Short and sweet, here's a couple of vids found by Plastic Fuzz which I think look pretty good and give a good indication to which side wanted the fight, especially the guy in the second video who says "we're trying to get to the Israeli Ambassador and they're protecting him, so that's why it's kicking off" If you follow the links at the bottom of the video when it finishes, there are loads more from the 10th now.
First one.
With no hint of irony, given that accelerant was thrown at the Police officers on the gate, here's the second vid to the relaxing theme tune "Firestarter"
1.49-1.53 was my serial.
Metcountymounty
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25 comments:
Violence comes in many forms. What about the newspaper that is threatened with an advertising boycott if it doesn't toe the "right line" when covering the Middle East?
And I understand that the Community Security Trust has a lot of input into advising the Met on policing matters. An ambitious officer knows that being on the right side of the CST is not a bad career move.
They're peace protesters. It's clear that the police provoked them into acting violently. All they wanted to do was sit down and talk to the Israeli diplomats.
We live in a police state. You can't even have a little riot without the police getting in your face.
they're protecting him
That being the job of police, to protect people and property without fear or favour. Why does that mean that police are taking sides, in the minds of these thugs?
Are they perhaps not very bright?
anon 0947 - the CST are a group of volunteer Mossad wannabes, most of whom look 14 years old and have as much experience - especially when it comes to Policing and violent situations. They are taken about as seriously as any other private security company. Now the actual Mossad agents (like all other diplomatic protection units) who deal directly with special Branch, Royalty etc, are taken seriously because they know what they are talking about and can clearly deal with anything that happens.
MCM, the amount of restraint those officers displayed was admiral when the barriers were hurled on them. Im afraid a couple of baton strikes to peoples heads were in order then.
Remind me why you're not allowed to mass pepper spray people throwing metal barriers at you? I'd have most likely smacked the guy in the beige jacket at 0:58, and lost my job for it or something.
Remind me why we can't just hose the lot of them? (With warmed water of course...can't have them getting cold!)
What happened to the big full length riot shields?
Stuart - Have a read of the first post "So... who started it?" which I wrote on the 11th of Jan. We broke out the long shields about 8ish, we'd been taking hits on the short shields for a couple of hours by that point. And yes, they did work.
It sickens me that in order to protect the rights of the rioters, the government is quite happy to allow police officers to be used as punchbags by the enriching army of thugs who claim police brutality if they see a policeman stroking a dog.
I was looking at the footage of the North Gate riot, why were the police deployed there? You had a metal barrier, the green shield of humanity and then a big iron gate. Predictably, the useless barriers were used to pin the police against the immovable gate until the rioters got bored with this and used them as missiles.
Would it not have been better to stick the police behind the gate and simply thump the first person to try and climb over it? A bit of razor wire on the top would have probably prevented even the most zealous rioter climbing up a 12 foot metal barricade to see what was on the other side.
In the event that there's some great tactical reason for having two dozen officers sandwiched between a locked gate and 100 screaming lunatics, then the least that senior managers and the Home Office could have done would be to hand out the big cans of PAVA and let the officers use them to keep the nutters off the barriers. It's much less tiring that battering someone with a long shield or baton for half an hour.
BTW - was the officer shown lying on the ground okay? Always upsets me when British police officers are injured keeping warring factions from other countries apart. If I had my way, you'd have water cannon on every street corner and cages in every park to lock these scumbags up in. Let them shiver in the cold overnight with London's drunks, druggies and mentalists urinating on them instead of bothering the doctors and nurses in A&E.
Bridge - the officers at the north gate were there because people started climbing the fence and throwing things over, they then started climbing over the fence to the russian embassy in an attempt to get round the main gate. The serial that was there was attacked and requested help and a full PSU was sent in to get them. The officer on the vid was hit in the face with a bottle, he had a couple of cuts and bruises but was ok, unlike the officer who had the brick sized metal bracket thrown into his face.
I have just watched the vids and my blood is now boiling.
I have been arrested for standing up at a football game - yet here we see people throwing huge fence panels at plods from 6ft away; yet the police just stood there.
It is exactly this kind of thing that causes the last semblances of public support & trust for the police to drift away: Every time we see a car full of police hiding with a speed-gun, every time you get hit with a baton for the crime of being a football supporter, and every time we see the police standing by whilst gangs of hooded thugs smash up our towns.
Why why WHY MCM? You have an almost limitless list of things you can lift us for (which you use with gay abandon to get those detections up), but when people are attacking you and trashing our cities you don't bother?
Over on another blog, the boys in blue were ranting and raving because some drunken bint had a pish in the gutter - that seems to be of more concern than worrying about rioters attacking you and destroying peoples property...
Er, Well said Hibbo!
