Police must be 'servants not masters' says head of watchdog
New Met chief could lose support of rank and file if he begins a 'witch hunt'
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Independent Minds
Nicole Fisher, from Brighton, is seen remonstrating with a police officer, who slaps her with the across the face before drawing a baton and then striking her on the legs.
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Police officers must remember they are "the servants and not the masters" of the people, the head of the police watchdog said yesterday as he condemned the practice of concealing shoulder numbers as "unacceptable".
Nick Hardwick, the chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), said he would appear before the Home Affairs Select Committee as the fallout surrounding allegations into the use of police force at the G20 protests grew more acrimonious.
Mr Hardwick said he had "serious concerns" about front-line supervision of officers at this month's demonstrations. The IPCC launched a third investigation yesterday into police tactics after a 23-year-old London man claimed he was assaulted by a Metropolitan Police officer. "Why was that happening? Why did the supervisor not stop them? What does that say about what your state of mind is?" he asked. "You were expecting trouble?"
Mr Hardwick's comments came as former Metropolitan Police Commander John O'Connor warned that the current Met chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, risks losing the support of rank and file officers if the investigation into allegations of abuse became a "witch hunt."
And Sir Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), moved to defuse the situation by praising the "vast and overwhelming majority" of officers who, he said, deserved public support.
The chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz, said MPs would examine the G20 controversial "kettling" tactic used to contain demonstrators as well as "what happened at the G20 protests" and the scope of the IPCC investigation.
A new video emerged yesterday of two further incidents which occurred at the Climate Camp demonstration in Bishopsgate. The first involved Alex Cinnane, 24, an IT technician from London, who is shown being hit on the head with a riot shield by an unidentified, partially masked officer. The other shows an officer punching an unidentified male demonstrator in the jaw as the crowds retreat from an advancing police line.
By Friday, the IPCC had received more than 185 complaints about the G20 protests, including 90 about the use of force, from witnesses as well as alleged victims.
Mr Hardwick said that the recent trend of digital cameras and mobile phones for photographs and video footage was providing the IPCC with invaluable evidence as well as "challenging" police.
"They have to respond to the fact that they are going to be watched, there is going to be evidence of what they have done," he said. Mr Vaz said that the amount of amateur and CCTV footage meant police actions were "much more open and much more transparent".
Mr Vaz also called for a broader debate about the right to protest and the responsibilities of policing. "It's got to be a democratic question of how do we want to be policed? That needs a proper parliamentary discussion," he said. "The choices we make as a society about that aren't consequence-free. There are tricky balances to be struck."
But temperatures were rising among protesters as some warned that this year's May Day demonstrations could be some of the most dramatic yet. The United Campaign Against Police Violence, a coalition formed in the wake of the G20 protests, met last weekend to discuss plans. "We're trying to stop London on May Day in memory of all those who have died in police custody," said Chris Knight, a founding member. "If police officers haven't got the message at that stage, we may have to take it into our own hands."
Others have called for riot police to wear large football-shirt style numbers on their fronts and backs so that it is harder for them to conceal their identity. A report published by The Camp for Climate Action over the weekend deemed policing as "violent and disproportionate" though not dissimilar to the type of policing experienced at other climate camps.
Incident log: The Met under fire
*1 April 2009
Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor, is struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer. He is seen remonstrating with the police who offer no assistance leaving it to bystanders to help him back to his feet. Later he dies. Officer is suspended.
*1 April 2009
An unnamed 23-year old man claims he was assaulted by a police cordon in Cornhill. The case, which has not yet come to light on video, is the third under investigation by the IPCC.
n 2 April 2009
Nicole Fisher, from Brighton, is seen remonstrating with a police officer, who slaps her with the across the face before drawing a baton and then striking her on the legs. The officer, whose shoulder number is concealed, is identified and suspended.
*1 April 2009
Alex Cinnane, 24, an IT technician from London, is hit on the head with a riot shield by an unidentified officer whose face is half-hidden by a balaclava. Another video, pictured far right, taken the same day shows an officer delivering a right hook to an unidentified male demonstrator's jaw as the crowds retreat from an advancing police line. Yesterday, a spokesman for the IPCC said that no formal inquiry into these cases had yet begun.
