Police State UK

Police Misconduct

2011-11-14T15:28:14Z

Police Misconduct (http://www.doughtystreet.co.uk/files/20101001.pdf) has been the subject of great debate recently. Drs Mawby and Wright of Keele University provide an excellent summary of police accountability (http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/programs/aj/police/res_mat/police_accountability_in_uk.pdf) . Their document gives us all an excellent overview of a subject we [ the public] know little about. Many may believe that police accountability is not relevant to them but it is important to understand that the public get the quality of service they fight for. Emergencies can happen at any time, day or night - to anyone. A police officer can make the difference between life and death. It is in everyone's interest to ensure that policing in the UK is proportionate, accountable and done with utmost respect to the civil liberties. The public have a right to expect the highest standards - afterall, it is the tax payer who pays for the UK's policing and pays out compensation for the mistakes made. It is therefore in the interest of the economy to have robust, effective policing not a version of the Wild West.

SOAS protest trials collapse after video contradicts police lies

2011-11-07T15:07:25Z

Two more cases collapsed at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court on Monday, 31 October when police offered no evidence against student demonstrators following the acquittal of a third protestor the previous week.Aaron Peters and Ashok Kumar, both PhD students, had the cases against them dismissed after dramatic video and photo evidence was presented in a related case against Simon Behrman on the Thursday, 27 October.The footage and photos found on the Internet by Kumar's solicitor, Matt Foot, directly contradict the witness statements of six police officers. "Five arrests were instigated by primarily one police officer who basically lied," said Peters in an interview with this writer.

UK police have rings of steel

2011-11-02T15:06:20Z

ANPR stands for Automatic Number Plate Recognition (http://www.npia.police.uk/en/10505.htm). The UK has a network of ANPR cameras which can be found on most motorways and main roads, as well as at ports, petrol stations, and in a few cases entirely surrounding the centre of some cities or towns - a so-called 'ring of steel'.

Private police operating beyond the law

2011-10-24T12:46:26Z

Interesting article (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/alarm-at-private-police-operating-beyond-the-law-2375094.html) in the Independent today:

Hundreds of privately contracted police officers are working for forces across the country despite being unaccountable to the watchdog responsible for investigating deaths in custody, public complaints and allegations of wrongdoing, an investigation by The Independent has found.The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has no automatic power to discipline privately contracted staff even if individual failures or misconduct contribute to the death or serious injury of a detainee.The Government has failed to close this regulatory loophole despite warnings dating back several years. The IPCC has investigated a number of cases in which privately contracted staff were found to be working alongside police officers when a detainee suffered serious harm or death.

The privatisation of public spaces

2011-10-23T13:48:26Z

It was NemesisRepublic (https://twitter.com/#%21/NemesisRepublic) who pointed me in the direction of a document by Anna Minton (http://www.annaminton.com/) - on the privatisation of public space (http://www.annaminton.com/Privatepublicspace.pdf).The first time I stumbled across this as a concept was during my Brighton days when anti-capitalist types in the Brighton Peace and Environment Centre (http://www.bpec.org/) (where I was a volunteer in the information resource centre during its Gardner Street days) told me that people could not protest inside the Churchill Square Shopping Centre because it was legally private property.

Vigilance, not praise, keeps our police decent

2011-08-17T11:58:29Z

Excellent article over on Politics.co.uk today about the dangers of unexamined pro-police sentiment following the recent riots:

British police probably are, ultimately, the best in the world. In the same way that we return home from holiday full of appreciation for the BBC, Brits in Europe and America quickly come to appreciate the moderation and humility of our police force.

This did not occur because the British are somehow innately superior. It happened because we hound the police. We criticise them, we regulate them and we monitor them. The police are the most dangerous thing in the world. They are the mechanism the state uses to interfere with what you do. They are to be tolerated, not loved. It's by vigilance, not praise, that we keep them decent.

Read the whole article here: Don't let police off the hook (http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2011/08/17/comment-don-t-let-the-police-off-the-hook)

Recording stop and search

2011-08-11T18:22:09Z

There's no law against recording a stop and search, and police forces have been regularly advised by ACPO to allow this kind of monitoring of their duties (as long as the person recording does not attempt to interfere). The Met have a statement about this on their website:

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel. (http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm)

However, the reality is that even officers of a reasonably senior rank, such as this Inspector, are not happy for them and their colleagues to be recorded, and will do everything they can to prevent it:

Violent Disorder and Authoritarian Rhetoric

2011-08-11T12:06:58Z

"The peasants are revolting." That has been a cry of the ruling elite for centuries, and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, was no less scathing of the rioters that have disturbed the capitalist cosiness of the British consumer. Mr Cameron, initially slow to respond to the escalating riots that have now spread to many parts of England, was very quick with his words: "There are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but frankly sick," he said. Revolting indeed.Let's be very clear: rioting, the looting of shops and the violent attacks on persons and property is not acceptable. The revolutions that are sweeping the Arab world, albeit seemingly stalled for the time being, have been built on the premise of peaceful demonstration. The riots in the UK have no clear political purpose, yet there is a strong underlying frustration amongst many sections of society, not just blacks, not just the youth, even though those groups seem to be amongst the most dispossessed in Britain today.

Against Authoritarian Crackdowns

2011-08-11T09:25:22Z

As riots ripped through London and spread out to the old industrial towns of the north, the public was not in the mood for understanding.Instead, huge numbers of ordinary people- including those hurt by the riots and those whose only knowledge of it comes from news broadcasts- are openly backing some of the most authoritarian ideas this country has ever contemplated.

A British political disease

2011-06-06T17:44:17Z

From today's Guardian:

It's a British political disease, this, the suspiciously neat, aggressively spun response to a passing media hurricane. New Labour were past masters at it; and Cameron's Tories are worryingly diligent students. Much later on, when the headlines have faded, it often turns out the legislation wasn't properly followed through, or only dealt with a fraction of the problem, or hasn't changed anything.

Jackie Ashley is talking about the role of feminism in tackling the sexualisation of young girls (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/f-word-girls-sexualisation-feminist), but the quoted text is spot on for any number of issues where the tabloids have seemingly driven government policy over the last 10+ years. Most particularly the last sentence.