“They want to be seen as the best and they want to be the best – and of course when anybody challenges them about it, they feel it very personally,” he [Head of the Metropolitan Police Territorial Support Group, Commissioner Chris Allison] said.
They want to be seen as what they are… the overwhelming majority are highly professional cops who go out on the streets to protect communities.”
Pardon me for finding it absurd then that if they want to be seen to be ‘the best’ then they shouldn’t go around either wantonly beating unarmed, non-violent protesters or killing innocent passers-by. If the overwhelming majority of the TSG really are highly professional it seems rather odd that the reports of extreme violence from within their ranks should be coming out with such regularity, with so little then done to change the behaviour of the unit.
Commander Bob Broadhurst, who had overall command of the G20 policing operation, told the home affairs select committee in May that “no plain clothes officers [were] deployed at all” during the demonstrations in the City of London.
It has emerged that 25 undercover City of London police were stationed around the Bank of England to gather “intelligence” on protesters on 1 and 2 April. Broadhurst stands by the evidence he gave to MPs, claiming the deployment of undercover officers was unknown to him.
The proof is on a video on that page. Broadhurst can split hairs all he likes, saying that he was only talking about the Met, when the plainclothes police in question belonged to the CityPolice, but he still told parliament as the man in charge of the entire operation, that no plainclothes police were deployed when there were. And the City Police admitted it:
The assistant commissioner at the City of London police, Frank Armstrong, then told the MP that about 25 undercover officers were deployed during the protests.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the select committee, has written to Broadhurst suggesting the disclosure about plain clothes officers “contradicts” his evidence to MPs. Broadhurst claimed the officers filmed marching among Met and City of London riot police were “evidence gatherers” seeking to identify a certain protester.
It’s a terrible demonstration of just how inept he and the entire operation were that day, particularly when Armstrong continued to undermine Broadhurst:
[Lib Dem MP Tom] Brake said Broadhurst had “inadvertently misled” parliament, thus revealing a “startling lack of co-ordination” in the top ranks. “If plain clothes officers were only deployed to gather intelligence why is one clearly seen brandishing a baton?”
Was the cop in question in the video instructed to brandish that baton or was that rogue behaviour? The fact is the cops were out of control that day, pumped up largely by Broadhurst into an expectation of the need for violence which never resulted from protesters. Today’s report is sorely needed.
A police officer who allegedly struck a woman during the G20 protests in London a woman is to be charged with assault, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.
A CPS spokeswoman said Sergeant Delroy Smellie would be charged with assault of Nicola Fisher and he will appear at Westminster magistrates court on 16 November. He faces up to six months in prison if found guilty.
Smellie, a member of the Metropolitan police’s territorial support group, was suspended from duty two months ago after footage emerged of him near the Bank of England, apparently hitting Fisher, 35, with the back of his arm.
He was also shown appearing to strike her on her legs with a baton as she attended a vigil for the newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, who had died the previous day. She said the incident left her with severe bruising.
Of course he’ll get off, or he’ll become the scapegoat that his renowned colleague has long been expected to become. What must be remembered is that both officers, although behaving in an unacceptably (and unnecessarily) violent manner, were operating under the presumption that this was acceptable behaviour. Don’t forget how the force trailed its intention to be violent that day. The CPS can’t be allowed to get away with making this their only notable prosecution against the Metropolitan Police after their calamatous handling of the G20 protest.
Most of you will have heard of the Metropolitan Police’s pre-emptively violent behaviour at London’s G20 protests earlier in the year. Another G20, more violent policing, this time in Pittsburgh:
It’s quite a choice G20 protesters find themselves faced with: getting beaten for peaceful protest or having their eardrums shattered by military weapons. Nate Harper, Pittsburgh’s police chief was pleased with how the sound cannon performed: “it served its purpose well.”
Police officers’ notebooks lodged at the high court tell how they punched people in the face and beat others with riot shields during the G20 demonstrations in April.
The notebooks, which have been lodged as evidence in an action brought by three protesters, also disclose how Metropolitan police were given no restrictions on the use of force when they were ordered to move protesters attending the Climate Change camp in the City of London on 1 April. The accounts were written up the day after the demonstrations.
In one notebook, a police constable recounts how when he saw a protester pushing against officers’ shields: “I punched him in the jaw and he moved backwards.”
Another officer describes how he hit people with “shield strikes both flat and angled. I also delivered open palm strikes to a number of individuals and fist strikes as well.”
A third constable logged: “To get the protesters who would not move, I needed to hit the flat part of my shield to get them to move back. I also used open-handed palm strikes. Once the protesters were moved back to the required distance, we remained in a closed cordon until relieved.”
The Met insists that this time they’ll engage in ‘community policing’, but what evidence is there that they’ll keep their word? Their operation last time in Bishopsgate promised (and for a time delivered) ‘community policing’, but entirely peaceful protesters still faced the brutality mentioned above. After all Chief Superintendant Helen Ball, in command of policing Climate Camp’s swoop and camp (beginning as I write) has said:
“At the moment we will be photographing people on arrival at the camp because it is important for us to know if there are people coming who want to cause violence and disorder.
“We will not be routinely stopping and searching everybody going into the camp and we have briefed officers carefully on searching people and what the spirit of the operation is.”
In other words the first tactic will be to use Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) from the outset. Given that FIT teams used for protest are never used to track people who might cause violence and disorder, how can we possibly believe that the stop and search tactics used at Kingsnorth won’t be reappearing, not to mention the suppression and attacks on the media? The jury’s out and the country is watching…
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