'Ever since the SNGP campaign began protesters have continually met with senior police officers to discuss their questionable methods of policing. A police liason officer was subsequently agreed on. The officers were courteous and agreed that the policing needed improvement. Sadly, after the meetings things went from bad to worse; the liason officer didn't materialise, protesters were followed, bullied, harassed, threatened, goaded, made fun of and assaulted. They have been arrested for the slightest thing simply to be bailed away from the farm. I have felt targetted by these people for years now. I believe I have been the focus of their hate because I am local, a regular to the protests, I am vociferous and because I fight back. I never been prepared to accept intimidation from anyone. I have seen these questionable methods reach unthinkable proportions in recent months.

My arrest on December 1st 2004 for the grave desecration concerning Gladys Hammond was a harrowing and disturbing experience. Now, thankfully, I can see it for what it is: a sham! The evidence presented to my solicitor to justify this imposition was that a witness had claimed to have seen a male of 5ft 10'' with fair hair whom the witness alleges had been keeping a lookout at a gate in the Yoxall graveyard.
This was supposedly in September 2004, weeks before the incident in Yoxall. Later, this witness saw me on TV and immediately told the police I was the person at that gate on the night in question. This is despite the plainly obvious fact I am a 5ft 4'' WOMAN with NO HAIR - due to the chemothrapy I have endured. Whatsmore, the sighting was in mid-September 2004, the desecration in October 2004 yet I wasn't arrested until December 1st 2004 - the day before SNGP and I were named in the Injunction attempting to guarantee an Exclusion Zone for the guinea pig killers in Newchurch! What a timely coincidence!

So, on this evidence, my house was raided, my property effectively stolen and I was arrested! The spurious nature of the evidence and my absolute knowledge I had and know nothing about the Yoxall incident gives me and many more obvious notions: that these arrests were purposefully designed police tactics used to discedit defendants before the case and during the case. They are tactics which the police have employed with all the arrests during this hysterical and fevered 'investigation'. Every arrest the police have made and every dawn-raid that has plagued the lives of innocent campaigners has left them and their families the victims of a rabid and frenzied media baying for headlines. Yet all these arrests have been implimented with no concrete evidence and have yet to lead anywhere. The Staffs police are quite clearly 'barking up the wrong tree', infact they are barking mad!

During the course of the Injunction hearings the Staffordshire police and the solicitors Lawson-Cruttendon took upon themselves to try and prejudice this case beyond measure. When my solicitor informed the Judge I had no previous convictions Lawson Cruttendon immediately piped up 'but she has been arrested for grave robbing.' This made me realise how desperate they were to secure partiality in the mind of the Judge. It has also reminded me how wrongly the public deem an 'arrest' as a 'conviction' when it is clear to me now that 'arrest' and 'guilt' are often mutually exclusive! I realise now all this madness is the product of the police simply satisfying budgets and quotas and, like Timothy Lawson Cruttendon, keeping up appearances in the press that they are all 'combatting injustice'.

Perhaps my greatest concern during this fiasco has been how the police have used my bout of cancer to cause me more unimaginable stress. PC Cairns and PC Lynne have made personal comments about my illness and lifestyle that have left me physically drained and mentally shattered during my illness. Whatsmore, Inspector David Bird in his profound ignorance specifically chose to mention that I chose to take animal tested drugs in his witness statements. What relevance this had no one knows. It indicates to me how low the police have sunk as an institution, without a surviving scrap of professionalism, integrity or empathy.

Being an animal rights campaigner and having cancer is a stern predicament. Being called a 'hypocrite' by the police and the press is extremely distressing since they have historically been the true perpetrators of hypocrisy. The fact is I am being black-mailed by the vivisection industries and their breeder lackeys who give you the
choice to 'Take this drug -or die!' I have long-held the belief that despite taking these drugs I still may die. And this is the same for all those black-mailed by the pharmaceutical companies: men, women and children. I sincerely believe that is something the animal abuse industries have no interest in or concern for.

Undoubtedly throughout these last few months I have tried to remain focussed on what I and the movement is about - securing the freedom for animals incarcerated beyond their will. This whole farce has been a remarkably well-designed distraction from these grotesque realities. I pray we can all continue to remember the guinea pigs that remain locked up at Newchurch, in their thousands, waiting to die.

Yours For the Animals,

Janet Tomlinson'

From:  http://www.liberation-now.org/archive/05/04/16.htm