, and then Reliance called the police again and 3 riot vans and 5 police cars turned up.

Whilst some of the Reliance per­son­nel tried to take sitex met­al sheets off, in order to gain access, the police suit­ed up and arrived at the main door with bat­ter­ing ram in hand.

The occu­pants were giv­en the option of leav­ing now with no charge (‘leave now and you can walk’), or stay and get nicked. After a group meet­ing, the occu­pants decid­ed to remain. The police (with riot shields and shouts of ‘stand down, stand down’) then bashed down the door, detained the occu­pants and bailed them to the street, to return to Trin­i­ty police sta­tion in May, on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age.

They were allowed leave with cheers for each per­son res­onat­ing from the crowd.

There were a cou­ple of com­e­dy moments: name­ly a con­ver­sa­tion between Reliance secu­ri­ty and squat­ters:
Squat­ter: Can I tell you a joke?
Reliance: Go on then
Squat­ter: What do call a man with no shins?
Reliance: What?
Squat­ter: Tony!

—and an old clas­sic from the sar­gent in charge: ‘Can I speak to the organ­is­er, or your spokesper­son?’ Amaz­ing, they nev­er learn do they?!

— A bat­ter­ing ram police offi­cer was hilar­i­ous­ly referred to by their col­leagues as ‘Cap­tain Chaos’, which caused the occu­pants much con­stant mirth. ‘Whose Cap­tain Chaos then, when’s he com­ing!’

141 Ash­ley Road has been emp­ty for near­ly a year now since the pre­vi­ous occu­pants (who were squat­ters) were evict­ed and emp­ty for longer before that. It is on the cor­ner before the shops on Ash­ley Road and Grosvern­er Road, and the gar­den is reg­u­lar­ly used for drug deals. Locals com­plain about this, yet Places for Peo­ple have done noth­ing about this prop­er­ty for years.

87 Ash­ley Road whose roof was occu­pied for 3 weeks dur­ing evic­tion resis­tance, remains emp­ty to this day, (despite Places for Peo­ple’s assur­ances that it would be turned into afford­able hous­ing.)

The direc­tor of places for peo­ple receives a salary of £250,000 a year.

Squat­ters, self-hous­ing them­selves, are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, and the onus off social hous­ing cor­po­ra­tions to house them. The argu­ment that squat­ters delay social hous­ing is rub­bished by the fact that 87 and 141 Ash­ley Roiad have remained emp­ty for months and years after the evic­tion of squat­ters, and not turned into afford­able social hous­ing. It seems P4P are more con­cerned with sell­ing off social hous­ing stock on the pri­vate mar­ket as can be seen with the new flats up at the top of Ash­ley Road.

This is a com­pa­ny that claims to be work­ing to house peo­ple, yet it appears prof­it is the only moti­va­tion they have.

and anoth­er joke from the day:
One of the riot vans had a stick­er say­ing Oper­a­tion Relent­less which after inves­ti­ga­tion is a cam­paign of fear against ‘those who com­mit crime’: laugh­able.