Protesters "intent on killing police officers"
Radio 4 listener | 20.04.2009 10:51 | Repression
Regarding the G20 protests, Derek Barnett said this morning that "protesters were intent on injuring and killing police officers".
On BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning, David Davis, former shadow home secretary, and Derek Barnett, vice president of the Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales, discussed the policing of protests.
At one point Derek Barnett said, "...level of violence...We ought to put that in context of violence and the circumstances of thousands of protesters with the sole intention of causing damage to buildings and at the worst injuring and killing police officers."
Listen for yourself online http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8007000/8007668.stm
Start listening at about 3 minutes 30 seconds into the programme.
This is an outrageous comment. How many cops have ever been killed by protesters????
I hope by highlighting this disgraceful comment here, that something can be done about this.
At one point Derek Barnett said, "...level of violence...We ought to put that in context of violence and the circumstances of thousands of protesters with the sole intention of causing damage to buildings and at the worst injuring and killing police officers."
Listen for yourself online http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8007000/8007668.stm
Start listening at about 3 minutes 30 seconds into the programme.
This is an outrageous comment. How many cops have ever been killed by protesters????
I hope by highlighting this disgraceful comment here, that something can be done about this.
Radio 4 listener
Additions
proportionate force vs police
20.04.2009 15:50
The last time a cop was killed during a demo in Britain was more than 100 years ago, and the person who did it was acquitted in court on grounds of self-defence! There has since been a cop killed during an urban uprising (Broadwater Farm) because of a previous murder by police. In the same period of 100 years, police have killed literally hundreds of people. There are currently around 600 deaths in custody per year, only about 100 of these are suicides. I can list a number of protesters and protest bystanders killed by police pre-Tomlinson - Jill Phipps, Blair Peach, someone run over at a military base, a man in a wheelchair run over by police during the Brixton uprising, two deaths from heart attacks when police attacked a courtroom protest during the Poll Tax, another anarchist who died at about 40 a few years after injuries sustained during a police assault... not including the various "shoot to kill" cases in Northern Ireland, or people who've died in hunger strike.
Police create an imaginary scenario of protesters causing death, when in fact this is almost unknown even GLOBALLY - protesters throwing rocks or even Molotov cocktails, or wielding sticks or whatever, does NOT kill police. The handful of cases where police have been killed, have been close-range lynchings, shootings or stabbings, and these are very very rare globally (and from the cases I know, always follow from police killings - the cases I know of are from Italy many decades back, the anti-Arroyo protest in the Philippines, the Gujjar unrest, Broadwater Farm and some cases from Nigeria). There were no police deaths in Genoa, no police deaths in the unrest in Greece last December. Look through a list of deaths linked to protests and NEARLY ALL are caused by police. Examples from this last year: the Gujjar protests in western India, 40+ dead in police shootings; Kashmir, 60+ dead in police shootings; Korea squat eviction, 5 protesters and 1 cop dead due to police use of dangerous chemicals. On rare exceptions where deaths are blamed on protesters using usual "violent" protest tactics, they are accidental, due to people setting fire to vehicles or buildings with people in them. (There's also the rather different phenomenon of ethnic pogroms, which really do cause deaths, usually from deliberately setting fire to houses with people inside or from beatings, stabbings or shootings - these are directed at civilians not police, and are usually easily distinguishable from protests).
Put simply, even if protesters are using the full range of the most "violent" protest tactics (which in Britain they generally aren't), these tactics are "non-lethal" or "less lethal" by police definition, i.e. they can't predictably be expected to kill anyone. If someone wants to kill police, they do it with lethal weapons against isolated individual police. So-called protest "violence" is about dispersing or pushing back police, enforcing the right to protest or sanctioning unwanted state actions by exercising proportionate force to control the streets of an area, create or defend an autonomous zone, reach a target or shut down state functioning.
