Archive

Tag Archives: Police

An account and warning to all those who may find themsleves in a room with the Met Comissioner

January 19, 2012
Politics
1 Comment

Hogan-Howe

It is not often that you get to be in the same room as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service (unless you are a politician or other bureaucrat). Not least one where the Commissioner is ready to engage in a debate with you. My meeting with Bernard Hogan-Howe at the London School of Economics’ debate on ‘Total Policing’ on Monday night was no different to this. Despite claiming on numerous occasions to be willing to ‘debate’ the intricacies of his policing policy with the public, he dismally failed to do this throughout the entire session. But what legitimacy is there in the Commissioner debating with the public in any case?

In suggesting that he can debate with us he assumed an antagonistic position where the public must convince him to not carry on with whatever draconian policing tactic he feels is tenable. The Metropolitan Police Service has now officially come under the control of the ‘democratically’ elected London Mayor, yet Hogan-Howe does not see himself in any way democratically accountable to the public, but rather in a position where he is able to debate with them. This of course assumes that democracy as we face it is in any way about accountability, that our police do in fact police by consent and that the invitation to debate is in any way genuine. All of these things we are told to take as fact. I am under no illusion that this is the case.

Unfortunately, the facts were far from what Mr Hogan-Howe was interested in. When asked about why the figures for section 60 (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act) stops and searches showed black people were thirty times more likely to be searched, he admitted that he was unable to provide an explanation. This is not a new issue and it is clearly something he has been questioned on previously, but perhaps the Commissioner saw it as so inconsequential that it didn’t warrant any thought – leaving him unprepared when challenged on it.

Fortunately, a fair number of questions from the audience continued to be challenging from here on in, but often left the Commissioner, a man supposedly at the top of his profession, unable to provide adequate answers beyond vapid filibustering and occasional invitations to agree to disagree. After waiting through several rounds of questioning and having to stand and indicate vigorously to the chair that perhaps he should get the final question, an audience member who identified himself as Liam, was able to ask the Commissioner the following question:

“Could you just explain to me why you’ve undertaken this strange exercise of reifying abstracts such as ‘crime’? For example your ‘War on Crime’ rehtoric that you like to wheel out. Is this an attempt to abstract away from criminality within your own police force, such as the 333 deaths in police custody in the last 13 years? I’m sorry if I got this figure wrong because it has increased since the last time it was last reported.”

In true form, Hogan-Howe was unable to grasp the very concept of the question and seemed positively happy to jump straight in to questioning the figure quoted. Unfortunately, the figure is not a ‘nonsense’ as he put it, but rather the very brutal truth from the IPCC . Not only did he dismiss the figure out of hand however, but he also admitted that he was unable to provide an alternative one.

Again, it is very clear why the Commissioner was unable to provide an alternative figure and explanation but dismissed the questioners. It is because he simply does not care. The policing that he is concerned with is based on a normative view which he hopes to see achieved. The right to protest (which another questioner tackled him on), victims of police brutality and facing up to the realities of crime are not even on the periphery of this man who saw it as some sort of victory that the numbers of people incarcerated had doubled to over 80,000 in what is a massively over crowded prison system. Ironically, for a man who is so ready to interrogate figures, it seems he has taken this one as some sort of invitation to see even more people locked up, without the foresight to consider the inevitable result.

Despite the complaints of those in the audience who were somewhat more favourable towards the Commissioners, football game inspired, ‘Total Policing’ campaign, Hogan-Howe was given ample chance to explain himself and perhaps even engage in the debate that he was so ready to have. Yet through a mixture of both ineptitude and marketing spiel he managed to leave the entire event devoid of any substance.

Having been offered his chance, it is my view that he should only ever be addressed in chants of ‘No Justice, No Peace, Fuck the Police’ as many of the audience did as he exited the stage. The Commissioner indicated he would repeat the futile excercise monthly in different parts of London; don’t waste a journey to spend an evening being patronized by him. You won’t change the Met or even Bernard Hogan-Howe’s opinion by subjecting yourself to this.

