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So what has changed, the police, the media or the evidence?

Wotsit | 19.04.2009 06:25 | G20 London Summit | Repression | Social Struggles

Almost since it began our police force have been injuring and sometimes killing citizens with batons and other forms of violence.

Serious concerns were raised at the death of Blair Peach in 1979 but there was a lack of direct evidence. The mainstream media seemed unwilling to directly blame the police when such incidents took place, though TV did show some police violence in 1985 at the miner's strike. Then came the internet, slowly at first but ever growing apace. No longer reliant on the tame mainstream media, activists took the opportunity to voice their disquiet and published photos of police violence at demonstrations, which was largely ignored, despite pictures of bloodied heads.

Suddenly, with the G20 in London on April 1st everything seems to have changed. The mainstream media is full of it. The explanation is simple, incontrovertible embedded video evidence from truly independent citizen journalists with no establishment editors to reign them in. Straight onto YouTube, where it cannot be ignored, and thence to TV and online newspapers. Still pictures can be easily doctored or be misleading but it is difficult to ignore a continuous unedited video.

Now police methods are being widely questioned, especially containment or 'kettling' which was first used against those celebrating Mayday 2001 in Oxford Circus and by Euston Station. Then there is the question of police deliberately concealing their badge numbers, hardy something new!

So what will happen now? Will the police alter their methods or be encouraged by government to carry on as usual? We are already seeing attempts to stop citizens and tourists alike filming in public places and being ordered to delete their camera pictures, using the catch-all excuse of anti-terrorism. Then there is pre-emptive policing, now being used to prevent alleged organisers from attending demos. How will police suppress political dissent in the future and a peaceful majority continue to be punished and brutalised for the wrongs of a violent minority?

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/426083.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/427421.html

Wotsit

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

What's changed?

19.04.2009 07:10

Good question.

It's a combination of things.

The now huge spread of cameras and video recording phones, means little brother is watching and can get the media out online very fast.

The recession means the smug self-satisfaction of the masses has dissipated a little, people are more open to anti-capitalism than they have been in a long time.

Bourdin


The police

19.04.2009 07:46

The police don't need the excuse of reacting to a violent minority to suppress protest. Don't parrot the PR they feed the mainstream..

But on the whole I agree, the amount of video and photos really have made a difference to raising awareness of criminal police behaviour, that is as old as the force itself.

If your using camera equipment just remember not to record evidence that can be used against us.

Lastly, from my own experience at least, Kettling was used on May Day 2000, and no doubt earlier than that. The 2001 demo, just happened to have a follow up court case into the legality of the tactic.

Interesting to note that a day after a terrorist attack the police reveal CCTV footage, strangely they have not been forthcoming with the CCTV footage prior to I. T.'s murder.

Sam


Fantasy World

19.04.2009 08:26

Like mass actions, big stories like this don't just happen spontaneously, they happen because of a small group of people spending lots of time and effort making them happen. The media coverage of police brutality around the G20 is a product of a number of factors. The violence is not new, the video evidence is not new either. Just having stuff filmed or having it up on youtube does not automatically generate a media story.

Ian Tomlinsons death at the hands of the cops plus a group of people working hard to gather witness statements, seek out and examine photographs and video, identify other victims and spoon fed journalists - this is what has made the difference this time.

n


When did kettling start?

19.04.2009 08:41

As I recall, the police at Mayday 2000 didn't closely confine the demonstrators but did prevent them leaving Parliament Square for a time, after the windows of McDonalds in Whitehall had been broken.

The demonstrators were finally allowed to leave en mass, not as a kettle trickle.

Quote:

"Still dancing with the samba band they made another attempt to push through, and this time succeded with the police line dissolving as people began to pour down Millbank cheering and clapping."

Wotsit


Kettling

19.04.2009 09:46

n, you are quite right about the organised collection of evidence. All involved deserve praise.