Police create an imaginary scenario of protesters causing death, when in fact this is almost unknown even GLOBALLY - protesters throwing rocks or even Molotov cocktails, or wielding sticks or whatever, does NOT kill police. The handful of cases where police have been killed, have been close-range lynchings, shootings or stabbings, and these are very very rare globally (and from the cases I know, always follow from police killings - the cases I know of are from Italy many decades back, the anti-Arroyo protest in the Philippines, the Gujjar unrest, Broadwater Farm and some cases from Nigeria). There were no police deaths in Genoa, no police deaths in the unrest in Greece last December. Look through a list of deaths linked to protests and NEARLY ALL are caused by police. Examples from this last year: the Gujjar protests in western India, 40+ dead in police shootings; Kashmir, 60+ dead in police shootings; Korea squat eviction, 5 protesters and 1 cop dead due to police use of dangerous chemicals. On rare exceptions where deaths are blamed on protesters using usual "violent" protest tactics, they are accidental, due to people setting fire to vehicles or buildings with people in them. (There's also the rather different phenomenon of ethnic pogroms, which really do cause deaths, usually from deliberately setting fire to houses with people inside or from beatings, stabbings or shootings - these are directed at civilians not police, and are usually easily distinguishable from protests).
Put simply, even if protesters are using the full range of the most "violent" protest tactics (which in Britain they generally aren't), these tactics are "non-lethal" or "less lethal" by police definition, i.e. they can't predictably be expected to kill anyone. If someone wants to kill police, they do it with lethal weapons against isolated individual police. So-called protest "violence" is about dispersing or pushing back police, enforcing the right to protest or sanctioning unwanted state actions by exercising proportionate force to control the streets of an area, create or defend an autonomous zone, reach a target or shut down state functioning.
fuck pigfuckers
Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
Daivd Davis: British cops don't wear balaclavas
20.04.2009 11:28
Recent evidence of the opposite:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/video-g20-police-assault
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/images/2009/02/420983.jpg
For amusement only: British cops don't like anyone else having balaclavas:
"A War On Terror board game designed in Cambridge has been seized by police who claim the balaclava in the set could be used in a criminal act".
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/displayarticle.asp?id=338658
masked menace
they all hide
20.04.2009 13:04
this current frenzy around the policing will fizzle out as soon as something more pointless surfaces because "they've got you where they want you safely locked up inside, now they are killing off your brains with intelicide"
ballz
On the positive side
20.04.2009 13:08
nice one!
Police Kettled - what nonsense
20.04.2009 13:39
He has not offered proof or given CCTV evidence of police being kettled. He is trying to manage the media. The police have never been kettled. Its ACPO Spin.
non spin
Well more than 100 years ago
21.04.2009 02:28
The inquest into Culley's death was held in the upstairs room of the then new Calthorpe Arms, on the corner of Wren Street and Grays Inn Road. A bigoted coroner refused to allow relevant evidence from eye witnesses and tried to browbeat the jury into returning the verdict he wanted. He refused them food or water or to allow an adjournment (it was now late at night) until they complied. The sort of kettled jury was fortified by the huge crowd which had assembled outside and refused to be cowed. They insisted on bringing in a verdict of "justifiable homicide" and the coroner had to give up eventually. This verdict was later overturned by the Home Secretary (Lord Melbourne) but the promise to hold a fresh inquest ever so slightly slipped down the agenda. We're still waiting for it....
Whilst waiting, anarchists still like to hold meetings or social events in that same upstairs room of the Calthorpe Arms and drink to the "16 just men and true", as they were called at the time.
Stroppyoldgit
shocked!
21.04.2009 12:18
holy fuck is that true? i had no idea of the extent of violent deaths in custody... i'm gonna run off to google to research it but if anyone has any good links with details, please let me know. thanks for that bit of news, shocking as it is...
seani fool
something that has bothered me for ages
21.04.2009 15:16
does anyone know of any center of information about the corruption of the police, why the police are un necessary and alternatives to police state.
i just think that it would be good to have a leaflet about the police, at the minute theirs just lots and lots of songs.
sue denim
@ Seani Fool
22.04.2009 06:50
Take into account that death in custody means in the custody of 'police, prison, psychiatric detention and immigration'.
information
thanks!
23.04.2009 12:07
seani fool