Police

1 October 2011News in Brief

During the student fees protest in December 2010, police tipped Jody McIntyre out of his wheelchair and dragged him across the road. A metropolitan police internal enquiry in May found that this had been done “for his own safety”. However, in a report published in late August, the independent police complaints commission (IPCC) ruled that the officer concerned had used excessive force and should be charged with common assault. This charge could no longer be brought as a six-month legal…

1 October 2011News in Brief

In early September, Nottinghamshire police paid £20,000 in an out-of-court settlement to Rizwaan Sabir, the student at Nottingham university who was detained for seven days in 2008 after downloading an al-Qa’eda training manual as part of his research on terrorism.

1 September 2011News in Brief

The 20 climate activists convicted of conspiring to shut down Ratcliffe coal power station had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in July, following the revelation earlier this year that the CPS had not disclosed evidence gathered by undercover cop Mark Kennedy which could have been useful to their defence. The ruling described Kennedy as “arguably an agent provocateur.”

13 August 2011Feature

Activists often experience traumatic events: violence expressed towards themselves or towards third parties, or the fear and anxiety that can develop as a result of new and threatening situations. Minor physical injuries are common, but the long-term impact of trauma on activists has only recently begun to be discussed. Websites such as Healing Trauma (http://healingtrauma.pscap.org/) and groups such as the Aubonne Bridge network (http://www.aubonnebridge.net/) have started to provide materials and create spaces for activists to deal with trauma in the face of increasing repression. Starhawk has published some useful texts on this topic: See http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism.html

In comparison to rape, perpetrating mass murder, or other terrible things, street demonstration is rel-atively less traumatic. However trauma is very much an individual thing and people can be severely effected by imprisonment, gassing, beatings by police, betrayal, or even unexpected behaviour by comrades or the state.

We can mourn little things as well as big things and it's healthy and we should. Spending time in the “sad space” intentionally allows us to delve deeper into the…

13 August 2011Feature

Phone calls, email and browser histories to be stored by government for a year

In the last month, the government and big businesses have launched a dizzying array of initiatives threatening the expansion of a creeping “surveillance society” – which has lead to two young people being arrested.

The most sweeping proposal is the government’s scheme to store every phone call, sent email, and web page visited over the previous year by British citizens in a giant database. Jonathan Bamford, of the government’s own privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner’s…

1 June 2011News in Brief

On 2 May, an inquest jury found unanimously that Ian Tomlinson had been “unlawfully killed” by a police officer during the G20 protests in April 2009. They said that “excessive and unreasonable” force had caused death by internal abdominal bleeding. The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said he would review his previous decision not to prosecute the officer in question, Simon Haywood.

1 May 2011News

The Irish environmental group “Shell to Sea” has published a video in which a police sergeant suggests to another Garda (Irish police officer) that they should say to an arrested protester: “Give me your name and address or I’ll rape you”. A suggestion that provokes laughter.

The recording was made on a video camera confiscated from the protesters but not switched off. Only after a protest outside the Irish parliament did the Gardai apologise for the remark.

1 March 2011News in Brief

Good police news. Only 27 police officers (out of 13,157 tested) were positive for drugs in the past two years. Drugs detected included cocaine, cannabis and amphetamines. Surprise, surprise: the force with the largest number of detected drug users was the Metropolitan police.
Bad police news. Over the last two years, police officers in just two areas (Staffordshire and Cheshire) have caused more than £100,000 worth of accidents and car crashes – in their own car parks.
A report…

1 March 2011News in Brief

The British national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU) was set up in 1999 under the control of the association of chief police officers to meet the perceived threat from “domestic extremism” and “protest”. After the recent unwelcome “outing” of undercover officers including PC Mark Kennedy (see PN 2530), on 28 January, the NPOIU was put under the control of John Yates, assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police – Britain’s most senior officer in charge of counter-terrorism.…

1 February 2011News

On Monday 24 January, 35 women and men blockaded the metropolitan police’s headquarters at New Scotland Yard, London in response to revelations of infiltration of activist movements by undercover police officers. The 8am demonstration was in support of women who have been exploited by undercover officers after it was revealed that some of these officers had had long-term sexual relationships with activists they were investigating.

Participants held placards with messages to those…

1 February 2011News

Careful investigation by environmental activists has uncovered the identities of three long-term police infiltrators, one of whom advocated violence. Police constable (PC) Mark Kennedy, known in Nottingham activist circles as “Mark Stone” was publicly exposed on the Indymedia activists’ news website in late October, a fact recorded in PN 2528. (The first report in a British print publication.) Kennedy had been undercover in the environmentalist movement from 2004. In late 2009 he resigned…

1 December 2010News in Brief

Police shut down the website of Fitwatch – a group that resists police harassment and surveillance of activists – after it published advice for student protestors worried about being arrested following the trashing of the Tories’ Millbank HQ.

On 15 November the site’s US-based host received an email from British police alleging that it was being used for “criminal activity”. The site was removed and Fitwatch prevented from accessing its files.

The advice was instantly…

1 November 2010News in Brief

On 21 October, a statement was posted on Indymedia announcing that a long-time Nottingham activist known as Mark Stone had been confronted with overwhelming evidence, and had confessed to having been an undercover police officer from 2000 to at least the end of 2009.
According to the statement, Mark Stone’s real name is Mark Kennedy. He is said to have been one of the 114 climate activists arrested in Nottingham in April on the eve of an action at the power station at Ratcliffe-on-…

1 November 2010News in Brief

Fourteen US anti-war activists who had their homes raided by the FBI in September have had subpoenas to testify before grand juries dropped following protests in over 60 cities, a national call-in day, and a joint letter from those raided refusing to testify.
Armed members of the FBI took computers, mobile phones, documents, newspapers, framed photos and children’s art work in the 24 September raids in Chicago and Minneapolis, on the grounds that they were searching for evidence “…

3 September 2010News

On 8 July, home secretary Teresa May announced the suspension of “stop and search” powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Section 44 allows police to stop and search anyone in a designated area without needing reasonable suspicion of their being engaged in illegal, let alone terrorist, activity.

According to ministry of justice statistics, in 2008 less than 0.1% of those stopped under the section were even arrested for terrorism offences; and black and…