This is the madness and the mystery of this insane government system, that has made serious errors of judgment, which in turn HAS undermined the police force, especially front line officers.
But then again, the poor behaviour of a minority of cops, which has come to light in the press, has hindered the efforts and working practices of the good guys!
Authoritarian regimes always seem to want to punish and restrict the whole group because of the bad behaviour of a few. A bit like keeping the whole class in for detention, due to the misbehaviour of a minority element.
Government appear to apply this sort of tactic to those who are unfortunate enough to be ill and have to claim benefits to survive on. Due to a minority who have abused the system, the government, AND ESPECIALLY the press, have given the genuine cases a bad name.
They whip up a storm and the "mob rule" of so called democratic public opinion, and low and behold, the government "tightens" up the rules in an act of oppression. They "punish" the whole lot for the "sins" of a few.
Keep that up for long enough, against enough people, and one day they decide that enough is enough, and they demonstrate against it.
Regarding "Who Started It" ....The oppressive and over zealous USA, a long time ago when they decided to "Declare a War on Drugs"..... Cannabis, which many Muslim countries do not regard as an "evil". Muslims regard Alcohol as being harmful and evil.....
So the U.S.A then became the "Hand of Satan" and an evil enemy.
Stupid, pointless crazy WARS, and over what? Eastern cultures using Cannabis and being against the use of harmful Alcohol, which was totally accepted in the West.
And the West, instigated by the U.S.A. initially, totally against Cannabis, which is accepted by Eastern cultures.
How many lives have been lost since the 1960's, when the U.S.A decided that the Peace and Love generation who smoked Cannabis, were such a threat to the world?
The U.S.A. "Started It" when they decided to go on a mission to cut off all supplies of the God given herb reaching the U.S.A.
The best quality Cannabis at the time, came from Lebanon, and Pakistan.
Afghanistan also produced good quality Cannabis, but some of it WAS opiated and therefore potentially harmful. Most of the Heroin comes from there too, so that was the CAUSE of the "War on Drugs" insigated by the U.S.A., to protect their people from Heroin addiction which ruins lives.
So, it can also be argued that the Afghans also "Started It" by exporting "Satan's Filth" - heroin into the West. Six of one, half a dozen of another!
Hibbo,
just to enlighten you there were numerous people there who could have been locked up for numerous public order offences. The problem is even if it takes only one officer to control and arrest one protester (unlikely in this situation) there is one officer less to stand up to the crowd. One PSU = 18 Cons, 3 Sgt's and 1 Inspector this does not mention the 3 drivers who remain with the vehicles. The simple truth is if you start locking people up there would soon be no-one left to control the crowd. Understand now? With no-one left to control the crowd what do you think would happen next?
How many protesters were there and how many bobbies? It doesn't take a degree in maths to work out which side would run out of people first.
CCTV is the saving grace mate. Countless hours of poring over footage will result in a number of arrests in months to come, the clowns who posted this on you tube will help immensely.
Much though it galls you when in situations like this you have to hold off on locking people up as there is a bigger picture of protecting the general public and property as much as possible to consider.
Ahh joy.
Does make you wish they'd allow some more offensive tactics though instead of the standard "stand there and take it behind the shields".
I know the PSU gear is strong as hell (years ago, when i used to live with a copper friend we tested it by me baseball batting him as hard as i could), but it just beggars belief that they stand you there like human targets.
Hell even another PSU arrest team working the crowd would have been better!
Constable Confused,
Good explanation, I can understand where you're coming from about it simply being a case of numbers. But why just stand there? Is it only climate protesters who get the baton treatment?
PS. Well done anon, managing to turn a thread about muslim thugs to 'legalise cannabis'!
Hibbo, on that one vid the guys and girls there were taking the hits, but it was a hell of a long night which did include shield and baton charges from more than a couple of PSU's. To add to what Constable Confused said, running football events and demonstration events are legally different. By law we can use previous history to categorise fixtures between teams and set an elevated level of force (such as full overt kit to 'send the message' from the start) and allocate more officers to specific roles such as arrest serials, it is also an accepted strategy that zero tolerance at football can and usually does prevent further trouble because everyone knows the situation, as I'll explain in a mo.
Although there are always cell spaces and process teams ready on any large demonstration, there aren't as many arrest or transport teams as at football. We can't use previous history of a specific group of demonstrators to set a level of force or allocate resources (beyond sensible prudence) until it actually does kick off OR there are specific individuals attending. We use the forward intelligence teams (FIT) to identify the individuals and assess the threat which then influences the response from us.
In a public order situation you act as a unit and taking two or three people out for one arrest doesn't work and leaves your lines thin, so at football and that type of public order event we have arrest teams and specific transport units who will deal. A public order serial will extract someone and the arrest team takes over so the public order serial can be redeployed immediately.
