Our Friendly police at work

Used it once too, doesn't seem to work though

I was a bus/tubenger today and coming up to Christchurch/Brixton Hill at the bus stop there was atleast 15/20 London bus inspectors and OB stopping randon busengers getting on and off, checking tickets! Lazy good for fuck all cunts
Whereas if they were to go half a mile down the road into Brixton they could do some proper work and catch all the fuckin drugdealers, pickpockets and crack'eads!

While I see you frustration if you follow that logic why should they bother catching pick pockets and street dealers? Why not only bother with mafia bosses and international arms and drugs smugglers?

I'm no fan of the police because of the misuse of powers and twisting of regulation to do what they want but can't criticize the police for catching someone braking the rules because someone round the corner is braking the rules more so.

Back on topic. this is unbelievable. What kind of world have we allowed when this happens?

tragic.

blogged this video, thanks for posting it.

no the women. they disagree with the police filming protesters so they go about filming police. i don't understand how this solves their original grievances, or provides any kind of positive solution. it is overly, overly petty.
as far as i'm aware they're not connected to that protest itself, and i don't see any protesters getting in trouble (although, actually, i'm sure some did at that climate camp..) i don't really see what they're doing other than wasting police time and getting in the way of them doing their job which is to manage the climate camp.
i don't support police brutality and like i said it's very worrying from their account of the days that follow their arrests. that is something that 100% should be looked into and i don't support the loss of anyone's rights.
however, like a lot of things, this seems to be stupid people doing stupid things and then throwing the old innocent eyes when they get called up on it.

So as someone who was at climate camp, got arrested there for trying to shut the power station down and also know's the two women who were arrested I figured I should try and answer this one.

FIT watch aren't some separate troublemakers who get in the way of the police and have nothing to do with the protests. They are there, often by request, of the protest organisers to try and force the police to be accountable and operate within the law.

Police often remove badge numbers before attacking people, lie about their rights whilst searching people under various sections, make up spurious laws, and arrest people who they are completely aware haven't broken any law purely to get them out of the way.

The FIT team (police evidence gatherers) are not like a human CCTV camera, who passively gather evidence, they follow people home, turn up at your work, call out your name whenever they see you to let you know they are watching you, and are generally employed as a tactic to pressurise, intimidate and harass people who they see as organised activists.

During the climate camp, the police had already started several raids on a peaceful camp, buzzed helicopters over campers at two hour intervals during every night, attempted to wake everyone up blaring music at them through the night, staged mock riot squad attacks at 4am whilst campers slept, stopped and searched EVERYONE coming in and out of the camp every time they saw them, arrested ALL of the camp van drivers who were picking people up from the station, sprayed the local MP with pepper spray and many many more things.

FIT watch, by filming the police attempt to make them accountable for their illegal activities. The girls were arrested and put in prison for four days, not because they had committed a crime, but because the police are uncomfortable breaking the law whilst they are being watched by people who know the law very well. They could have been put in a local cell and processed as normal, but I have no doubt the reason that these two were treated so harshly was in order to intimidate them and try and put them off doing the same thing again.

Just to re-iterate, the person who should have been arrested, was the police officer who was breaking the law by removing his ID number.

This is not a case of 'if you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to hide'. This is a case of a un-accountable police force using illegal violence, intimidation tactics and illegal detention in order to try and quash what the government see as a growing and increasingly effective environmental movement.

and yes,

they did kill an innocent man on April 1st, and no nothing will happen because of it.

This is not a case of a few bad apples in a nice police force, this is a case of institutional encouragement for violence and unaccountability. There are plenty of nice bobbies out there on the street, but put one of them in a riot helmet, lock them up in a hot van for hours, give them a truncheon and a shield, then whip up the media into framing a non-violent protest as a fight and their training to be violent will kick in.

..

Sorry to link to the hate mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199930/Anger-surveillance-police-photograph-anti-airport-campaigners-talking-MP.html;jsessionid=E175637E9336E9B0254AFBE0767E83B8

new complaints from MP's and campaigners about police surveillance harrasment.

Norman Baker MP visited the airport and met members of Greenpeace and campaign group Stop Airport Expansion Now, which are opposed to plans to increase the size of the airfield. He said: 'This sort of police behaviour is more akin to East Germany in the 1980s than a democratic country like Britain. It seems to becoming a habit. 'People should be able to lobby members of parliament without being photographed by the police. It was quite wrong that police were taking pictures.'