Why ask the question? I am guessing that since Sir Robert Peel first put our 'Bobbies' on the beat we've had various strains of civil rights campaigners asking whether we live in a police state, and with varying degrees the answer will veer between a vague 'yes, possibly' to a vehement 'yes, definitely'. I'm not really a libertarian in ther sense of being the hair shirted, sandal wearing vegetarian types who live in a pseudo-Buddhist fantasy world of man loving his fellow man, and people never being nasty to each other, but I've always been more than a tad wary of the police and the powers vested in them, and specifically how they use them. I consider myself a healthily objective sceptic. Who wasn't really scared by them.
Until now.
It is now apparent that there are clever people advising the police on how they might interpret new powers resulting from changes to anti-terrorism laws. What is also apparent though is just how willingly the police distort these powers and abuse them. We now have the spectacle of demonstrations being prevented on the grounds of cost to the police for overtime, of demonstrators being arrested prior to any actual march on the dubious grounds of 'tip off's' or hearsay as it used to be called. We have the downright abuse of individual freedom of movement arriving as a consequence of 'kettling' with people being kept in a single place for hours upon end and not being allowed to go home. Surely this is false imprisonment?
We also see the practice of police officers covering up their identification numbers and wearing full face balaclava's in order to hide their identity. Can someone explain reasonably why this is allowed? Why are their commanding officers allwoing these practices to take place? We are also seeing the confiscation of cameras when police are filmed or photographed, which is a civil liberty restriction too far when our lives are tracked almost constantly by CCTV.
Most worrying of the these new 'powers' being abused is the apparent acceptance of casual violence used against people who may be spouting virulent views in an aggressive manner, but who haven't actually carried out any violent act on anyone nearby or on a police officer. The Ian Tomlinson example being of course a prime example but also the girl being slapped and then hit across the legs with a baton for apparently not moving back quickly enough. Now what I saw in her case was aan obviously agitated policeman momentarily losing it. In the Ian Tomlinson case I saw an officer assaulting a man presumably because he wouldn't walk quicker and was prepared to argue his case. Totally and utterly unacceptable. In each case the officers should be suspended from their posts, and in the case of the cowardly balalcava wearing, badge covered copper who pushed Ian Tomlinson should be sacked immediately.
It all shows some of the claims in the past from football fans through to miners of unnecessary police brutality in a new light doesn't it? The laws on photographing and filming police officers should be repealed, and if not repealed then ignored by all of us. If we have to live on camera then they should expect the very same back.
I hope we're not moving inexporably towards a police state, but fear that their own actions are losing them the groundswell of the basic support from the law abiding public that they will need to survive. Serious actions and serious changes to policies will be needed and must be seen to be done if the 'summer of rage' is to be prevented.
Later, GJ
1 comment:
You're spot on there, Grocer Jack. I had a thought just yesterday: according to the Guardian, the IPCC has only received 70 or so complaints from members of the public who weren't at the protest. Seems too few, eh? We should all get on it, I know that it probably won't actually change anything as such, but the number of people who found the whole thing offensive in the extreme (and yeah, a touch scary, too) is definitely a whole lot more than 70 and needs to be logged as such. I respect the shitty job that must be modern policing at times, but there is no way that that qualifies officers losing control and becoming thugs. I'm a nurse, I work under insanely stressful and potentially violent situations all the time too, but I don't reckon that nurses taking their name badges off to get away with giving rubbish care anonymously would be tolerated somehow!
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