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Comments
Love, Peace, Justice, for All.
These 3609 so-called 'Laws' are not laws at all, they are Statutes - and according to Black's Law Dictionary, a Statute is 'a legislated rule of a society that is given the force of law by the consent of the governed'. Why do you think they are called 'Acts' - because they only act as laws.
I, and many others, have expressly revoked our consent to the government's Statutes by serving Affidavits on The Queen and become a Freeman-on-the-Land in Lawful Rebellion under Article 61 of the Magna Carta of 1215. (see http://www.tpuc.org for more info).
We don't need our public servants to invent new 'crimes' - the UK is a Common Law jurisdiction and it's principles are all we need - do not cause harm or injury to another, do not cause a loss of property and do not use fraud in a contract.
Simple - No Victim - No Crime!
By ratifying the EU Treaty of Lisbon, our public servants have committed the most serious Common Law Criminal Offence - TREASON.
Sounds like it's time for the public to convene a Common Law Grand Jury.
Love, Peace, JUSTICE, for ALL.
I'm sorry, but this is The Independent? Right? How about putting some depth on the issues? Just because a pensioner tripped over a flagstone doesn't mean the flagstone spent 25 years planning her murder.
this is all very confusing for people like myself , who lived in the "olden days" (more than twenty years ago) .
Those abusive police can and should be deselected ASAP. Would they be able to walk away if they are properly investigated and disciplined? No? Why? Because they couldn't get a job anywhere else at the moment.
In any event, the top brass are in charge, not the union mentality of the bovver boy PCs.
Unfortunately, the recruitment and training processes are clearly not up to scratch, so the police service has too many inadequates in their ranks.
In that the people serve the government not the other way round.
What will of course happen is that a few moronic and violent individuals in the front line will become the scapegoats and the idiots who manage them will get away with it yet again, as will the politicians who pull their strings. When there are problems on this scale in any organisation the people who are at fault are invariably the management team and the person who is supposed to provide proper leadership to them, in the case the Chief Constable.
Management at the Met appears to rotten to the core with values such as arrogance, lying to the press, sucking up to politicians and brainless and misdirected PC policies being what are needed to obtain promotion. Principles of accountability, responsibility and public service seem to be completely lacking and many of these senior officers appear to be morally and ethically bankrupt. Junior officers take their cues for what is and is not acceptable from observing their bosses - what a wonderful and inspiring standard their have to aspire to!
There needs to be a witch hunt at a senior level and at a junior level the police should be instructed that if they observe another officer breaking the law they must intervene immediately and if necessary arrest them. Without this public confidence in this bunch of misfits will continue to spiral downwards.
However what will happen in practice is nothing - as usual.
They use exactly the same tactics as the illegal state of Israel that was built on native Palestinian corpses!
I am glad this has been brought to our attention. Most of all is the professional side of the work and by the way, Professonialism, is for the public good. Nothing to do with what degee one has. A good doctor is as good as the good road sweeper; both are being PROFESSIONAL
Is this a different Keith Vaz to the Keith Vaz who has been in the media several times in the last couple of weeks telling us what a good job the police did?
"former Metropolitan Police Commander John O'Connor warned that the current Met chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, risks losing the support of rank and file officers if the investigation into allegations of abuse became a "witch hunt.""
This line has been tried before. When the officers who murdered Harry Stanley faced being held to account in the courts their colleagues took secondary industrial action. In the face of this industrial action and threats of further industrial action the Crown Prosecution Service rapidly dropped the idea of holding the murderers to account.
Giving in to bullies in this way simply encourages them.
The freedom to protest is slowly being eroded in this country; people like yourself who make stupid and ill-informed comments in the belief that the "government knows best", only compound the fact that we are sleep walking towards becoming a police state.
What?!!
Yes- he knew exactly what he was trying to do- he was a city newspaper vendor who had finished work and was trying to go home, but kept on getting turned back by the police. Idiot.