As far as Kettling is concerned, I was referring to the aftermath of the May Day 2000 protest. A large group had formed outside Charing Cross train station, I'm not sure how long for, but the police aggressively ran us down the Strand, and over Waterloo Bridge, into a waiting cordon.

The first protesters where let out after 3 hours. If you agreed to have your photo taken.

Sam


It's video

19.04.2009 10:05

A still photograph often does not show enough information. In the case of Ian Tomlinson what would have been caught? A push certainly, but it wouldn't have shown the force.

Video camera evidence is worth a lot more than still shots.

Jeb


Signs of the times

19.04.2009 10:08

I agree that the amount of images and video taken is important

At the G20 protests it felt at times that there were more people taking photos than taking active part in protest. Protest becoming part of the spectacle.

Death on camera is pretty hard to ignore

I also agree and applaud the hard work done by anti-capitalist equivalent of evidence gatherers and F.I.T. and the word done in making connections with the media and others to get this on the agenda.

But that is not a sufficient explanation for what has changed

Another factor is what many mainstream media commentators are writing about - a qualitatively different level of arrorgance in the police. One manifestation of this was that the police physically attacked mainstream media workers at times on April 1st, they asked the media to leave the area using public order legistlation as an excuse and refused to give numbers. Basically the pissed off a whole load of journo's. Basically the police have been told that they can do what they like for years in terms of 'terrorism' or public order. So they act accordingly and their bullying gets more indiscriminate

At the same time this comes against a general background of people questioning old certainities due to the current economic crisis, and the slow drip drip of politicians and police being caught out lying or spinning stories.

Regardless of the reason it creates an opportunity to reassert the right to assembly and free movement of protest.

Harlequin


actually

19.04.2009 10:39

I feel a bit old saying this, but I think it was the N30 action at Euston in 1999 was the police's first 'kettling' experiment. They started kettling after they lost control of the streets on J18 (1999) in the square mile.

Rastafari


Kettling at Mayday 2000

19.04.2009 11:19

There was definitely an organised kettle by the police on Mayday 2000. I was trapped for a number of hours in Trafalgar Square on Mayday 2000 after the Guerrilla Gardening outside Parliament. The people who had smashed the Macdonalds window had gone in the opposite direction and the day was coming to a close.

Me and some friends stopped by in Trafalgar square as a touristy thing before we went home. We were surrounded by some Kurdish protesters and lots of tourists so it was just bizarre when the police stopped people leaving and violently began squeezing everyone into a smaller and smaller space. After keeping people there for about 4 hours the police photographed and searched everyone as they were allowed to leave. Despite the crowd being very fluffy protesters or tourists the fully armoured riot police were really "up for it" and had that psycho glazed over look somebody recently referred to. I was hit by a shield for asking if I could leave and its made me anxious being on demos ever since.

keith


Kettling comment

19.04.2009 13:58

I read a letter in a newspaper a couple of weeks back (Guardian?) by a guy saying the kettle method was being used by nazis to herd Jews in occupied Poland.

anon


There is not a lot new in the Policing.

19.04.2009 17:36

A. “Crowd Management” is defined that range of techniques used to manage lawful public assemblies before, during and after the event for the purpose of maintaining the lawful status of that assembly. This is intended to be accomplished through coordination with event planners, group leaders, monitoring, and past event critiques.

B. “Crowd Control” is defined as that range of techniques used to address unlawful public assemblies, including a display of formidable numbers of police officers, crowd containment, dispersal tactics and arrest procedures.

Clearly, the G20 protests were never considered to be lawful by those officers organising responses. Given those premises, the various Policing agencies are increasingly relying on crowd control rather than crowd management. In part, this is due to the bewilderingly fast rate of legislation. There are, literally, too many laws for any one Officer to understand. This ensure that action is by command. A senior interprets the law and commands a subordinate to exercise control.

