What if the Tottenham Court Road hostage-taker was a Muslim?
On the afternoon of Friday 27th April 2012, a job seeker walked into an office on London’s Tottenham Court Road with a bomb and took a company boss hostage, shouting “I have nothing left to live for!” according to witnesses.
Michael Green, 48, allegedly threatened to blow himself up unless he got a refund from a company that trains lorry-drivers, before proceeding to throw furniture and electronic equipment from the 5th floor of the building. Police arrested him hours later once negotiators had persuaded him to release the hostages and give himself up.
The story alone is shocking enough, but even more extraordinary is the manner in which the State apparatus – the Police in particular – and the mainstream media have represented the incident.
For a start, the Metropolitan Police openly stressed at the outset that this was not a terrorism-related incident and that no counter-terrorism officers were involved. This should raise serious questions about the Police’s definition of ‘terrorism’, considering a special-forces team, an Army bomb disposal unit and the RAF’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare group were all put on standby. Somehow, the self-declared potential suicide bomber, who took several people hostage, was not considered by the Police to be a terrorist.
The media towed the Met Police’s line and the word ‘terror’ was conspicuously absent from their reports. Even the reliably sensationalist national papers, such as the Daily Express, carried no mentions of terrorism. Their bland choice of article headline, ‘Police Quiz Man After Office Siege’, showed uncharacteristic restraint. The incident was notably absent from the front-pages of Saturday’s papers.
In the days since, Green has been revealed to have been a former Parliamentary candidate for the far-right British National Party, yet at no point was he referred to in the media as a ‘domestic extremist’, nor his behaviour portrayed as ‘criminal’. Instead, Green was repeatedly described as a man or a suspect. It seemed that, for once, the media were willing to treat a person as innocent until proven guilty. On occasion, Green was described in the media as mentally unstable, especially after video testimony (below) emerged of Abby Baafi, one of the people Green had allegedly threatened, describing him as such.
Exceptionally, the Guardian, the UK’s leading liberal-left newspaper quoted Abby Baafi but omitted her assessment of Green’s mental state. Perhaps they felt it was inappropriate or unreliable – especially given the lack of evidence Baafi’s was a serious, considered assessment. And yet, the Guardian showed no such circumspection about repeating the Metropolitan Police’s account of the events and giving prominence to it. Is this reasonable? Can the police, in light of everything that has emerged over the past few years, really be considered reliable?
For many journalists, Green’s arrest was only remarkable because he was photographed being led away topless, not because he had threatened to murder people. Indeed, rather than vilify him as a cold-blooded killer, the Daily Mail mocked Green’s disproportionate reaction to failing an exam: “Topless Tottenham Court Road siege suspect ‘demanded a refund from the licence office after he FAILED his HGV driving test’”.
All of which completely ignores any discussion of Green’s actions as a form of political protest. Have we forgotten Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian man who had such difficulty earning a living that he set himself on fire in December 2010 in protest? His action sparking the Tunisian Revolution and the wider Arab Spring. Indeed, the political dynamics of self-immolation were so obvious that the tactic was repeated across the Arab world.
And yet, Michael Green’s actions are not that different from Mohamed Bouazizi’s. Finding work in Britain is hard – the economy is stuck in the longest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s and Green had just failed his lorry driver’s test for a third time, effectively seeing his chances of finding employment vanish.
With this in mind, why then did the British Press and Metropolitan Police ignore the political aspects of this incident, dismissing Green’s actions as if they were hardly a matter of concern – comical and crazy; an incident about mental health, not terror or crime? If terrorism involves political violence, then doesn’t that surely include an aggrieved jobseeker taking a company director hostage?
Let us remember that criminality can include throwing objects out of buildings. When student protestor Edward Woollard threw a fire extinguisher from the roof of the Conservative Party Headquarters in November 2010, or when young people looted shops in the August Riots, the State and the media were quick to condemn that as criminality. So why is Green’s, arguably far more serious, behaviour not being depicted as such?
Had Green been a Muslim, would counter-terrorism officers not have bothered to attend the incident? Had he been a member of an anarchist organisation, would he not have been described as a domestic extremist? Indeed, why aren’t the Police now warning Londoners to be suspicious of unemployed people on the tube?
