squat eviction & resistance in the South West

ille­gal evic­tion of squat in Bath
On Mon­day the 9th Feb­ru­ary, at 2.15pm, British Trans­port Police & Bath con­stab­u­lary con­spired to com­mit an ille­gal evic­tion of a new short-lived squat on the edge of Twer­ton, in Bath.

The for­mer Twer­ton-on-Avon rail­way sta­tion fell out of use in 1917, and was briefly the site of Androm­e­da Gar­den­ing Ser­vices owned by R. Pot­ter. R. Pot­ter was arrest­ed and found guilty of a huge can­nibis grow­ing oper­a­tion in the loft of the build­ing in 2003, and was believed to have been forced to sell the prop­er­ty to pay off the fine. The build­ing was lat­er occu­pied by Euro­pean squat­ters in 2006 & 2007, whom the local res­i­dents mis­tak­en­ly assumed were the can­nibis deal­ers. Con­tend­ing with that and con­fus­ing the issue, Net­work Rail also claimed squat­ters’ rights to the build­ing, and their twelve years’ were due to be up in August 2008, except for the inter­ven­tion of our Euro­pean friends.

A sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of squat­ters moved in on Fri­day the 6th of Feb­ru­ary, last week, through a dam­aged door­way and prompt­ly went about doing up their love­ly new 4‑storey home, con­tent in the knowl­edge that they were the new tem­po­rary own­ers.

The author­i­ties had oth­er ideas though, with BTP com­mit­ting crim­i­nal dam­age destroy­ing one of the pad­locks, crim­i­nal­ly break­ing and enter­ing as they boot­ed their way through the door, and then tres­pass­ing as they spread through the build­ing, ignor­ing the Sec­tion 6 notice that the occu­pi­er read out to them as they car­ried on their crime wave. Offi­cer 1306 par­tic­u­lar­ly of British Trans­port Police take note. They were alleged­ly act­ing off knowl­edge from a near­by prop­er­ty also rent­ing from Net­work Rail (were they fraud­u­lent­ly pre­tend­ing to be the own­er of that prop­er­ty, too, one won­ders?) who report­ed sus­pi­cious squat­ter-types enter­ing and leav­ing the build­ing — so police also broke their own rules on reveal­ing wit­ness­es. They then hand­ed over the occu­pi­er to Bath Con­stab­u­lary, who held him for a fur­ther 8 hours.

Bath Police did­n’t care about the fact that Net­work Rail aren’t the legal own­ers of the con­test­ed build­ing, and nei­ther did they care about the gui­dle­lines set down in PACE where they are oblig­ed to sup­ply inmates with writ­ing mate­ri­als, or food in sealed pack­ag­ing, or indeed respond to the sus­pec­t’s cries when hav­ing a claus­tro­pho­bia attack, or indeed offer him access to a solic­i­tor of his choice and repeat­ed­ly refus­ing him access to hsi phone call — though, they even­tu­al­ly caved on that.

It also appears that the police flunked their law exam: they were due to release the per­son with a cau­tion for tres­pass at 21.30 that night, until one of the embar­rassed CPS took their win­dow-lick­ing col­league aside and advised that it’s prob­a­bly best to do some­one for a crime, rather than a civ­il offense. So, cau­tuoned for elec­tric­i­ty extyrac­tion it was.

Also of note is that at no point was a legal warn­ing giv­en, nor a war­rant pro­duced. The offend­ing bad cop screwed up the Sec­tion 6 and shoved it in his pock­et with a scowl.

Good old Bath police.

But for read­ers out there, the prop­er­ty is still own­er­less and ripe for the tak­ing. And remem­ber: an attack one is an attack on all.

Don’t let ’em rot…

——-

ille­gal evic­tion avert­ed in Bris­tol

Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009
police soon change their tune…

About 1.30pm this after­noon a squat in eas­t­on was a tar­get of ille­gal evic­tion attempt.

Police, accom­pa­ny­ing the own­ers threat­ened to “kick the door down in half an hour” if the occu­pants did­n’t leave. In about 20 min­utes, around 20 local res­i­dents turned to show their con­cern to what was going on. The Police soon changed their tune, and before you knew it they had spo­ken to the own­ers and things would now pro­ceed through court.