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Police tactics seek to ‘intimidate people and prevent lawful dissent’


Friday, March 13th, 2009

By Linda Catt |

It comes as no surprise to me to read that “Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years” (Revealed: police databank on thousands of protesters, 7 March). As a regular protester, I have long decried to a seemingly deaf world the ham-fisted and sinister surveillance techniques described in your article, even ensuring that my comments are recorded by police cameras.

So while I am pleased to read that “Liberty, the human rights group, is challenging the police surveillance tactics in a judicial review at the court of appeal”, this action is long overdue.

You say that “Overt surveillance by police forward intelligence teams (FITs) or evidence gatherers (EGs) is designed to record potential criminal activity and gather useful intelligence.” But to me it seems clear that it is designed to intimidate people and prevent lawful dissent.

While these techniques were “Pioneered by the Met’s public order branch in the late 1990s”, Sussex police have also made great efforts to advance them, particularly against the people who protest against the US defence company ITT/EDO in Brighton. Through determined perseverance, I have had complaints about intrusive and prolonged filming by Sussex police EGs upheld, including when I was followed and filmed for two and a half hours during an anti-arms-trade march, even though my yellow tabard clearly indicated that I was a legal observer for the protest. This continued well after the march had ended, and even extended to waiting for me outside shops and a cafe.

When the boot is on the other foot however, it is another matter. Twice I have had a camera snatched from me by police officers when I tried to film their actions in public, with one officer even trying to delete the footage. Although an EG had filmed the latter, my Data Protection Act request for video footage could only uncover stills of everything but the offending moment. I was told that my next port of call would be the National Public Order Intelligence Unit in London, which in itself has sinister undertones.

I have already had an “of interest to public order unit” Sussex police marker placed against my vehicle on the Police National Computer for attending three peaceful and lawful protests outside ITT/EDO, resulting in a stop and search of my vehicle under the Terrorism Act 2000 in London in July 2005.

It therefore seems a logical development that the process of criminalising innocent protesters has been extended to secretly storing their data on Crimint, a database about criminal activity. Superintendent David Hartshorn asserts that the police, “in terms of intelligence, have to justify what we are able to keep”. But it would appear that this justification can be pretty flimsy when Hartshorn believes it is reasonable for people like me who have no criminal record to be kept on such databases because we are “seen on a regular basis” at demonstrations.

I have just reread the tiny printed flyer Sussex police rarely give out at demonstrations entitled “Why are you filming me?” Absent from the reasons stated - which it maintains are in compliance with privacy rights under the Human Rights Act - is the transfer of images to Crimint. I look forward to seeing the government account for this in court.


Have Your Say: Police tactics seek to ‘intimidate people and prevent lawful dissent’
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One Response to “Police tactics seek to ‘intimidate people and prevent lawful dissent’”

  1. Hickey Halibert
    Posted: Mar 14th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    Two uniformed police officers stood on either side of a mobile metal detector. No one could enter or leave the building without passing through the metal detector. Around the corner at the other entrance to the building stood an identical metal detector. With two identical policemen attending it. Nervous smiles flickered on the otherwise stern faces of all four officers. They eyed with suspicion the few civilians who stood around smoking outside. One man stood deliberately between the frame of one metal detector, drawing on his cigarette as if in defiance. Crowds of shoppers passed, looking at the provocative scene with a mixture of curiosity and bemusement. The people inside the building sat at the windows like prisoners. The atmosphere was tense.

    Is this a description of what we were told happened in the Soviet Union during the Cold War? No.

    Perhaps Nazi Germany? No.

    It was in Basildon, outside both doors of The Moon on the Square public house at 1pm today, Saturday 28th February 2009.

    No one took photographs. It is now illegal in the UK to take pictures of the police. One supposes that any one who attempted to take a photograph, his or her camera would have been confiscated. They may even have been arrested.

    The official reason for the police being on guard outside the pub is that they were searching for weapons. That explanation is absurd.

    This is why:- A person carrying a knife or gun approaches the pub. They see metal detectors and police:- decide to walk through?

    Absurd.

    So, what is the real reason? Intimidation comes to mind. But why would the police deliberately intimidate the public? Seems crazy to alienate the very public without the co-operation of whom crime prevention cannot possibly succeed?

    But, this is not about normal crime prevention is it?

    Jack Straw, MP for Blackburn, and now Secretary of State for Justice said in a newspaper article on February 27th 2009:- “Our record isn’t perfect, but talk of a police state is daft.”

    Any citizen who passed The Moon on the Square public house today would beg to differ.

    So, what is going on?

    Let’s make an intelligent guess, based on facts. “Police are preparing for a “summer of rage” as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions“ reported in the Guardian on 23rd Feb 2009.

    The police action today is part of a softening up process. The action outside the Moon started at 11am and finished at 4pm. We saw it and were shocked.

    We will see it again and not so shocked. Soon, longer and more often and everywhere. We become used to it.

    “Oh well, that’s the way it is, let’s have a cup of tea.” some might say.

    The ordinary copper does what he is told. So do the police all over the world. The four policemen outside the Moon looked nervous. Why? They don’t know what is going on, they just ‘obey orders’ - where have we heard that before?

    Those poor coppers, like our poor troops who each one is following orders for a rich man to get richer, not fighting for their neighbours or friends, indeed if ordered to fight their own people they would.

    We the mugs of this Nation and a World are gradually awaking from our long sleep. The rich unelected elite are being found out. Found out how they plunder us and our sweet Earth for their own selfish rewards.

    The bankers have been robbing us for years. The elite in government help them. Eton and Harrow, Cambridge and Oxford, funny how all that learning cannot make a just man, some yes. We are beginning to know something our parents never realised. Suspected, but were half asleep. Now that the rich who rule the UK know this awakening is happening to the British people, as it has in some countries in the past, but not the UK, and are preparing to bash us down by the force of our own brothers and sisters who dress up in uniform and prefer themselves to be ordered about instead of an individual soul. Though brave they are, many will testify to their unflinching devotion to the wrong people. Dived and conquer. A very old rule used by many Emperors and Monarchies in the past.

    Basildoneye spoke to a staff person in the Moon by telephone today and they didn’t like what the police were doing. Nor did the customers, nor passes by. The American owned ‘local’ newspaper The Echo had no one to comment and so far have not mentioned the police action on their online site.

    What do the local councillors think? Basildoneye rang one. Unavailable. You ring too.

    Basildoneye supports law and order, supports the police, who we know are just ordinary folk like us. But the rich of the UK don’t give a fig about the coppers just as long as those thousands of mostly good men and woman do their fighting for them.

    In fact the four policemen outside the Moon on the Square looked invalid and they felt it. They will be lied to, they will be used, they as much as us will be victims. They will have to deal with the animosity of the crowd, not their commanders, who ordered this provocative action. If a fight flared up our rulers would no doubt be pleased, because that would prove that we need more metal detectors, more surveillance cameras and tougher police laws.

    What did our forefathers fight and die for if not our freedom.

    If we allow their bravery to go for nothing, then we should hang our heads in shame.

    Jack Straw says that the UK is not a Police State, well we sure saw the beginnings of one in Basildon today.

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