A video of the full event can be found here: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=1303

The fear of the riot

August 10, 2011
Politics
Leave a Comment

As the riots reached more and more town centres, including my own, those previously apathetic woke in rage and fear at burning buildings, smashed windows and looted shops. When a riot is around the corner it is hard not to be fearful whatever your political view point. Yet, anger and condemnation will not get us anywhere in the next few days.

These riots were not ‘mindless’, as they had been described time and time again by media commentators. They are symptomatic of wounded communities that never truly recover from the last disaster. Whilst the individual motives of those involved may not have been that of a political message, there is always a politics behind these things, and as some have pointed out there has been a long history of socio-economic problems in many of the communities that have flared up in anger; a poignant backdrop to the disturbances that has been ignored for too long.

The Arab spring revolution was sparked by the death of a single Tunisian street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, after sustained attacks on his livelihood by local officials he took his life in order have a voice. Riots, looting and wide spread civil disobedience quickly spread throughout the Arab world and was met with international solidarity. People were finally making a stand for true democracy and this country offered both military and diplomatic support to revolutionaries all over the Middle East. Yet, as the riots moved closer and closer to home through Greece, Spain and now our own streets, it has been all too easy to let fear and shock stop us from making the same judgements that we have again and again the last few months; austerity did not work there and it certainly isn’t working here.

In fact, there is little difference between this scene filmed earlier this year in Egypt and this scene filmed in Brixton on Sunday evening. Even more similar are the root causes. Austerity and inequality are issues that would be recognised in Sidi Bouzid, Bouazizi’s home town, just as they would in Tottenham and, though months apart, both communities have come to the same realisation: if the world shan’t listen, we must give them something to listen to.

One young man from Tottenham asked an ITV journalist ‘You wouldn’t be talking to me now if I didn’t riot, would you?’ The sad truth is that the journalist certainly wouldn’t be. Nor would the police or the IPCC, and for that fact, neither would his democratic representatives in parliament. Talking to disenfranchised communities in Tottenham, Enfield, Hackney, Peckham, Ealing and Croydon is something that stopped many decades ago as MPs and the police have been less and less accountable. Something that was increasingly obvious as journalist after journalist expressed their shock at how ‘affluent’ Ealing could see rioting, ignoring the poverty many of its residents live in only minutes from the centre.

But as people realised they did’t have to wait for those in power to listen to them, community organising took over. Through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, people were able to play their role in the healing process and organise when and where to meet to clean up after the nights of rioting.

Just as Egyptian’s formed groups to take over where the government had left them during their revolution, many in the UK , still angry that much of the government remained on holiday through the weekend,took to their streets to claim back the concept of ‘community’. No longer is it acceptable that someone else will help the neighbours clear up the glass, or that the scared old lady is left on her own. No longer is it acceptable that our press, politicians and police have been unaccountable for far too long. No longer is it acceptable to not be political. Communities are instead turning fear into positive action.

An anarchist is no terrorist

August 1, 2011
Politics
Leave a Comment

What has become known as the ‘student movement’ was born out of the protests over tuition fees last year. The lasting legacy of these protests was not a u-turn from government in response to a mass of pressure, but rather a new understanding of how a collective could organise without permission from figures of authority or dominant voices stifling debate. When students were severely let down by those who had been democratically elected to represent their interests, it does not take a leap of imagination to understand why for many the tools of anarchism became the only way to express a voice.

Direct action was used in the form of university occupations where consensus based decision making was the norm, a far cry from the single vote you receive every five years In what is far too forgivingly termed a ‘democracy’, but is all too often an excuse for governments to introduce ideological policy changes regardless of the opinion expressed by the public.

How insulting is it therefore to find that the ‘counter terrorism focus desk’ of City of Westminster police saw fit to essentially criminalise all of these students and every other person who have become disenfranchised with a limp democracy by instructing the public that “Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local Police.” This was nestled between other counter terrorism warnings, including a report on the terror attacks in Norway and warnings about a flag “Often seen used by Al-Qaeda in Iraq” which should also be reported to local police.

