"Teams of 12 specially trained officers will form a Forward Intelligence Team (FIT) who, operating in uniform, will seek to build a "rapport" with "street activists" so that people "likely to provoke disorder can be identified early in an event"
The FIT first surfaced in the early 1990s, as part of the Public Order Intelligence Unit (CO11), a section of the Public Order Branch of the Metropolitan Police. They were initially targeted at football fans but were soon extended to cover a wide variety of political events, and their tactics have more recently been used in town centres as part of the "community policing" strategy. Sometimes they are deployed outside of the Metropolitan area, as at the G8 in Scotland for example, and most UK police forces now have officers trained in their methods.
IMC Links: FIT hunting NoBorders activists at rampART | Protest at Heckler & Koch weapons manufacturers HQ in Nottingham. | Policing FIT for "serious and sustained" terror? | FIT watch at Disarm DSEi meeting. | Counter-FIT: some thoughts. | Resisting the FIT teams: a proposal for action. | FIT at Convergence Centre. | Fit Team vs the Grey Bloc. | Backwards Intelligence Team. | Fatuous Intimidation Team strike again! | FIT intimidation at rampART. | The FIT team at work. | Police Harassment Bayswater Rd. | Indymedia and British Intelligence Services. | Where are the London cops? | Mayday march and protest at Canary Wharf. | Mayday in London 2007. | Unprecedented police harassment operation against Wombles. | G8 Employment Ministers Protest In London. |
Other links: Defective Inspectors. | WANTED! | Europol. | The Empire Strikes Back. | Fairford Coaches judgement. | Anarchist Mayday Cricket. | Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. | Defend the Intifada. | What really happened in London. | The police paparazzi. | Public order training and tactics reviewed. | We are heartbroken and furious! | G8 Employment Ministers Protest In London. | Bank Robbed! | All about my 'BIG BROTHER' ...! | NETCU Watch. | FIT Watch. |
No More Personal Space Invasion
Why do the FIT target some events and not others? Their presence at large demos of dissent might not be surprising but why pensioners and Critical Mass cyclists? You never know when or where they will turn up. The FIT sometimes try to engage you in friendly conversation to extract intelligence and are claimed to use covert methods to obtain unpublished information.
A typical FIT will consist of a photographer/videographer with two yellow-jacketed minders, a note taker and one or more 'controllers'. The controllers will point out certain individuals in a crowd to be photographed. At other times the photographer will snap off shots on his own initiative of people at random, which is thought to be an intimidation tactic aimed at discouraging political dissent. A police photographer will sometimes shove his long lens right in people's faces and at other times will shoot in semi-concealment from a distant balcony.
OK, you now want to get your own back and photograph them instead. Why is the note taker trying to conceal his face and the police photographer hiding behind another cop? It is odd that some of the FIT really do not like being photographed and you wonder why.
Under the Data Protection Act you are entitled to get hold of any pictures the police may have taken of you but this is not as straightforward as it might seem. No surprise there then!
"Some activists were assigned their own 'personal' escort who followed them at all times and one cameraman continuously took photographs of the same group of people (estimate that he must have taken over one hundred pictures of the same twenty-five people!)."
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Backward Unintelligence Servants
28.07.2007 18:15
But anyway it seems very apparent to me that the (hilariously named) intelligence team's job is little to do with collecting information. It is a more effective technique to intimidate activists and make them think there are intelligent police in the force.
The Greeks stated that fear was the emotion that the human brain acts most irrationally under the influence of. We’re at war with fear at the moment, er I mean terrorism don’t forget.
What I am saying is PARANOIA is far more of a threat than the police force can ever be.
WE ARE EVERYWHERE
The police know this and can never hope to equal its strength of statement though they try with CCTV and other information gathering and attempted intimidating techniques. Where police can occasionally raid meeting spaces of resistance or impede movements of dissent, paranoia and fear is a weapon of mass destruction. It will stop people gathering, get between friends, stop good people meeting or collaborating. It can potentially break up activist groups, far more than our dignified Cuntstables could ever hope of achieving.
When the 800 German police raided 40 buildings in the run up to the G8, it achieved nothing and the G8 succeeded in blockading numerous roads as well as the East Gate for two days. Even the 11 police raids following the G8 resulted in a spontaneous demo of several hundred people and ended in a lovely little street party.
While its disempowering to think we cant win and they have all our names and photos clogging up some microsoft machine, remember that most of the FIT team don’t know the shutter button from the delete and though rather forward with us, they don’t strike me a very intelligent and are a number of workshops short of a cohesive team.
Yours in solidarity ;-)
A CABby
A CABby
fit as fuck
28.07.2007 20:07
Barbara
missed opportunity
29.07.2007 20:26
mollie
Why do you take them seriously
29.07.2007 22:42
Hmm what should I have for lunch?
Barbara
Missed oportunity?
30.07.2007 06:20
Watcher
London and the UK, the epicentre of lifestyle anarchism?
30.07.2007 11:59
As if people in the rest of Europe would tolerate filth intimidating people outside their social centres.
It could only happen here, hopefully that will change some day..
mollie
London and the UK?
30.07.2007 15:51
Watcher
They are clearly very effective
31.07.2007 11:32
Here's a plan - stay legal and see what the FIT do!
Max Gastone
not me
31.07.2007 16:10
Just to add to the debate, the FIT teams are often from Hampshire as well, and on one occasion when challenged openly admitted that their purpose was to intimidate. As well as photographing those going to protest meetings or demonstrations, they are also keen to photo who is talking to who and building up networks and profiles.
the actual Max Gastone
Max
Sidetracking?
31.07.2007 17:26
Sure in other countries nobody would stand for it. Sadly this isn't other countries. Better to start from where we are than wish we were somewhere else!! Sounds good to me!
Bill (unfortunately)
This debate is in itself a sidetrak
01.08.2007 13:31
Dr B O'Driscol
This issue is not a sidetrack
02.08.2007 10:20
Of course they have loads of covert means of surveillence and people should take that into account with everything they do. However the FIT team have an effect both on our actions and our mental health and it is vital to our strength to oppose them.
As said in previous posts, the idea is for people to act in solidarity with each other - standing outside meetings they wouldn't normally go to. There are several people planning to go to climate camp who wouldn't otherwise go, to do Fit Watch stuff.
There's also going to be a FIT Watch workshop on 14th August at 4:30 at the Climate Camp.
FIT Watch
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Good luck with this
02.08.2007 19:22
Barbara
?
02.08.2007 22:47
There are at least one or two good looking coppers on the Bill, why can't they get these coppers to follow us around? I'd quite like to get frisked and videoed in intimate situations by some of sunhills finest.
welsh andy
fit up paedos,nazi bnp& robber barons not true community activists
05.08.2007 14:58
jj
fitwatch not a sidetrack, an action in itself
09.08.2007 00:08
Given that...
a) their presence can actively deter joe public from engaging with issues that they may otherwise support
and
b) the emotional/mental impact their tactics can have upon some folk
then not only are we facilitating the legitimate freedom to protest by actively challenging them (a la the fitwatch initiative etc), its also an obligation for us to do so as a gesture of support for those victims of this particularly nasty form of State repression.
mike
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