I haven't yet had a chance to read Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary's report on the policing of protest in light of the G20 which was released today. There's some good analysis on the Guardian website and by Stuart White on NextLeft. It seems that Denis O'Conor, the chief inspector of constabulary, has made some pretty serious criticisms saying that the current approach is "inadequate"and needs to change in response to new circumstances, paying far greater regard to human rights obligations.
The report seems to recognise the distinction between a protest being "lawful" and a protest being "peaceful" in apparent acknowledgement that unlawful activity by protesters isn't sufficient justification to shut down a peaceful protest. The report stops short of calling for an end to the vicious practice of "kettling" protesters but it does recommend a more flexible approach in applying cordons to let peaceful protesters and passers by leave and criticises Met commanders at the G20 for being unaware of their human rights obligations when they kettled thousands of protesters near the Bank of England.
The Met have apparently accepted the report's recommendations and launched an urgent review of training and tactics at protests. Campaigners interested in securing the right to protest will aim to keep the Met true to their word (hopefully the rumours of the Metropolitan Police Authority, the body which scrutinises the Met and is open to the public, not meeting this month due to "lack of business" aren't true) and continue to ask serious questions about the circumstances under which kettles can be imposed on protesters (the report doesn't address this enough, according to Stuart). I'll post more on this and on last night's interesting Panorama documentary on protest policing (watch it on BBCiPlayer) later.