Yet, this representation of anarchism is not surprising when you consider how it is often reported in mainstream media, particularly before large scale protests. The Evening Standard for example ran a piece with the headline ‘Anarchists plot to wreck Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding celebration’ and used information obtained from a so called ‘anarchist organiser’ to reveal plans for disruption at the Royal Wedding that to most anarchists I know were simply laughable. But all too often media coverage such as this seems to come as a precursor to violent policing which is justified justified and ignored by the press as otherwise hoards of violent anarchists may have run rampage. This narrative, which has largely gone unchallenged, leads to a public image of anarchists as nothing more than a ‘black bloc’ that needs beating into line.

However, as the anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber describes in his article ‘Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you!’, to be an anarchist takes little more than examining your daily life and recognising that much of how we already behave and think is anarchic in nature. He asks ‘If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?’ The answer is common sense and yet when the concept is applied to how we organise ourselves politically, it is suddenly labelled as a terrorist view point which we should be vigilant for.

What exactly would we be reporting? That a group of friends decided on where to go for dinner collectively rather than someone making a authoritative decision? That some people are playing a game like Ultimate Frisbee without the need of a referee? Or perhaps that people think politicians are greedy and don’t listen to public opinion? These aren’t alternative views after all, and certainly not those of terrorists, but very mainstream thoughts held by many. If it wasn’t hilarious to think, we may worry that the millions who decided not to vote in the last general election would end up in jail for fear they were anarchists. Would it be criminal to think that with so many refusing to take part in our democratic process, perhaps that process may well be flawed?

It is, at best, misleading to portray anarchists as a terror group that needs watching and at worst propaganda designed to discredit a legitimate political ideology for fear that the view may become more widely accepted as many suffer through austerity.

UKUncut: The day after the day before

February 1, 2011
Activism
1 Comment

I’m sure many of us who were on Sunday’s UKUncut demonstrations were worried about what kind of press coverage our efforts had received. Creating a spectacle on Oxford Street on a Sunday afternoon is one thing, but to get any campaign off the ground you need the help of one thing: the media.

There were plenty of them there too! From our Boots hospital we could see the many photographers and camera men trying to get a shot of our action and we were more than happy to pose for the occasion. Not even turning off the lights or shutting the front door (where most of the press were waiting) could stop us from demanding that we had our chance to speak to the nation and soon enough, we did.

As I walked out of that entrance I knew that this would end up on the news somewhere. I have never walked out to the cameras of the public media before, but I now certainly know how those people on the news feel when surrounded buy the press. Well the goodies at least. Knowing that the the lenses all represent a multitude of eyes that will be able to see and hear your message just as loud as those who are sitting inches from you on that cold concrete floor is definitely an empowering position to be in.

Unfortunately, the demonstration hit the news for reasons that none of us wanted it to. Rather than speaking about tax avoiders, the headlines all spoke about the use of CS spray against peaceful protestors.

Don’t get me wrong, it is an important issue. What a sad state of affairs it is when the police you rely upon for protection turn on you with weapons (that is what it was after all) for simply calling into question the legitimacy of their arrest. But it is even sadder that they are allowed to make this the focus of coverage, rather than the real issue: tax avoiders. And even sadder still when many in the media drag their heels before reporting on the incident. I highly doubt we would have seen anything more than a cursory mention on the BBC News website if protestors hadn’t come to harm, even then it took far too long.

There was a saving grace however. A platform where UKUncut was given the ability to show what it really does in an accurate way. This platform came from BBC Newsnight (and fatratfilms.co.uk) who produced a short film explaining about the creation of UKUncut and followed protestors during Sunday’s demonstration. The camera doesn’t lie and it painted a compelling picture here.

And let us not forget the power of private cameras. Here someone was able to catch officer CW2440 CS spraying protestors and the lead up to his actions. A fellow police officer telling him to put it away is also clearly audible.

Sunday was a mix of emotions and adrenalin. What is important is how we look back on it – hopefully it will be a profound step on the road to closing down the loopholes tax avoiders use.

~Wail

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 934 other followers