The fact is, were the police to treat this as a security crisis, they would have had to class millions of people as potential threats. After all, it was the condition of precarious employment that turned Green into a potential suicide bomber, and his ‘profile’ thus clearly applies to the majority of (white) working class people in Britain, especially since his actions are easy for anyone to replicate: get some gas bottles, strap them to your body and demand an employer gives you a job. Yet the government has not made the incident into a crisis. They have not said that mass unemployment is a threat to national security. Instead, the incident has been ridiculed.
On one level, this should cast doubt over Met Chief Bernard Hogan-Howe’s “priority” to counter terrorism during the Olympic games. How can they possibly plan their operations when seemingly almost anyone could ‘do’ terrorism without ‘being’ a terrorist. On another level, this episode reveals an instructive truth: that unemployment, an everyday threat to people’s physical security (i.e. their ability to meet basic needs), is nonetheless not considered by the state to be a threat to national security.
The inescapable conclusion is that it is all too convenient for the state to scare-monger about external demons when a suicide bomber happens to be a young Muslim who says his grievance is the West’s occupation of Iraq. This was the State’s response after Hasib Hussain blew up the No.30 Bus in Tavistock Square, not far from Tottenham Court Road, on 7th July 2005, killing 13 other people.
However, it’s a bit more awkward for the government to do so when the potential suicide bomber is a middle-aged white bloke called Michael Green who wants to be a lorry driver. Best to sweep it under the carpet and dismiss him as a crazy guy who was under a lot of stress; that way we don’t have to reflect on how unemployment in our society can lead to self-destruction, nor do we have to admit that anyone has the potential to be a terrorist.
It’s worth pointing out that Green’s BNP credentials were not revealed by the police but by campaigning group Hope Not Hate. This raises a number of questions about the police’s approach to ‘profiling’: was Green on the suspected terrorist database given that he practised terror? Was he on the domestic extremist database given his extreme views on immigration? If Green had a criminal record, was his BNP membership/electoral candidacy noted? Was the police, at the time of going to press, aware that Green had been a BNP candidate in the 2010 election? If so, why did they not disclose this to the public? Did they not find this relevant? And if so, why? And finally, could the police have done more to stop him?
These questions about profiling probably seem far-fetched and speculative to some readers. But why should Mr. Green, a middle aged White Nationalist from the Home Counties, be treated with less suspicion by the Police than, say, Mr. Hussein, a young Black Muslim with Anarchist views? If police profiling is wrong for one type of citizen, should it not be wrong for all?
If you don’t want to take part in police profiling, take a stand and refuse to give over your details. Sign up to constrain police powers by supporting the Network for Police Monitoring, and come to the next NetPol Conference on May 20th.
Police Announce Olympic Dispersal Zone
On 1st May the Metropolitan Police confirmed that a three month dispersal zone had begun in the Stratford area, which “will specifically cover Stratford Town Centre, including the Magistrates’ Court, the main transport hubs in Stratford and the areas along West Ham Lane commonly known as the West Quadrant”.
Powers under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 to move on groups of people congregating in the zone began on 27 April, exactly three months before the Olympics opening ceremony. The police rather coyly add that at the end of the current period, they will “review the intelligence gathered and will consider making application to Newham Council for a three month extension”, but it is pretty obvious that an extension will happen automatically. Coupled with confirmation that “local residents and businesses will also notice a marked increase in police patrols” supported by the Met’s specialist public order unit CO20 (the Territorial Support Group) and Newham council enforcement officers, this is clearly a clean-up operation in advance of the summer’s Games.
So what does a dispersal zone involve in practice? Section 30 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act says that police officer or Police Community Support Officer has the power to order a group of two or more people to leave the area and, if they don’t live within it, to ban them from returning for up to 24 hours. Refusing to comply with an officer’s direction or not following the rules of the dispersal order can lead to arrest and charge, with a conviction potentially leading to a maximum penalty of three months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of £5000.
In addition, officers have ‘curfew’ powers: young people aged under 16 are effectively prohibited from public spaces within the dispersal zone overnight, from 9pm to 6am, unless they are accompanied by a parent or a responsible adult over 18 years of age. An officer has the power to remove anyone within this age group that they find during these hours to their place of residence, unless there are “reasonable grounds for believing that the person would, if removed to that place, be likely to suffer significant harm.”
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRT) has shown that dispersal orders can have an impact on levels of crime and anti-social behaviour within a designated zone, although they risk displacing crime to the immediately surrounding neighbourhoods. Dispersal powers do, however, tend to have the impact of stigmatising all young people as potential perpetrators of anti-social behaviour, although they are most likely to be its victims:
Dispersal orders potentially criminalise youthful behaviour on the basis of the anxieties that young people congregating in groups may generate among other people. As such, the power is potentially less concerned with the agency of individuals than the assumptions that are made about what they might do.
For many, meeting friends and peers in local public spaces constitutes a fundamental aspect of developing their sense of identity and control, as well as providing space in which to forge their independent capacity to manage risk and danger.
With the Olympics fast approaching, the underlying fear of young people from Newham scaring visitors and upsetting the drive for the ‘perfect Games’ does seem like the major motivation for creating a dispersal zone this early. It is as much about sending what JRT describes as a ‘symbolic message’ – mainly to stay away from public spaces in Stratford. The reality, though, is that this message is unlikely to succeed – many young (and not so young) people are are likely to head towards the area after 27 July, whether they have tickets for Olympic events or not, out of curiosity and excitement generated by the relentless publicity for the Games if nothing else.
However, when coupled with other stop & search and anti-terrorism powers and the huge number of police and private security around Newham over the summer, the dispersal zone is clearly seen by the Met as an important element in the expected lockdown of Stratford for the duration of the Olympics – one that could lead many young people to unexpectedly find themselves in court if they don’t fully understand their rights.
Policing pro-palestinian protest
This video is a brilliant example of what happens when people assert their rights to film the police. The blog piece taken from Inside Left – the Official Anti-Olympics Blog explains what happened next.
I wouldn’t normally blog about work related stuff, but since this video has achieved mini-viral status I thought I’d let people know the story behind it.
After the Israeli air attacks on Gaza in December 2008 / January 2009 the people at my workplace all agreed that we should use our window on Fawcett Road to show our outrage – and our solidarity with the Palestinian people. In the grand scheme of things it’s not exactly the greatest act of resistance, but no matter how small a gesture, it felt that we were at least doing something.
The window remained unchanged from the picture above until May 2010 when Israeli commandos boarded a flotilla of ships carrying aid to Palestine, gunning down nine activists in the process. At that point we added the words “ISRAEL = TERROR STATE” at the bottom of the window display. It wasn’t long before we had a visit from the local Community Wardens – old bill wannabes – demanding to know when we planned on removing the protest as they feared it might be contentious. We explained, patiently and at great length, that this was a legitimate political comment, proven by recent Israeli actions. We assured them that it was in no way a comment on a particular faith and pointed out that a number of us had spent years actively fighting racism and fascism in the city. Not surprisingly we refused to remove either the flags or the words from the window.
By September we were visited by another police officer – the one in the video – who opened his “little chat” with the fantastic “I have to acknowledge that my knowledge of this is… quite limited”! Indeed. Perhaps this explains why he didn’t feel like sticking around to debate the issue. His comment that they had received two complaints, “One from a Jewish woman, and one from a member of the public” was as absurd as it was, I believe, untrue. Can you be a Jewish woman and not a member of the public?
The whole sorry saga came to a head last year when two uniformed officers came to our door, threatening us with arrest unless we took down the ‘offensive’ material. They claimed that we were in contravention of section 4a of the 1986 Public Order Act – intentionally causing alarm, distress and harassment (racially aggravated). We shut the door in their face, saying that we would think about it. As the two officers stood outside talking about how they would “break the door down” (because, they said, “the offence is on the inside”), we contacted the local Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and got some legal advice. Eventually the case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service who said that there was no case! According to the sergeant in charge of the ‘investigation’ they had received a complaint from a local (unnamed) councillor who objected to our window! The funniest part was that the sergeant seemed thoroughly pissed off that he was being played by a politician.
Nobody has ever knocked our door to complain about the window, though plenty of people have stopped to have their picture taken next to it. On one occasion a young man asked me to come outside and talk to his family about what had motivated us to demonstrate in such a way. He was origianlly from the West Bank, though had come to the UK to study in London. For the first time he had managed to get his family across to this country and they had, on a whim, driven to Portsmouth, just to see the sea. As we talked I looked at his mother, tears rolling down her face. In her seventies she had travelled thousands of miles from home and here, in the middle of wherever, was a flag proudly proclaiming solidarity with the Palestinians. It was an immensely moving experience.
It says a lot that, despite support from successive American administrations, the wider international community and the right wing media, Zionists feel so threatened by a single protest in a single window in sleepy Portsmouth. To this day we still get the occasional visit from the police trying to throw their weight around. But the protest remains. FREE PALESTINE!
Met Olympics briefing – they came to us
by Matt Salusbury from London Freelance
POLICING the Olympics, and how this affects journalists, was the subject of a briefing by Acting Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Chris Allison and Commander Bob Broadhurst. NUJ General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet introduced them.
Commander Broadhurst frequently acts as “Gold” (senior) commander for public order operations in London, and will be for the Olympic operation. Allison is “Gold for the whole lot”. (They showed a schematic diagram of the Met command structure for the Olympics, which also included a “Bronze” commander for “Media.”)
The briefing, on 11 April, was organised by NUJ London Freelance Branch and the NUJ Freelance Office, and was the result of the Met contacting the NUJ asking to come to brief journalists. This is a testament to the effectiveness of years of work Freelance Officer John Toner has put in towards ensuring better treatment of journalist who encounter the police in the course of their work.
The Assistant Commissioner said the Olympics is the Met’s “biggest-ever policing operation”, and the longest, lasting 68 days from start to finish. Olympic test events went ahead during August’s riots, uninterrupted: the simulated beach volleyball started only an hour late.
Your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in
Both officers emphasised, that just because you’ve got a Press Card, that doesn’t mean you can get into the sporting events unless you’ ve got accreditation for them from LOCOG or another Olympic body. The Commander reminded journalists that the Met “are not running this event”. Access to the events themselves is “Locog’s gig”: you can’t get into the Olympic Park or through the fence all the way round it unless you have accreditation as well as a Press Card. And Broadhurst warned that when it comes to “breaching venue security, the Press do not have immunity from prosecution.” (For the scandal of Olympic accreditation see here.)
The police will be in considerable force outside the Olympic venues, but, as with football matches currently, there will be “very minimal policing presence inside… mostly LOCOG do security” including bag searches.
Freelance photographer David Hoffman asked about “private security operatives making up the law as they go along,” and was told that LOCOG security (G4S) are “getting training to which Met contributed, ” which includes “dealing with media. ” (But see here for what happened when five photographers tried to take pictures just outside the Olympic perimeter soon afterwards.)
NUJ London Photographers Branch chair Jess Hurd asked if Olympic security would be “given any extra powers.” Chris Allison said they have no extra powers under the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 (the special law for the Olympics) but “security, G4S plus military, volunteers… they have the same powers as anybody when you go onto private property.”.
Other opportunities
For the vast majority of journalists unable to access Olympic venues, there’s still plenty to cover. The progress of the Olympic torch will end with “Olympic celebrations almost every night,” attended by 5000 to 20,000 people, with post-torch parties on open spaces in the immediate run-up to the Games as it passes through the various London boroughs. There is also what the Assistant Commissioner described as “the small issue of Notting Hill carnival in the middle of it”. (Expect intensive policing of these “parallel events”: the Met see these as a potential terrorism “soft-target” compared to the much harder-to-enter sporting events.)
Police and journalists, reporting in the streets
What sort of encounters can journalists expect with the cops around the Games? Broadhurst listed the “roles” of the police during the Olympics as to “prevent crime; keep the peace; respond to incidents. ” He assured his audience that “we are not editors” and that he would brief his officers not to hassle the “40,000 non-accredited media reporting on London” expected during the Games.
There will be an expected 10,000 Met officers on the streets of London during the Games, with the Met relying on “mutual aid” in the form of between “two an three thousand” officers from other police forces, including “colleagues from out of London, unused to the urban environment,” of whom Broadhurst said “we remind them” about the Press Card.
Broadhurst anticipates a risk that “officers slip below the standard we expect of them” during such long deployments. It may prove hard to keep these out-of-town officers “motivated for so long, especially when they realise they can’t go into the (Olympic) venue” and they’re stuck with “policing Hackney, in the glare of publicity.” Officers would, he assured, be continually reminded of such “reputational issues”.
Official protesters of the London Olympics
What sort of policing can those who report on the protest beat expect? The third of four headings in the Met’s Olympic threat assessment is “public protest and domestic extremist”. In the Met’s thinking, “people” could “use the Games as a platform for protest”, for which they’d have a “four billion audience.” Said Broadhurst, “anything can happen anywhere in the world and there will be a protest within 10 minutes in London.”
Chris Allison didn’t sound too bothered by the Occupy protest then going on in Leyton Marshes, which he described as a protest not about the Olympics but about one specific Olympics venue.
There has been an Olympic Intelligence Centre in place for two years now, which Allison said is there to “pull together stuff from other intelligence agencies” and “will get bigger. ” He told me that this Centre wouldn’t gather its own intelligence or have its own database with data on individual protesters, and would wind down once the Games had left town.
Touts
Other information at the briefing included the Met’s operations against ticket touts and online Olympic ticket scam artists. There are extra powers for use against touts under the “Olympic Act” – for “unauthorised sales, we will arrest, we already are, ” and the Act has raised maximum fines for touts from £5000 to £20,000. The Assistant Commissioner says the Met hasn’t found as many “false websites as we expected there to be” offering Olympic tickets, and they are taking down those they find. “If you have found a final ticket for the men’s 100 meters plus hospitality suite for around £56, you are being had, ” advises Allison.
Sussex police use pepper spray in Brighton protests.
Pepper spray is a highly potent incapacitant chemical which is causes temporary blindness and severe pain. The government has said the weapon is ‘not designed for crowd control technology’ and ACPO guidelines state that its use in public order situations is an option ‘of last resort’. Sussex police however, appear to consider themselves above such rules and guidelines. They have used pepper spray on demonstrations at least four times in the last four years. The latest incident occurred last Sunday, when hundreds of Brighton people turned out to make a stand against the right wing nationalist ‘March for England’.
Hundreds of Brighton people had turned out to made a stand against the right-wing, nationalist March for England (MfE), an event strongly associated with the anti-Islamic English Defence League. Around a hundred MfE marchers were shepherded by police through the large opposing crowd, only to be halted by 400 anti-fascists who stood in the street and refused to let them pass. Police then used horses and baton charges as well as pepper spray in their attempts to force people out of the way and push the march through. Ultimately they were forced to cut short the March for England and redirect it away from the planned route. Sussex police have conceded that pepper spray was used on the demonstrators, ‘in isolated instances’.
Sussex police have a considerable track record in their use of pepper spray against demonstrators. In June 2008 police used pepper spray, as well as batons and dogs against anti-arms trade protesters attempting to protest at the EDO factory in Brighton. Pepper spray was also used at a subsequent demonstration at the plant, in October 2008.
In 2010, a report by Sussex academics on student demonstrations in Brighton concluded that the police had used unjustified and disproportionate force against demonstrators, many of whom were of school age, including threatening the use of pepper spray. Last year pepper spray was used during a demonstration against the Sussex fox hunt, although the disturbances were not apparently sufficient to prompt any arrests.
Pepper spray, or PAVA (pelargonic acid vanillylamide), is a chemical incapacitant. It is delivered as a liquid spray, and it is aimed at the eyes, causing closure and temporary loss of sight as well as severe pain that can last for around 30 minutes. It has also been known to cause respiratory problems.
Sussex police pioneered the use of PAVA in 2000 / 2001 as an alternative to CS, after safety questions were raised. A number of police forces have now followed suit, although others have opted to continue their use of CS. Although the Home Office have consistently maintained incapacitant sprays to be safe, there are continuing concerns over the safety and long-term effects of both CS and PAVA. Last year Jacob Michael died after pepper spray was used to restrain him.
Pepper spray is supposed to be a weapon of ‘last resort’ in public order situations, to be used only in exceptional situations. Minister of State Lord Henley stated in a response to a parliamentary question just last month that;
“CS and pelargonic acid vanillylamide (PAVA) incapacitants are approved for police use in the UK. These are in the form of a handheld spray for use by police officers and are not designed for use as a crowd-control technology.”
ACPO’s manual of guidance on keeping the peace states that the use of incapacitant spray to disperse a ‘riotous assembly’ should be authorised at Chief Constable or Assistant Chief Constable / Commander level, and must be used in public order situations only “as a last resort, where loss of life, serious injury and widespread damage are likely”. While individual police officers also have the right to use incapacitant spray when necessary to protect themselves and colleagues, that use must be fully justified.
According to an eye-witness in Brighton on Sunday, while there was no denying that the anti-fascist protesters were having a significant impact on the ability of the March for England to make its way through Brighton, pepper spray was being used in circumstances where there was no serious threat of loss of life, serious injury or widespread damage.
“Pepper spray was being used at close range, when people were essentially just obstructing the route of the march. Sure, there was some pushing and shoving, but no-one had weapons, and the police were clearly not in any physical danger”.
There were reports of eggs and flour being thrown at the March for England, and later of bottles being thrown towards police lines. While the police may point to the throwing of bottles as justification for the use of pepper spray, eye-witnesses maintain that this occurred some time after pepper spray was deployed.
Pepper spray and CS were originally introduced as an intermediate option between the baton and firearms. But what was intended as a highly prescribed piece of technology has since become a routine mechanism for restraint and crowd control.
Once again, we are seeing significant evidence of ‘mission creep’ in the police use of dangerous weapons. With such repeated use over the last few years, the use of pepper spray by Sussex police appears to have become ‘normalised’, perceived as an acceptable option for use against protesters and in any public order scenario. Such normalisation may result in other forces following suit, and a marked increase across the UK in the use of chemical weapons in protest situations.
Serious questions need to be asked about the use of pepper spray at demonstrations. Otherwise protesters may be well advised to go to protests armed not only with face coverings and hard hats, but also with eye masks and swimming goggles.
Anti-Terror Police Powers Re-Emerge in Time For Olympics
So what new police powers that restrict people’s freedom of movement can we expect during the Olympics this summer? The answer lies in the ironically titled “Protection of Freedoms Bill”, which was introduced in February 2011 to ‘restore freedoms and civil liberties through the abolition of identity cards and unnecessary laws’. The Bill includes a revision of anti-terrorism stop and search powers that had been abused so routinely that the European Court of Human Rights ruled they were illegal in January 2010. What is strange is the government plans to hang onto a hastily cobbled-together interim power that, according to statistics, is never used.
The contentious anti-terrorism stop and search powers were under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allowed police officers to stop and search pedestrians and vehicles without needing any suspicion. As a result of the European Court’s ruling, the Home Secretary issued a remedial order in May 2011 under the Human Rights Act, which repealed immediately sections 44 to 47 of the 2000 Act and introduced a new section 47A, which was supposed to be more more targeted, proportionate and relate only to a specific area or place.
The only difference, however, was that authorisation to use section 47A powers required a senior officer to “reasonably suspect that an act of terrorism will take place” and considers that “(i) the authorisation is necessary to prevent such an act; (ii) the specified area or place is no greater than is necessary to prevent such an act; and (iii) the duration of the authorisation is no longer than is necessary to prevent such an act.” After that, there was very little real change: section 47A still did not require an police officer to have reasonable suspicion that a person was a likely terrorist. The remedial order still said that powers “may be exercised whether or not the constable reasonably suspects that there is such evidence”.
Stop and search in the Protection of Freedoms Bill is covered under sections 58 to 63 of the draft legislation, which is currently working its way through Parliament. Subject to any amendments, its wording is currently identical to the existing section 47A powers. In this sense it is not ‘new’, but what is interesting is that last month, a Home Office Statistical Bulletin [PDF] revealed that police have ceased using anti-terrorism stop and search powers completely. From April to September 2011, a period that included a royal wedding and a host of different street protests, there was not a single section 47A search. This seems to back up the argument made by many of us that separate anti-terrorism stop and search powers are completely unnecessary. So why hang on to section 47A in the name of ‘protecting freedom’?
One answer is likely to be intense lobbying from senior levels of the police to keep these powers and reintroduce them at a time when the stain of their misuse can be wiped away. As we have seen over the last six months, the Olympics has provided an ideal opportunity for demanding ever greater security provisions that are likely to turn east London into a semi-militarised zone. There seems little doubt that places like Stratford will be designated as specific areas where there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ – the whole Olympics security industry has been telling us an attempted attack on the Games is almost inevitable. The Protection of Freedoms Bill will become law just before the start of the Olympics and it is therefore highly likely that anti-terrorism stop and search ‘necessary to prevent’ a potential outrage will return with a vengeance over the summer. In an area like Newham, it is obvious who the most likely candidates for such stops and searches are likely to be, I think it is telling that the local police, when pressed by Newham Monitoring Project recently to explain the likely impact of the Olympics on the disproportionate use of all the different stop and search powers on black and Asian residents, were so reluctant to respond.
This is one of those Olympics legacies. Powers that the police were briefly forced to stop using because of the controversy around their misuse – powers that the last 12 months suggest weren’t that important in the first place – start to make a reappearance under the guise of unique circumstances. What these powers replace is essentially little different from what preceded them, but they emerge refreshed and reinvigorated from the cleansing influence of a ‘successful Olympic security operation’. In a couple of years, civil rights campaigners are back complaining that powers supposedly targeting ‘terrorists’ are being used excessively against ordinary citizens.
And all this happens, with typical British hypocrisy, under the guise of ‘Protection of Freedoms’. No wonder efforts to restrain the growth of more and more unnecessary police powers often feels like a war of attrition.
‘Total policing’ at London 2012 is a recipe for more racial discrimination
By Estelle du Boulay, Newham Monitoring Project
Stop and search flashmob
These brilliant urban dancers flash mobbed Trafalgar Square and Grosvenor Square on Saturday 31 March 2012 as part of the Stopwatch campaign against discrimination in stop and search.
As they rightly point out, black people are stopped and searched at up to 7 times the rate of white people. Asian people are stopped 2.2 times the rate of white people.
Netpol’s kettle the powers of the police campaign seeks an end to ‘section 60′ stop and searches, a blanket power that allows police to search who they like without any need for individual suspicion or justification. It is a power that is open to abuse, and which is frequently used to target black and Asian communities.
Detainee records racist abuse by police.
“You’ll always be a nigger”, said PC Macfarlane to the young black man held in handcuffs in the back of his van. “That’s your problem.”
Another police officer verbally abused the man, and bragged happily that he had strangled him to stop him ‘kicking out’, although the man in detention was already restrained and in handcuffs. All the officers present appeared to be quite happy with the behaviour of thier colleagues. Not one of them intervened or objected, and most probably they didnt think they had a problem. A black man, under arrest, making allegations of racist abuse against a police officer, was never likely to be taken seriously.
But this time their victim was able to record the conversation on the mobile phone that was still in his pocket. He also had the the determination to see this through to the end, and the good sense to get support and practical advice from the Newham Monitoring Project. Many people are fearful of the potential consequences of standing up to the police, and it is far from an easy thing to do. What this man did took courage.
Even with the hard evidence of the phone recording, it still looks like it will be a struggle to get any real action taken. The CPS decided not to press charges against PC Macfarlane or any of the officers involved. This changed only after the young man’s legal representatives, Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, threatened a judicial review of their decision. The CPS have now said that “all of the evidence should be reconsidered” and “a fresh decision taken”.
Filming or recording the police is becoming an increasingly popular thing for young people to do, and it has to be one of the best defences young people have against malpractice and discrimination. It is not without risks – there have been times when the police have resorted to threats and even violence to stop people filming them. But it looks increasingly that this is what it will take to end this sort of unacceptable police behaviour.
Europol criticised for conflating ‘terrorism’ and protest activism.
Andrej Hunko, German MP and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has spoken out agaisnt what he sees as the criminalisation of international or cross border activist networks.
According to minutes of a meeting of the Council Working Party on “Terrorism”, Europol is holding a conference on “anarchism” on 25 April. The focus of the conference is said to be on countering ”left-wing extremism and terrorism” and alleged ‘attacks on rail transportations”. The agenda apparently also flags up a discussion on the ’no border’ network.
Andrej Hunko stated:
“I am utterly opposed to the criminalisation of international activists.
As was the case with successful summit protests, international left-wing networking is criminalised. Last year, the Federal Ministry of the Interior used the sending of “letter bombs” to justify the international exchange of undercover police agents on the occasion of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.
According to the Federal Government, the conference on “anarchism” is a workshop for delegates from those countries that participate in Europol’s Dolphin analysis work files. These feature dossiers on individuals and objects concerning “extremist” and “terrorist” activities. The inclusion of left-wing activism in this category serves merely to defame left-wing activists and organisations.
This is particularly the case with regard to Europol’s interest in the no border network, whose fight against racism and militarisation on the external borders of the EU is absolutely essential in the EU Member States.
I therefore call upon the Federal Government to actively oppose the equalisation of left-wing activism with “terrorism” and “extremism”.
I also demand full information about contributions made to the conference by the police forces of EU Member States. International left-wing movements must be treated with respect and appreciation.”