This is no suprise given that, for the last decade or so, police officers have been obtaining "training" - actively or passively - in Multiuser Computer Games. The standard techniques of "Crowd Control" in a number of computer games are identical to the claim made above.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_control_(MMORPG)

This is no different to the Standards of Policing that took place on 16 August 1819 when a cavalry charge into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 gathered at a meeting to demand the reform of parliamentary representation resulted in 11-15 dead and 400-500 injured. The publicity for the Peterloo Massacre was never that great. It did help to create the Manchester Guardian.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo

Given the subsequent, apparent, demilitarisation of policing - those in command have trickled down, to their subordinates, a huge range of martial arts techiques - far more suited to a mediaevil battlefield than to asking someone to moderate their protest. Again, it returns to the Command and Control structure of Policing that has developed since Peterloo.

Among other techniques have been:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapap
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav_Maga
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defendu

and, more recently, Taiho jutsu ( http://www.taihojutsu.org.uk/)

Increasingly, the use of martial arts - which are essentially mass battlefield techniques - is causing deaths. This is, after all, what they were developed for. Claims that the Officers are being defensive or using these techniques as a defence are indefensible when viewed in the context of the Command and Control structures that drive them along. In this sense, what has changed is that we have returned to Peterloo.

The Original intent of Crowd Management was, apparently, health and safety and some regard for Democracy. This is not a defence but a description. This element of management has been overtaken by command and control and has shifted to the days and weeks before any major demonstration. Indeed, the amount of story planting or wishful thinking that takes place seems obvious in retrospect. All of the Crowd Management seems to be taking place before anybody arrives on the scene. This means that the entire event is a Crowd Control Event.

The consequence of Crowd Management being shifted before the event is that the policing is simply command and control. Rather than enabling or facilitating the protest the police are placing themselves into a default oppositional role. The facilitation of the protest is managed, entirely, within the police media discourse. Crowd Management has ceased to exist and has become Media Management. The presence of any media - independent or mainstream - does not fit the command and control model because, quite simply, the model sees and understands the media as being only involved after the event or during the event but not during.

The only gaze that is needed, in the command and control model, is that of the CCTV and the Officer on the ground. This makes the notion of police officers passing on instructions to go away there is nothing to see, completely understandable. The presence of people actually watching what is going on is not part of their model. In the role of subordinates this means that they must exercise control. Which leaves them in a position of being out of control through excessive control.

The worst thing that could happen to the command and contol model is for a perfectly organised protest by one group of protestors being ignored by a separate group of protestors. Command and control requires a clear and well defined set of events, with a clear unfolding of those events in an orderly and predictable manner. In short, the model that modern policing has is of the project managment of public events in a command and control model.

Which means that modern policing fails at the point where people are outside the project (Tomlinson walking past a "situation" is outside of the project model) and reacts in the traditional manner of the state employed enforcer. Give the range of martial arts techniques and the command and control structure, the police actually need endemic warfare ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_warfare) in order to sustain the perceptions of their authority. Only by moderated, repeated and low level failures of discipline can the police cohere as a force for "social discipline". The police need failure.

This has resulted in such spectacular failures as Orgreave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Orgreave) The Poll Tax Riots ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax_riots) The Toxteth Riots ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxteth_riots) The Notting Hill "Race" Riots ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notting_Hill_riots), Handsworth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handsworth_riot), Brixton (  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brixton_riot_(1981) ), Chapeltown ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapeltown_riots_(1981)) and Bristol Riots

The Association of Chief Police Officers, developed police policy in their their Public Order Manual in response to the riots. This was used subsequently used in training by police forces throughout Britain. Which suggest that Riot is the only command and control structure that the police have. Policing is not a public service but a restraint on public action.

Mayday can always be characterised as being "riotous" and this informs the response of the police. The range of disasters that could befall such a strategy is that the Media phase of "crowd managment" could fail. Getting the right crowd to the right place at the right time for the right kind of protest and processing just about describes kettling. This takes place in the media before any protest. If the police fail in the media then the tactics of kettling, street warfare using martial arts and arbitrary detentions will fail to gain approval.

