POLICE have been accused of a "massive and costly over-response" to a peaceful event staged by Titnore Woods campaigners in Worthing, West Sussex on Sunday afternoon (S1).
Fifty people who gathered to symbolically hand over a scroll to the local landowner were amazed to find a huge police operation had been launched.
Police riot vans were parked up in laybys along the A27 for miles in either direction, video camera wielding "evidence gatherers" were hiding in roadside bushes and metal barricades had been erected around the pub where they were meeting up.
Clement Somerset, whose family owns the land at Titnore where a massive new housing estate is proposed, failed to turn up at the Coach and Horses in Arundel Road to meet the campaigners, as he had earlier promised.
And when the group started strolling up the public right of way to the Somerset family's Holt Farm, just north of the A27, their way was blocked with a thick line of police and riot van - with another van and reinforcements seen lurking by the farmhouse.
They were informed by the police that "Section 42" emergency powers had been invoked and anyone continuing along the public footpath would be arrested.
Eventually Mr Somerset arrived on the scene, accepted the scroll and engaged in a brief, polite debate with the delegation about his status as a friend of the countryside and the impending sale of the Titnore land to a consortium of property developers, before the group dispersed back in the direction of the pub.
Said one of the delegation: "The presentation passed off completely peacefully, as we always knew it would.
"We have been amazed at how wrong the police have got this all along. This was never even going to be a proper demonstration - it was just a gesture more than anything.
"While we were enjoying an excellent pint at the Coach and Horses we were all handed a leaflet explaining that the policing of our Sunday excursion had even been given a special name - Operation HASP.
"It was suggested that this might stand for Hysteria At Sussex Police. Someone in the force must surely now being brought to book for launching this massive and costly over-response."
Before the day itself, some local people had already had direct experience of the police "hysteria". One local woman found plain clothes police turning up on her doorstep asking who was organising the event.
At least five other people received rather intimidating recorded delivery letters from the police - apparently on the basis that they had attended the 350-strong peaceful mass protest on May 26.
Said a spokesman for local newsletter The Porkbolter, which was itself targeted by police for having publicised the event: "The campaign to save Titnore Woods has been completely peaceful from the word go.
"The way the police have tried to criminalise the campaign, and frighten people from attending events, should be of great concern to anyone who cares about a democratic society.
"Anyone who has been told that the police lack resources to investigate crimes in the area should also be asking how it is that they can spare the huge numbers of officers that we saw on duty on Sunday - without even a parking offence in sight!
"It would be interesting to know how much Operation HASP cost and in whose interests it was launched."
The letter to Mr Somerset urged him to reconsider plans to sell off the land for housing and instead hand it over to a trust to be preserved as a natural habitat.
The letter pointed out: "Such a gesture would ensure that the name of your family is not tainted and tarnished forever by unsavoury associations with miles of tarmac and concrete and vanloads of riot police ensuring that the profitable destruction of our environment can go ahead uninterrupted."
The next event in the Titnore campaign calendar is the handing over of a petition to the Mayor of Worthing on the steps of the town hall on Thursday September 19 at 4pm.
ENDS