Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

City Hall grill Met police over G20 policing

Matt Salusbury | 30.04.2009 15:14 | G20 London Summit | Policing | Repression

Report of today's public meeting Metropolitan Police Authority public meeting on the G20 policing. MPA members question Met Assistant Commissioners over kettling, police identification numbers, deleting photos, the Tactical Support Group, and question Mayor Boris Johnson over his role.



METROPOLITAN POLICE AUTHORITY GRILL POLICE ON G20 POLICING

The policing of the G20 protests came under scrutiny today (Thursday 30 April 2009) at a public meeting Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Assembly body that watches over the Met. Assembly Member Jenny Jones in particular gave the police a run for their money, asking why the police had refused to let her into the Bank of England kettle, and why “very aggressive tactics” were used to remove the Bishopsgate Climate Camp. Assistant Tim Goodwin - standing in for Commissioner Stephenson, who was recovering from appendicitis appendix out – and Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison – were there for a grilling.

A transcript of the and a webcast will be on www.london.gov.uk shortly, if it isn’t already.

London Mayor Boris Johnson – who chaired the meeting - opened by saying of the G20 that “everybody in London and in the country horrified by some of the images of what happened particularly to Ian Tomlinson, his family need answers and need them urgently.” Boris said he approved of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary enquiries, but reminded everyone that the police “do a fantastic job.” This was met by shouts of “Rubbish!” from the public gallery, the first of many lively interjections from the public, particularly from Class War people, and particularly on the subject of tasers. Boris later threatened to have the meeting “suspended” (closed to the public) if they didn’t shut up. One woman in the gallery was masked up as if for a demo.

Tim Goodwin for the Met said that while it was “probably unlawful for us to comment” on incidents of police conduct that are now under criminal investigation, but “we will not tolerate any MPS officers to make inappropriate comments via the internet” and that one officer had been resigned over this already. He admitted of the G20 policing that “we have a number of serious issues” that need to be addressed, and added, to laughter from the gallery, that the Met “can and want to learn better.” As Jenny Jones said, “I can hear the waves of doubt behind us” coming from the gallery.

EVIDENCE FROM PROTEST GROUPS
The Authority invited Andrew May of the group Defend Peaceful Protests to come and put questions to the police at the meeting. All the G20 enquiries are going to take evidence from protest groups. Tim Goodwin said the HMIC enquiry had already taken a lot of evidence from the Climate Camp legal team. One new bit of terminology that kept popping up was concern for the rights of the “vulnerable protester” – examples given were Ian Tomlinson and a pregnant lady who was only eventually allowed to leave the kettle to go to the toilet. One MPA member, herself disabled, said she had wanted to go to the protests but had been “too frightened.”

POLICE IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS
There was also laughter at Tim Goodwin’s suggestion that some officers had no identification numbers on G20 duty because “some come off by accident.” He said, “anyone not doing that (displaying their number while on duty) will be in deliberate disobedience of a direct order.” The Met’s Clothing Board are on the case to make sure that reflective tabards will carry shoulder numbers, and coloured shoulder flashes identifying heads of “serials” that obscure shoulder numbers will be changed. Chris Allison said he’d been out on the Tamil protests enforcing police regulations on the wearing of identifying numbers.

It was news to the MPA that the Met had very recently forked out £85,000 in compensation to those who “shouldn’t have been arrested” at an October 2008 Mexican Embassy protest. Why hadn’t they been told earlier? Boris agreed that there were “communications problems” between the Met and the MPA here.

KETTLING
Much of the meeting was, in Boris’ words, a “discussion about what I would call kettling” and police cordons, and on what MPA member Toby Harris called “the degree of permeability of the cordon.” On Neil Johnson, Manager of the MPA, asked, “how can protesters extract themselves?”

Chris Boothman, who has a lot of experience of the Notting Hill Carnival, asked if police had asked behavioural experts about the effects of containment in the kettle, and whether “containment can exacerbate the situation.” Dee Doocey said she’d heard reports of people as they left the “kettling area” being forced to delete mobile phone images under the Terrorism Act. Clive Lawton says that the Met had in its mind-set divided up protesters into “those who were full of villainy before they started” and a group of people “who get stirred up an excited,” and how being in a crowd affects the individual “being contained in a space, getting angrier” and said more attention and research needs to be paid to this”

FORCIBLE DELETION OF PHOTOS
Chris Allision said that “there is no tactic that says as we release people we make them delete their photos. We fully accept that people are going to film us and have a right to film us.” Forcing people to delete film is “not a tactic and not a policy.” Boris said any cases the MPA hears of this will be brought before the Authority.

