Police

On 3 September, a London magistrate refused to grant a compensation claim of £300 demanded by the ministry of defence (MoD) from Catholic peace activists Ray Towey, 68, Henrietta Cullinan, 50, and Katrina Alton, 44.

Earlier, the three had been joined by 25 supporters for a time of prayer outside Hammersmith magistrates’ court before a three-hour trial.

The three activists offered clear and moving accounts of their peace actions at the MoD during Holy Week when they…

Police spy Bob Lambert fire-bombed the Harrow branch of Debenham’s in July 1987, Green MP Caroline Lucas told parliament on 13 June. The attack was perhaps ‘a move to bolster Lambert’s credibility’ within the Animal Liberation Front, which he had succeeded in infiltrating.

Lambert then helped convict two other members of the group, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clark, who carried out fire-bombings of Debenham stores in Luton and Romford at the same time as the Harrow attack. Sheppard and…

The police march in London on 10 May was ‘supported’ by some radical protesters, holding sardonic signs: ‘Without us, democracy would triumph’, ‘Kettling: a transitional demand’, and ‘Not all cops are bastards’. People joked that the police might be less conservative than usual in their estimates of how many marched (in the event, Scotland Yard refused to give a figure).

The protest was against plans to cut police numbers by 16,000 over four years, as part of a 20% cut to the policing…

On 2 February, the police oversight body, her majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary (HMIC), published a report on national police intelligence units. This was a response to the outing of a number of police spies – including Mark Kennedy – who infiltrated protest groups on a long-term basis, forming sexual relationships with protesters, and some even having children with them, using their false personae. (See PN 2528, 2530.)

The main target of the report was the national public order…

Police constable Simon Harwood has pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests on 1 April 2009. Harwood will be put on trial at Southwark crown court from 13 June next year. Video footage shows Ian Tomlinson walking away from a police line, with his hands in his pockets, when a police officer strikes his legs with a baton and then pushes him violently to the ground – from behind. He was helped to his feet by demonstrators, walked a short…

During the student fees protest in December 2010, police tipped Jody McIntyre out of his wheelchair and dragged him across the road. A metropolitan police internal enquiry in May found that this had been done “for his own safety”. However, in a report published in late August, the independent police complaints commission (IPCC) ruled that the officer concerned had used excessive force and should be charged with common assault. This charge could no longer be brought as a six-month legal…

In early September, Nottinghamshire police paid £20,000 in an out-of-court settlement to Rizwaan Sabir, the student at Nottingham university who was detained for seven days in 2008 after downloading an al-Qa’eda training manual as part of his research on terrorism.

The 20 climate activists convicted of conspiring to shut down Ratcliffe coal power station had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in July, following the revelation earlier this year that the CPS had not disclosed evidence gathered by undercover cop Mark Kennedy which could have been useful to their defence. The ruling described Kennedy as “arguably an agent provocateur.”

In comparison to rape, perpetrating mass murder, or other terrible things, street demonstration is rel-atively less traumatic. However trauma is very much an individual thing and people can be severely effected by imprisonment, gassing, beatings by police, betrayal, or even unexpected behaviour by comrades or the state.

We can mourn little things as well as big things and it's healthy and we should. Spending time in the “sad space” intentionally allows us to delve deeper into the…

In the last month, the government and big businesses have launched a dizzying array of initiatives threatening the expansion of a creeping “surveillance society” – which has lead to two young people being arrested.

The most sweeping proposal is the government’s scheme to store every phone call, sent email, and web page visited over the previous year by British citizens in a giant database. Jonathan Bamford, of the government’s own privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner’s…

On 2 May, an inquest jury found unanimously that Ian Tomlinson had been “unlawfully killed” by a police officer during the G20 protests in April 2009. They said that “excessive and unreasonable” force had caused death by internal abdominal bleeding. The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said he would review his previous decision not to prosecute the officer in question, Simon Haywood.

The Irish environmental group “Shell to Sea” has published a video in which a police sergeant suggests to another Garda (Irish police officer) that they should say to an arrested protester: “Give me your name and address or I’ll rape you”. A suggestion that provokes laughter.

The recording was made on a video camera confiscated from the protesters but not switched off. Only after a protest outside the Irish parliament did the Gardai apologise for the remark.

Good police news. Only 27 police officers (out of 13,157 tested) were positive for drugs in the past two years. Drugs detected included cocaine, cannabis and amphetamines. Surprise, surprise: the force with the largest number of detected drug users was the Metropolitan police.
Bad police news. Over the last two years, police officers in just two areas (Staffordshire and Cheshire) have caused more than £100,000 worth of accidents and car crashes – in their own car parks.
A report…

The British national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU) was set up in 1999 under the control of the association of chief police officers to meet the perceived threat from “domestic extremism” and “protest”. After the recent unwelcome “outing” of undercover officers including PC Mark Kennedy (see PN 2530), on 28 January, the NPOIU was put under the control of John Yates, assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police – Britain’s most senior officer in charge of counter-terrorism.…

On Monday 24 January, 35 women and men blockaded the metropolitan police’s headquarters at New Scotland Yard, London in response to revelations of infiltration of activist movements by undercover police officers. The 8am demonstration was in support of women who have been exploited by undercover officers after it was revealed that some of these officers had had long-term sexual relationships with activists they were investigating.

Participants held placards with messages to those…