Rampart — police break down door

28 Octo­ber 2008
A small num­ber of police broke down the front door and entered the Ram­part today. They searched peo­ple for drugs and pho­tographed them as well as the bar­ri­cades and the build­ing itself. They explained their actions say­ing that it is because the area is a high-risk drugs area. This is unfor­tu­nate­ly true of the street but we are con­cerned that this may be relat­ed to our evic­tion as well. They entered the Ram­part with­out a war­rant and then left after they had pho­tographed. This was NOT an evic­tion attempt.

28 Octo­ber 2008
A small num­ber of police broke down the front door and entered the Ram­part today. They searched peo­ple for drugs and pho­tographed them as well as the bar­ri­cades and the build­ing itself. They explained their actions say­ing that it is because the area is a high-risk drugs area. This is unfor­tu­nate­ly true of the street but we are con­cerned that this may be relat­ed to our evic­tion as well. They entered the Ram­part with­out a war­rant and then left after they had pho­tographed. This was NOT an evic­tion attempt.

Dif­fi­cult right now to say what it means in rela­tion to an evic­tion, but on the side of cau­tion, we are ask­ing peo­ple to come to the Ram­part tonight (Tues 28th) to stay over to defend the build­ing and help with bar­ri­cades for what might be an ear­ly morn­ing evic­tion. We will also need peo­ple to assist out­side if the time comes so send us your mobile num­ber to be informed. There will be a hearty break­fast for the brave.

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28th octo­ber 2008, lon­don, whitechapel, lunchtime:

the police unex­pect­ed­ly intrud­ed the ram­pART social cen­tre in their lunchtime. they must have been starv­ing, because they felt like break­ing the doors. we won­der if it was appetite, that made them force their way in, or curios­i­ty, to see the progress of our efforts to bar­ri­cade the ram­pART. still, we art not amused of offi­cers on the scrounge…

… although we are gen­er­al­ly open for peo­ple to come by to wine and dine with us, but we’d like to invite peo­ple to knock on the doors, rather than knock­ing them down. and we don’t sup­port glut­tony of greedy devel­op­pers, grop­ing hous­es to con­vert them to lux­u­ry flats, because they want to bite more than they can chew…

… as you might know, the ram­pART is under threat of imma­nent evic­tion, so these three cop­pers might have been the van­guard of the 80 riot cops that are expect­ed to come by with the high court bailiffs to evict the space. so we are think­ing how many peo­ple we will have to cater for break­fast. need­less to say, we’d pre­fer to pam­per our friends and sup­port­ers. so feel wel­come to join the feast & fight the beast and defend your favourite social cen­tre…

please con­tact us via email: rampart@mutualaid.org or phone: 07852657501