Cops are cops, whatever they call themselves. They will be friendly, lie, be violent, kill people- whatever they think will work for them. Whatever will reduce any demo to a tame event they can control.
Police Liaison Officers, in fluffy pale blue tabards, were conspicuously wandering amongst
the crowd at the Olympic demo today. Talking to everyone they could- except "known extremists"!
A while ago the cops realised Forward Intelligence Teams were provoking conflict instead of suppressing it. So they're now introducing a soft cop version- PLOs. Talk to them and you build yr file!
In Brighton activists met the two faces of the new PLOs when one of them attacked anti-fascist demonstrators enthusiastically with his baton- and another told a UKUncutter she had her pepperspray and was not afraid to use it! Fitwatchers did their best to isolate the newFIT with banners on one Smash EDO demo, and successfully totally excluded them on the Weapons Inspection.
A demo is- or should be -our space.
Cops, whatever they pretend to be, have no place in the middle of them.