CLEARING THE CLIMATE CAMP
John Biggs said he didn’t don’t the “innocent protester thing… I’m sure 99 per cent of Londoners don’t have the faintest idea or what Section 4 or Section 14 (Public Order Act 1988) is. For ordinary Londoners in that camp, there’s a potential for a lot of confusion, need to communicate more the reasons for clearing the camp, how it (blocking the highway with the camp) affects London. He asked “whether people in the camp had it made clear to them that it needed to be cleared,” and that it was made clear to them by police that it was legitimate as well as strictly legal to do so.

CCTV
Jennette Arnold was concerned about how the police service appeared to be unaware on the level of disturbing actions by officers, with all the CCTV and “eye on sky” why was this not picked up, and if it was not picked up, what is the point of all these CCTV? “CCTV should be two way, for policing, and for taking action against police misconduct on behalf of the “vulnerable protester.” To applause, Jennette said that ‘if you’d seen an attack on a police officer, we would have found the CCTV of it.”

TACTICAL SUPPORT GROUP
There was also a lot of scrutiny about the “culture of the TSG (Tactical Support Group). Chris Boothman asked, “is there something about the make-up of the team, the values that they hold, that actually produce some the incidents?” Reshard Auladin said, “ever since this authorituy has existed, there have been issues with a few officers of the TSG.” The suggestion of dispersing the TSG to boroughs was mooted. Boris admitted, “ I do think there are specific concerns about the TSG.”
“Issue of public confidence”
“Please don’t judge them on the activities of the few”

BORIS JOHNSON’S ROLE IN G20 POLICING – AND MEDIA HYPE
It wasn’t just police that were in the hot seat. John Biggs said “the public will always see politicians as hiding behind police,” and asked Boris “what role did you have in this?”

Boris said his role in the G20 policing was an “entirely operational matter” and that it would be “inappropriate to comment” and “quite wrong for me to micromanage the operation”. He said only that he had a meeting with Gold Command meeting and regular briefings in City Hall. Pressed on the “guidance” he had given to the police at G20, Boris said “my view was and remains, the overwheliming majority who came to London had to right to do so… those bent on violence should be impeded” and police should do so as effectively as possible. But the G20 policing had produced what Boris called “disturbing images… which is why we are here.”

The MPA also criticized London Mayor and MPA Chair Boris Johnson in his “third role as a columnist. Having (as Major) urged the media not to hype up the protests ahead of the G20, Boris in his 24th March Telegraph column predicted protesters would “surge like the orcs of Mordor” and described cider-fuelled protesters as “rioters”. While he admitted that his predictions had “not been vindicated by events” he said his words had turned out to be “an accurate description of some of the people there” and stopped short of promising not to do it again.

OLD TACTICS
I couldn’t help noticing that the examples the Met cited of protests on which they based their G20 tactics were a long time ago - N30 (November 30 1999) and Mayday 2001 – tactics that were widely condemned at the time and, eight years later, now seem rather old.

© Copyright Matt Salusbury
 mattsal@gn.apc.org
You can reproduce this for non-commercial purposes if you ask me first, feel free to quote from it

Matt Salusbury
- e-mail: mattsal@gn.apc.org
- Homepage: http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

ANARCHISTS HAVE ONLY GOT ONE BALL…..

30.04.2009 15:58

There’s a tragi-comic moment in the Irish Easter rising in 1916 well described by Thomas Coffey in his book ‘Agony at Easter’. On the third day of the rising James Connolly is making his military dispositions in the Dublin Post Office when three Citizen Army Volunteers approach him and offer him their rifles. A perplexed Connolly asks their reasons. ‘The Easter holiday is over’ say the Volunteers ‘ we have to go back to work tomorrow’. Whether Connolly laughed or cried Coffey doesn’t say.

The Volunteers action strikes me as very similar to that of anarchists post G20 – back to life as normal – no inkling as to the possibilities to be seized. We won the war at G20 –but lost the peace. Unlike the poll tax riots when people had good reason to keep their heads down – Operation Carnaby – this time it was the cops who’s faces were beamed out from tv screens and newspapers caught doing acts of violence. The public mood turned decisively against the police. If ever there was a moment to ram home the political advantage of police bungling and cover up it was in the days after G20. But where were the anarchists? No initiative was taken, no urgent meetings held over the midnight oil to hammer out a strategy – just people going back to life as normal before G20.

