New Report Documents ‘Total Policing’ Clampdown on Freedom to Protest

[Drawn from Netpol’s own release]

A detailed new report launched today by the Net­work for Police Mon­it­or­ing (Net­pol) high­lights how prom­ises made by the police to ‘adapt to protest’ after 2009′s G20 demon­stra­tions in Lon­don have been for­got­ten in a remark­ably short space of time and a far more intol­er­ant ‘total poli­cing’ style response to pro­test­ers has developed in the UK.

The report, which cov­ers a four­teen month period from late 2010 to the end of 2011, paints a bleak pic­ture of the state of the free­dom to protest in the UK. It doc­u­ments how the tac­tic of con­tain­ment known as ‘ket­tling’, the use of solid steel bar­ri­ers to restrict the move­ment of pro­test­ers, the intrus­ive and excess­ive use of stop & search and data gath­er­ing, and the pre-​emptive arrests of people who have com­mit­ted no crime, have com­bined to enable an effect­ive clamp-​down on almost all forms of pop­u­lar street-​level dissent.

The High Court last week ruled that the use of pre-​emptive arrests in advance of the royal wed­ding in 2011 was law­ful but, from the exper­i­ences of act­iv­ists gathered by Net­Pol, the report argues that this tac­tic is ‘one of the most dis­turb­ing aspects of the poli­cing of protest’. Squats and protest sites were raided by police and poten­tial pro­test­ers were roun­ded up and arres­ted. This includ­ing ten people who were car­ry­ing repub­lican plac­ards and a group who had dressed up to attend a ‘zom­bie wed­ding’, who were arres­ted while sit­ting in a café drink­ing coffee.

The report is also crit­ical of the use of ‘sec­tion 60’ stop and searches, which require no ‘reas­on­able sus­pi­cion’ and have been dis­pro­por­tion­ately tar­geted at young people tak­ing part in protests. This group has also faced arrest for ‘wear­ing dark cloth­ing’, for ‘look­ing like an anarch­ist’, and in some cases under eight­een year olds have been threatened with being taken into ‘police pro­tec­tion’ if they par­ti­cip­ated in demonstrations.

NetPol’s research also high­lights the invas­ive but routine use of police data gath­er­ing tac­tics, which oblige pro­test­ers to stand and pose in front of police cam­era teams and to provide their per­sonal details. The report gives evid­ence of an increas­ing mis­use of anti-​social beha­viour legis­la­tion to force pro­test­ers to provide a name and address under threat of arrest. Net­Pol believes polit­ical protest should not be equated with anti-​social beha­viour, and that the use of such powers against demon­strat­ors should end.

Each one of these meas­ures restricts and deters legit­im­ate protest, but taken together these meas­ures allow the police to impose a level of deterrence, intim­id­a­tion and con­trol that makes tak­ing part in legit­im­ate protest a daunt­ing and often fright­en­ing experience.

Val Swain, com­ment­ing on the report’s launch on behalf of Net­Pol, said:

“The evid­ence we have gathered has been pub­lished just as news emerges of fur­ther pre-​emptive arrests and other restric­tions on the free­dom to protest tak­ing place in advance of this summer’s Lon­don Olympics. With an appar­ent will­ing­ness by the courts to defend any actions by the police against pro­test­ers, we fear that dis­sent­ing voices face an even harsher clamp-​down in the weeks to come.”

Source: net​pol​.org

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