For a demo, if we put all of our resources in from the start while facing a predominantly peaceful crowd with a small hostile element, and send in snatch teams to drag out protagonists then that would been seen as a violent escalation by people who think a stern look is Police brutality, let alone 6 blokes dragging someone out of a crowd by their eyelids. We would then be facing several thousand violent people who would have responded to the use of force, instead of the several hundred who actually started the fighting in the first place.
At a football match you can easily have 60k normal honest fans there who will know that a few hundred (if that) are there to have a fight. They will not react if the Police start arresting protagonists (especially the regular shitbags, but also people who are loud and shouty/sweary) as they mostly see that as a good thing and they want nothing to do with it.
Compare this to a demo with a large number of idealists who see the Police as the enemy in the first place and are just itching for an excuse to kick off, the tactics have to be different. A football match isn't the same as a demonstration - like Stop The War, or the pro fox hunt demo - is a tinderbox with the majority just waiting for an excuse to have a go.
Thanks for taking the time to explain that MCM.
I don't completely agree but I do enjoy your writing.
Is it really as clear cut as you say ?
These vids could have been edited
Hibbo - I understand the rationale and have seen it work (and occasionally fail) enough times to know that the different methods are generally the right way to go, but I don't completely agree with it either, especially when it looks bad.
Joe - these vids were put up by the people supporting the protests, if there was ANY evidence of the Police kicking things off or using excessive force then they'd be all over it, but there is nothing on youtube and I've watched dozens of vids from that night, and there were literally hundreds of independent photogs and cameramen about.
Personally I think a bit of Police brutality wouldn't have gone amiss given the amount of violence we saw, the fuckers would never know what hit them if we actually opened an industrial sized can of whoopass and went to town on them. They'd either think very long and hard about doing it, would still be in an intensive care unit, or bring more mates along next time, in which case they've had their warning and if they come back for more it's their own fault.
Hibbo, I think you will find that my comment brought into the debate, the issue of Cannabis and the historical use of it by many Muslim countries. The fact that Cannabis got lumped in with Heroin as an "evil" to declare war upon, has resulted in a great deal of ill feeling from Muslim people towards the "oppressive west".
That mistake many years ago HAS caused a great deal of trouble with some Muslims.
My comments argue more for understanding of the original CAUSE of the problem, and for some common sense, and for PEACE.
I didn't actually turn the thread into a rant for legalisation.
I pointed out where and why, the bad feelings from some Muslims were rooted, apart from in their fanatical religeous beliefs.
I am old enough to remember all the "spin" from the U.S.A in the 60's which brainwashed the public via TV campaigns, when the States decided to "Declare War on Drugs".
THAT, my dear Hibbo, is a large part of the current problem, of radical Muslims hating the west, who "started it" with a military campaign....YEARS AGO.
The 'Stonehenge' Battle of the Beanfield took place in June 1985
The facts are still in dispute, but basically the Police/local council? tried to stop a very large New Age Hippy vehicle convoy, by blocking the (narrow) road with a few tons gravel emptied from a couple of grit lorries.
The lead hippy vehicle saw what was happening,turned sharply and drove straight through the hedge and into the beanfield. The rest of the convoy followed. A few Officers went into the field, but were nearly run down by the vehicles that were being driven recklessly around the field.
Missiles and petrol bombs were thrown and the Police van that was parked halfway into the field to plug the gap in the hedge was set on fire.
More Officers were called from surrounding Forces and then the order from above (and it was from above because the boss was in a helicopter) was 'Nick everyone' And that was pretty much what happened.
In the best traditions of 'Police Stop', the coaches, lorries and other vehicles continued to drive around the field until the Police swarmed around them, smashed the windows and arrested the occupants.
By the end of the day something like 530 had been arrested. Quite an afternoons work. The prisoners were taken to custody centres all over the south of England. Our station, which was 50 odd miles from the scene accepted 20 or 30 of them.
Something like that could be achieved now, but it was not pretty sight.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=15246101
Anon,
Chill man, I wasn't criticising you, just applauding you for moving so adeptly from "Superstitous idiots smashing the place up" to "Free the weed!"
Nicely done again! :)
Thanks Hibbo....I fess up to being just a little bit sensitive these days. Stress you know and an absence of good quality "relaxant"!
Just caught sight of your blog - excellent work - both on the streets and the screen.
Can I just ask your thoughts on why there was not official BBC or any reprters or camera men recording this and why wasn't this footage shown in the media. I've only seen it here and on the BNP websites.
Does anybody have any ideas?
I am so incensed by the arseholes in those videos that i fully intend to requalify my expired Level 2 ticket. It's just WRONG.
What a bunch of c*nts those protesters are. I would have liked to have seen them baton charged and given a good kicking. Wankers.
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