Mark's Blog

Again students are demonstrating against the unjustified rise in tuition fees that will bar many people from middle and poorer backgrounds from being able to afford an education and have a life afterwards. The students organising the marches have again worked with the police and are now in the process of being “kettled”, a term for collective punishment and humiliation where people are crowded into small areas and denied access to food, water, toilets or any other basic amenities regardless of age or infirmity. Now at previous demonstrations a small minority have misbehaved and only joined in to cause trouble so instead of the police targeting those people they police have targeted everyone. This is the same lying violent police force that has gotten away with 2 murders, lying to the press, false arrest and false imprisonment to name but a few issues over the last five years.

I really don’t know how anyone can trust the police as an organisation anymore, in fact if I was in the place of the protesters I would in future limit what I tell the police to the bare minimum they have proven time and again to be violent(charging horses at kettled protestors last week and denying it publically, the murder of Ian Tomlinson) and untrustworthy(just look at the “kettling” already happening today when following the approved route). The commissioner of the metropolitan police at the time of the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes by officers of the metropolitan police who later lied at the inquest into the death of Jean, lied himself to the press repeatedly for the 24 hours after the death of Jean. We then have the disgusting tactics used by the police FIT teams who break and bend the law and intimidate political activists who have committed no crime and are not even suspected of breaking the law. To even consider protesting against a government policy such as the war in Iraq or against the construction of weapons of mass destruction in the country(aka nuclear weapons) runs the risk of being stopped under any pretext, being photographed and added to a database of “domestic extremist”

I just wanted to add some comments re my earlier post. I am not anti police they do a difficult job in sometimes very difficult circumstances. Dealing with the nastiest people around including violent and sex offenders. I believe that the vast majority of policemen are there to protect and to serve the public and do the job for the right reasons. However there are bad apples and the police are far too reticent to stand up to them. When senior commanders make huge mistakes like Commander Cresswell did when she ordered an innocent man to be shot there appears to be little or no accountability. For the public to trust the police they need to be honest they need to make sure the bad apples are drummed out. They need to apologise when they screw up. They need to be accountable for there actions see thug who murdered Ian Tomlinson and Commander Cresswell.

If they expect demonstrators to work with them they need to rethink the intimidatory and quite frankly disturbing tactics of the FIT teams. They also need to ensure that riot control is done in a more propionate way, I dont think anyone can claim that kettling thousands of people for the actions of less than a hundred idiots is in any way proportionate. As it stands the police as a group (not as individuals many of who are good people who care about protecting the community and the public) risk further alienating many in the country especially the young. Deal with people proportionately, fairly and honestly and admit your mistakes and ensure those bad apples that you have are punished and reprimanded properly and maybe you will start to earn the trust of many of the people out there who are currently distrustful of the police.

Sorry, but comments are closed. Check out another post and speak up!