Only the much maligned Chris Knight attempted to seize the time – contacting the Tomlinson family, organising the memorial march the Saturday after and the leafleting of Millwall football club. And what did he get for his pains – a suggestion on a discussion list that he be excluded from anarchist circles! Predictably into this vacuum have stepped the SWP – setting up a front organisation and organising the anti-police violence demonstration on May 23rd. The anarchists whinge about the SWP but they are only able to fill the vacuum because we let them. And in the many voices to be heard in the media on police violence can we hear any anarchists trying to get their views across - no of course we fucking don’t comrades because we ‘don’t talk to the enemy’. So we leave the field to Chris Knight then we whinge even more ‘cos we don’t like what he says.

‘Events Dear Boy events’. We seem capable only of organising an event every decade then retreating with exhaustion. I sometimes seriously wonder if all anarchists are vitamin deficient. We are seriously the only people in the entire world capable of doing only one thing at a time. A juggler with one ball. It’s either a trip to the Visteon picket line OR a G20 meeting.

To respond to the post G20 situation we should have had emergency London anarchist meetings all fucking week – nutting out a strategy with the kind of high media visibility we had before G20. We should have been able to instantly respond to events and seize the initiative. I suggested this to one incredulous anarchist.’But I’ve got a job’ he replied’ as if ti was a cast iron reason for inaction. Try telling that to Comrade Connolly – oh shit – they did!

Taken from Ian Bones ‘What the Butler saw’ column in Freedom.

re-post


Some typing errors in original report - corrected here

30.04.2009 16:54

Sorry, I spotted some typing errors in my report, which I put up in haste from notes typed during the meeting. That's Tim Godwin not Goodwin, and Boris Johnson is of course Mayor not Major. I've cleaned it up so it's now hopefully error-free, but otherwise identical in content and unedited, the corrected version is at:

 http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2009/04/city-hall-grills-met-police-over-g20.html

Matt Salusbury

Matt Salusbury
mail e-mail: mattsal@gn.apc.org
- Homepage: http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com


A couple more corrections

30.04.2009 18:50

matt mate, it's Territorial Support Group, not Tactical.

As for the ian bone article, it's the whimsy of an aging iconoclast and revered individaulist that allows him such opinion.

Of course it never occurs to ian that he should organise the very things he claims 'the anarchists' are failing to do. We're waiting for your lead ian mate, you organise a response to tomlinson's death, you do it mate.

It is of course up to the 'anarchist movement' a body of people ian obviously doesn't see himself a part of, although is more than happy to offer his opinion and advice on where these anarchists are going wrong.

Master. Blaster.


Deary me

01.05.2009 07:55

Yeah, I'm not actually comfortable making political capital out of a man dying. That SWP and Chris Knight are says a lot about those sort of people.

There is actual class struggle being waged in Lewisham, with a school occupation, and Enfield, with a factory picketing. Bone reckons we should ruck with the cops instead.

Typical anarcho-celebrity nonsense. How is he allowed to write anywhere beyond his blog?

Anarcho


...

01.05.2009 09:25

"One new bit of terminology that kept popping up was concern for the rights of the “vulnerable protester” "
So the ordinary protestor doesn't have rights?

"There was also laughter at Tim Goodwin’s suggestion that some officers had no identification numbers on G20 duty because “some come off by accident.” "
Even numbers on shoulders are not enough. When faced with a line of baton and shield equiped riot(ing) police how the hell are you supposed to get close enough to read shoulder numbers? The numbers don't face forward you know.

"being in a crowd affects the individual “being contained in a space, getting angrier” "
No! Being attacked with dogs, batons, horses, shields, fists. Being illegally detained without access to water or toilet facilities for as much as 12 hours, being forced to undergo illegal searches, photographing and identification (all recorded forever by goodness knows who) if you wish to leave from your peaceful demonstration where you used your democratic rights.

"...blocking the highway with the camp..."
The excuse of blocking the highway shouldn't be used by the police. The only way not to 'block the highway' is not to protest or be there in the first place, which is an unacceptable imposition on free speach, freedom of assembly and political/social expression. If you only use the pavements and have protestors, police, regular pedestrians on the pavement and vehicles on the road you'd be in a very dangerous situation.

k


Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech