Over at Centre Right Graeme Archer has posted a practical set of proposals for bringing the police under control (hat-tip Sunny):
All police officers at public demonstration must keep their ID visible at all times. No police officers at public events should ever be dressed like a terrorist thug. No balaclavas. Such dress is ridiculous when the officers concerned are upholding public order, not carrying out surveillance. Anti-Terrorism must be given a seperate directorate to the metropolitan police duties. Then the latter can be devolved properly to the Mayor and to the borough police authorities. This confusion over who can sack coppers is ridiculous. I vote for the Mayor. I want the Mayor to be able to sack Met leaders who fail. Borough commanders should be answerable to a directly elected borough police "sherriff" and be sackable by that elected representative. ACPO should be abolished. It's a money-making firm that spends its spare time cheer-leading for the authoritarian wing of the Labour Party. Just as the storage of DNA from wholly innocent citizens is an outrage, so is the routine video-ing of members of the public by police officers. This must stop. In contrast, members of the public must never be prevented from recording the activities of police officers.
Looks like a strong list to me and good to see the supportive comments that follow. To this list I'd add:
1. An end to the practice of “kettling” peaceful protesters as a tactic to deal with demonstrations where a “breach of the peace” is suspected. The practice is provocative, counter-productive and almost certainly a violation of human rights.
2. An end to the use of catch-all anti-terror powers to harass and intimidate protesters.
What do OK readers make of the list? Is there anything you'd add?
Comments
There should be no pre-emtive strikes to arrest, or intimidate people who may, or may not be about to protest.
Law-abiding members of the public should be free to join or leave policed demonstrations at any time.
Yup, that & the additions from Ivor & Oli.
The given ideas are all excellent. I especially approve of abolishing ACPO.
I suggest the idea of locally elected chief constables.
Centre Right actually pleasantly surprised me yesterday. I would favour those measures, but something a bit more substantive is required. My own socialist take on it is here.
Guy,
I may just be a dumb American but you know me quite well so you know I'm generally on your side of any political discussion. However..I just wanted to point out a few things about these suggested changes in police procedure that my be problematic ie: the reasons why the police operate in this fashion....at least here in the states, but I'm sure in the UK too.
1. The reason police don't display ID with their names and frequently wear balaclavas is because individual police officers and their families have been targeted in the past by activist organizations with harassment and threats. Hey, maybe they deserved it...but the bottom line seems to be, they'll be able to use this previous behaviour as a reason to keep these procedures in place. Even the perception of police officer's wives and children being threatened by left wing crazies always seems to play out well for the police, even if it's not actually occurring.
2. The reason the police have taken to videotaping protests to my knowledge stems from a number of lawsuits brought against police organizations in the US where individual protesters sued a police department for injuries sustained during a protest. Granted...I'm not naive enough to think that they also don't do this to identify the leaders of activist organizations and intimidate the protesters...but this is the reason they generally give for videotaping police action during protests. Interestingly they are generally very opposed to the actual protesters also videotaping the police which I think is absurd. I remember watching a tape of a protest in Seattle a few years ago where the police had multiple officers videotaping the demonstration...whilst they forcibly confiscated cameras from a number of the protesters. This needs to stop.
I also totally agree that the tactics employed to counter terrorism threats need to be separated from those used when dealing with large groups of people demonstrating lawfully. And the tactic of "kettling" protesters is one of the most provocative things they can do to incite the crowd. This often creates a situation where thousands of people have assembled to express their grievances to an individual, an organization or their government and the police have essentially confined them a few blocks from the place where they can accomplish this objective. This is a recipe for trouble.
@ Ivor and Oli - agreed. Good additions.
@ BA Baracus - agree with this too. More democratic control of policing can only be a good thing in my view.
@ Dan - Thanks for your comments! As far as I know there is already a requirement in the UK that police display their ID badges at public order events like protests, so those officers that didn't have them displayed may be subject to disciplinary proceedings. If it isn't in fact already a requirement, I'd find it quite astonishing. Ensuring officers are identifiable protects the important principle of police accountability. If officers can't be identified they can act with almost total impunity (as many of them seem to have done at the G20). I understand there may be fears that individual officers and their families may be subject to reprisals at a later date (though I've never heard of any such thing happening in this country myself, and if it did you can be sure it would make the news). But if we accept this reasoning then surely we'd have to extend it to all forms of policing. Indeed you'd expect officers involved in policing violent criminals to be far more vulnerable to reprisals than those policing protests. At the end of the day, police officers are public servants and should be accountable for their actions. The small threat of reprisals is one of the risks they take with the job.
On your second point, I'm sure that is one of the reasons but I think the main stated reason that police film protests is to identify violent individuals and prosecute them at a later date. The issue I have with it is that they film everyone and it is done in such a way as to intimidate peaceful protesters. I've been on demos where there's been no hint of trouble at all and the forward intelligence teams are there in your face with their cameras. It's very unnerving, especially when you know your details are likely to end up on the police's central criminal intelligence database to be matched with other protests you've been on as the police build up profiles of all protesters, peaceful and non-peaceful alike.(see here for the details:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/06/police-surveillance-protesters-journalists-climate-kingsnorth
What purpose can this possibly serve? Clearly the function it serves is to intimidate and shut down protest, prejudicing the presumption of innocence of thousands of activists in the process. It's very interesting that all the criticism of the police over here in recent weeks is a result of the police themselves being filmed and subject to surveillance - having the tables turned on them, so to speak. They don't like it one bit and I expect that in the future they'll try and exploit a recent law that makes it a crime to take pictures of the police that may be useful for the "purposes of terrorism" (ie any pictures of the police) so the same thing doesn't happen again!
Very good article on why the police need to be identifiable by Ken Macdonald the former Director of Public Prosecutions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/17/police-tactics-protests-ken-macdonald
This includes wearing ID badges, but also not wearing balaclavas as Macdonald says.
In general they seem to be patently obvious.
Unlike others, I am not that surprised that Centre-Right should come up with these ideas. Not wanting any arguments, but right = authoritarian policing is an annoying stereotype sometimes.
A couple of late suggestions:
1) Police officers who take no action on witnessing their colleagues' unprofessional behaviour should be disciplined.
2) A 'shop a cop' phone line for police officers to report colleagues' behaviour that falls below professional standards.
3) TSG officers who have been disciplined for unprofessional behaviour should be forced to wear pink uniforms.
The Police should be directly elected by the public they serve. We must stop political gangs forming between different groups of public servants such as the Police, MP's and local government officials and all others on the public payroll. If they are on the public payroll and therefore paid by us, they must be elected by us.
We should also outlaw the Masons. How has it come to pass that a secret society iis allowed to run the country?
Give the Police the statutory duty to investigate mal/misfeasance.
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