Given the long history of mayday and anticapitalist protest a first step would be to feed the media with Freedom of Information requests asking how may people were detained and subsequently released without charge. It is not always the specifics of the requests but the variety that makes a command and control structure fail. Policing is supposed to adapt to changing conditions. As recent events have shown, policing persists in using force as the first, only and final technique. The addition of media management in order to prempt criticisms or critiques of policing the open prison society does not, in the long run, obscure that fact. While it does not remove kettling as practice in demonstrations, it is now more evident that the media is also where protests are being managed.





John Ashton Cowhill, Oldham 1819


Kettling and arrogance

19.04.2009 17:42

I agree that N30 in 1999 was probably the first consistent use of the police tactic of kettling, copied from the German rozzers, against an action in London. Football supporters in the '80s had earlier experience of it, though.

I don't agree, though that there is "a qualitatively different level of arrorgance in the police". The arrogance nowadays is displayed to a qualitatively different and wider group of people -anyone who's there, whether anything to do with the action going on or not. This goes back further than people allow for, though. I saw tourists being battered and having film ripped out of their cameras round Piccadilly Circus during the poll tax riot. The cops had just used horses to run down and trample a woman and immediately sent goons into the mainly tourist crowd at the bottom of Regent Street to suppress all evidence of what they'd just done with whatever violence it took. They can't do that so easily now.

Then there was the so-called "Battle of the Beanfield" almost decade earlier. It wasn't a battle, of course, it was an attack with sickening levels of violence, including against children and several pregnant women, accompanied by prolonged wanton destruction of property. In those days there wasn't so much a qualitatively different level of arrogance as a qualitatively different level of being able to get away with it. The cops were confident they could do so because the people attacked could be -and were- portrayed as a marginalised bunch of soap-dodging bandits. What they didn't reckon with was that there was an ITV camera crew on hand who were utterly shocked by the level and gratuitous nature of the police violence. So much so that they came to two of our meetings immediately afterwards and offered their footage as evidence for legal actions. Unfortunately, it wasn't the journo and crew who controlled their footage, it was ITV. And guess what? It all disappeared from ITV's storage system a few days later and couldn't be accounted for. It never has seen the light of day. There are some revealing stills by Tash, but it's vids that really nail them, as has been pointed out.

That sort of thing can't happen now, fortunately. Too many cameras not controlled by compliant bureaucracies like ITV. Of course, we can expect CCTV evidence from 1st April to be destroyed whenever it shows what the police don't want to be seen ("cameras not working" etc.), but in view of the evidence already assembled, this will be a rather retro, olde worlde, corrupt routine.

Stroppyoldgit


Violence & Propaganda

20.04.2009 00:05

It is believed that systems constructed to conserve the power and priviledges of an elite have had to employ less violence and more propaganda (or other means) over the years to control the masses. Perhaps the fall-out of the Tomlison death will only result in the police being a better trained in the use of violence.

Harold Hamlet
mail e-mail: harold.hamlet@virgin.net


Dear stroppy old git

20.04.2009 02:11

With respect, sir,

you are wrong about the CCTV. The vast majority of CCTV footage would never be permitted to a court as evidential quality. Irregularities around the licencing of a particular camera, the visual quality and so on would exclude it.

The main reason for CCTV is not to provide evidence of any kind but to support the copper on the ground. Far from this kind of brutality at the Beanfield

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JCkUZAwvEA

There is a more targeted and planned assault upon the innocent and the bystanding. I have no illusions about the Massacre of the Beanfields, but the possibility of the same kind of outrage has now been made possible in the heart of cities. CCTV makes policing more invisible in the eyes of the law.

You are right in most ways, but you are wrong to suggest that the anything has changed for the better.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUOem7bid-0

John Ashton Cowhill, Oldham 1819