The force used by the officer in question is NOT the only issue to be considered. Also relevant is the person or people against whom the force is to be used and their behavioural presentation ... is it one slight female officer against an aggressive male target with a weapon, or a burly 'rugby' police officer against a child? Is anyone under the influence of drugs or alcohol, etc., etc.. In addition, of MASSIVE relevance is the context within which that force is to be used ... is it a one on one situation in deserted country lane, or is the officer also having to bear in mind the other ongoing police operation around him in relation to hundreds or thousands of people who are animated / aggressive / violent / passive. Next, wherever force gets 'escalated' (ie, greater levels of force are resorted to after lower levels of force failed to achieve the objective), it is of relevant to ask whether other options were tried first and failed, or whether they were rejected as likely to success on good grounds.
Nicky FISHER was subject to verbal instructions with which she failed to comply and a 'push'. She swore at him and advanced toward him again. She was then struck with a hand and advanced again, continuing to swear before the sergeant backed off and drew his baton. He issued a THIRD instruction to back off and she failed to acceed before she was struck. There is an ongoing criminal investigation which will determine an outcome ... it may be the sergeant is prosecuted for assault in order to consider the appropriateness of his tactics.
Within that investigation and trail, however, will be questions for why Ms FISHER failed to adhere to three sets of instructions of back off in what is clearly a tense public order situtation which the police are attempting to manage. A sergeant in the Met TSG will almost certainly have experience of various public order situations in London where crowds which looked exactly like the one with which he was engaged who then caused millions of pounds of damage to property and serious injury to other uninvolved members of the public. Claim that 99.99% of people were engaged in peaceful, lawful protest is no more to the point than it is to outline what a useful 'cover' peaceful demonstrated is against anit-capitalist anarchists. The Met Police were heavily criticised by Londoners in 2000 for failing to manage the threats posed.
If you don't like the policing you have received, which I never have during my five personal engagements with them, each and every person has the option to do what I did and join the police.
But we always assumed that they were - until New Labour came along.
With respect,you don't know whether I experienced the events to which you refer, or not.
But I concede that I only saw them reported - and I take the point you make.
However, I do maintain that in ordinary circumstances, the ordinary police officer at that time was, in general (and probably rightly) considered to be an honest man and a public servant.
Not so now, I think.
Approximately a year ago, a relative came into my house and threw his car keys on the table. He explained that he expected a police car to arrive very shortly.
Apparently, he had stopped at the doctor's surgery to collect a prescription. Dashing in and out as quickly as possible did not prevent him from receiving a parking ticket from a traffic warden who was writing it out as he arrived.
Angered, he threw it on the floor - (a petulent and pointless act, I grant).
His prediction was accurate. Within a couple of minutes, a police car pulled up and two officers came to the door.
One of them stated that the traffic warden had claimed that my relative had thrown the ticket AT him. My relative said that he not; that he had simply thrown the ticket on the floor.
Twice more, the same officer attempted to put words into his mouth, "And when you threw the ticket at the warde....", he said.
Now I knew that if he had done so, it would have constituted assault. So did the officer. My relative did not.
In other words, this offfier, whose duty was to gather information, was really attempting to entrap my relative into admitting to having done what he had not done.
I put my head round the door and pointed out to the policeman that he'd been told three times that the ticket was not thrown at the warden.
"Were you there?" he snapped.
"Were you?" I replied.
"Well," he said; "I believe the warden.
"Well," I said; "you can believe what you like".
The relative of whom I spak has never been in any kind of trouble with the police in his sixty years on this earth. I know, of course, that there have always been corrupt policemen (just as there always has been a degree of corruption to be found among any group of human beings) but I really don't think that twenty years ago, an ordinary member of the public would have been subjected to such a blatant and arrogant attempt to entrap him?
However, I got stopped many times on my Lambretta for no other reason than driving it and it was always an aggressive copper who tried to pinch me for something or nothing. Living in Notting Hill in the late sixties meant being stopped by the police and searched for drugs almost every night you were out after closing time. Never were they polite. They just wanted a bust and if they couldn't bust you for a crime, they often bust your lip for good measure. Grosvenor Square....unfortunately I can keep going until the age of about 35, when it all suddenly stopped and I have never been accosted since. Grey hair means you are respectable?
