Police arrest 182 at Olympics critical mass in London

UK Indymedia | 05.08.2012 20:43 | Policing | Repression | London

While the London 2012 Olympic open ceremony was underway on Friday 27th July, there was a massive police and military operation underway, which included the use of CS gas, to contain and eventually arrest 182 London critical mass cyclists. The cyclists were held in a police kettle for two hours, handcuffed in buses for three hours and held in a police cell from six hours to two days. Out of 182 cyclists, only 3 have been charged with any offence. However, all have bail conditions imposed on them until September 18th 2012 restricting their freedom to move, assemble, associate and live their lives. Some groups have issued advice that the bail conditions may breach Articles 10 & 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They point out that "breaching bail conditions is not a criminal offence."

A petition for justice for the 182 has been launched with the following demands:

All bail conditions should be discharged
All data including DNA, fingerprint, addresses etc taken from those cyclists should be removed from all paper and comupter records of police & other agencies.
An independent review of the police behaviour on Friday 27th July should be conducted as a matter of urgency.

Articles: Olympic critical mass - report and pics | Arrests in Critical Mass during Olympics ceremony | Mass Arrest | Critcal mass | SchNEWS: Mass Arrest of the Week

Arrests outside kettle photo: rikkiindymedia(At)gmail[d0t]com

UK Indymedia

Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

pic credits

08.08.2012 23:31

erm, that photo may be "via schnews", but it was originally on london indymedia and is mine.

i don't mind its non-commercial use, especially for the likes of schnews and indymedia, but a credit is proper and polite.

rikki

Ridiculous!

12.08.2012 16:57

hardly surprising but then all we've had from the Beeb is grinning, mindless adoration of the whole Olympic shindig anyway. What about those of us who couldn't care less about the Olympics? We live in an impoverished town in West Yorkshire where there are no jobs, no opportunities and no hope for most people. of course we guessed that there would be no coverage of any protests from the mainstream media.

emma Green

TrapWire technology

13.08.2012 18:24

The thread I created about TrapWire which scooped the mainstream press coverage which has recently emerged at eg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/13/trapwire-surveillance-system-exposed-leak?newsfeed=true was hidden by an indymedia mod - presumably classing it as conspiracy theory.

For anyone who was arrested at Critical Mass who feels that their rights under the Data Protection Act may be breached due to the use of TrapWire, or indeed anyone arrested at any London-based political protest over the last five or six years, may complain to TrapWire by following the guidelines at

http://www.trapwire.com/SafeHarbor.pdf

TrapWire Inc.
1875 Campus Commons Drive – Suite 301
Reston, VA 20191
Attn: Legal Department/Safe Harbor

is the address to contact.

Hypnotised

Good Cop Bad Cop

27.08.2012 10:31

I was on the iceberg demonstration yesterday on Whitehall, alongside Topless Equality and the police man approached me and asked when we were leaving and if he could help in any way. So I said "Nothing personal; Can we have our bikes back?"
"?"
"Last month"
"Oh, the OLYMPICS. That wasn't to do with us; that was the nasty police. We are the nice police"

Can I just comment that the fact the "Olympics" may be happening in London is just a coincidence, and I do not see why they had to impose conditions on Critical Mass in this way. Our intention, on the riseup list, was clearly not to disrupt the olympics and this is merely an excuse by the press office for this attack on Londoners.

This is not the first time I've heard anti-cyclist spin from a political police officer. What a pain.

I heard a rumour that the mass split with some realising what was going to happen so a group peacefully continued outside the temporary protest-free zone and had a great ride through south London.

Polar Ben
Homepage: http://www.climateimc.org

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