What I am saying, which is reflected in your experience is that, unfortunately, they are in general a bunch of bastards. I remember at school that the ones who weren't that bright and couldn't go to college, or get an apprenticeship, joined the local police force. Enough said, except for Police FORCE, it's in the name isn't it!!
Seems like the National Front Storm Troopers has really made a solid foothold in the police force and nothing short of a witch hunt will uproot this institutionalized racist and thuggish force..I suppose nothing short of a British Nuremburg trial will uproot this evil..
What appears to have happened to Ian Tomlinson is totally unacceptable and only God knows what was going through the policeman's mind at the time.
What is this crap about right to protest and police brutality? Let's remove the right to protest and let the police do what they want and there is none of this media uproar - they were protesting, they got beat up, that is the law...
Also I thought it was now illegal to photograph the police... Are these whining commies who dare criticize our boys in blue going to be rightfully prosecuted for the scum they are?
As for photographing the police, I had one officer forcefully request I take his picture at the G20.
I hope you have a finely polished sense of irony,
otherwise you're just spouting a load of craap
Unless you agree with peoples right to protest even if you disagree with the cause then you deserve to lose your freedom. You cannot pick and choose.
My point was that the reason for the protest is irrelevant.......we either live in a free and fair society or we do not.
Has anyone seen "Taking liberties" (google video)
Or
"On The Verge" about the Brighton EDO protestors where the weapons manufacturer was colluding with the police. The police tried but failed to stop the film ever seeing the light of day. It can be obtained via free bit torrent download from their home page: http://www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies/ind
FTA (above schnews link): In 2004 a group of Brighton peace campaigners began to bang pot and pans outside their local arms manufacturers EDO MBM in disgust of their part in the Iraq war. This has grown into the Smash EDO campaign, which has cost the company millions, been the subject olarge scale police operations and has tested the right to protest in the UK.
Using activist, police and CCTV footage plus interviews with those involved in the campaign, On The Verge tells the story of one of the most persistent and imaginative campaigns to emerge out of the UK's anti-war movement and direct action scene.
The film is already being screened on the Smash EDO Tour which has begun, and dvds will be available to buy in April - with proceeds going to Smash EDO.
Police Repression
Police have attempted to stop On The Verge being screened around the country. The premiere screening at the Duke Of Yorks Cinema in Brighton in March was pulled at the last minute after police invention, and several venues due to host the tour and film have been subjected to police threats - for more see SchNEWS 625, 630.Read 'A misguided piece of official hysteria', the Guardian article published March 27th about police repression against On The Verge click here
If you object to this, then the issue is one to raise with Chief Constables, the Home Office and politicians as it is standard UK police practice to do so when officers are deployed in 'Code 1' as part of safety for obvious reasons.
Those who imagine things were different 20 years ago are living in a dream, the only difference was that less people were desperately on the edge of society, so less people witnessed the police leap to the defence of the ruling class.
No miner, poll tax protester or anti-nuke trade activist of 20 or 30 years ago would notice the slightest difference between what is happening now and what happened then. The middle classes are being put under the hammer in the same way that miners once were is the only change. The police attitude is unchanged.
Also,mr shepwaykent, Ian Tomlinson had every right try and get home,which is all he asked many times. He did not 'know what he was doing' because he wasn't doing anything. You thicko! He was an ill man as was the 'KETTLED' man trying to give himself an insulin injection in filthy conditions. Lucky he had it with him as well after being kept there for 6 hours. You wouldn't be from Wharf Rd Gravesend would you. Just go away!
Please don't hit me :P
If the TSG want to go on strike in protest because some of thier fellow officers are being investigated for crimes, well fine, sack the lot of them. If they don't understand the job of the police then they are not fit for purpose. Lot's of people are looking for jobs now so it would be easy to replace them.
This little piggy went to jail, this little piggy got to spend more time with his family, this little piggy squelled on his mates, and the rest of the little piggies went on the dole.
And we all lived happily ever after.
If only fairy tales could come true. :D
if they ask the police to get out the way so they can riot the police have to obey?
UK police are the most restrained of almost all European police forces no tear gas no water cannon etc