Bristol Police's Home Goal and Anti-Democratic Moves

bristol | peace | news report Saturday November 22, 2003 10:48 by Copwatch

The policing around the demos against Bush has come up for a number of criticisms.

The local force commanders and the quality of information supplied by the Forward Intelligence Teams (the units of the police responsible for gathering data on activist groups) must be coming under serious question after the police deployed large numbers of riot police in the city centre despite the fact that no protestors where present.

The first home-goal came on the 20th when the National demo against Bush was being held in London. No doubt stung by criticism from the Evening Post that the police nearly lost control, they decided on operation 'Close the Stable Door After Horse Bolted' where vans with riot police, mounted units and the necessary support units were moved into an empty city centre. There they remained for several hours, alone.

The second home goal came the next day, the 21st, when again the police saturated the city centre with their riot equipped units, including the placement of units in and around @Bristol. However the policing plan lacked one vital component; protestors. Having seized the M32 on the 19th the majority of local protestors had joined the 150,000 plus demonstrators in London. The anti-war movement size and movements were clearly more than the local police were able to deal with.

Further criticism has been levelled at the police for blocking an ambulance from the demo on the 19th where the M32 was occupied. The controversy surrounded the transport of a sick boy by an ambulance. The Evening Post reported that; "One paramedic crew said they were forced back as they tried to get to a seriously ill one-year-old boy in Eastville because the M32 was blocked by protesters." However eyewitness reports by protestors dispute that it was they who turned the ambulance round; "I saw an ambulance trying to get through the crowd outside the Artichoke pub as everyone moved towards the M32 and everybody moved out of the way to let it pass. I did not see any ambulance with sirens on the M32,but surely by that time it should have been the police telling emergency services what was happening....The directions from people organising the march back to the Esso garage specifically told people to avoid blocking both directions of the road outside the BRI, and what happened? Yup, you've guessed it, the police blocked the other side of the road."

Policing in Bristol over recent events has been erratic at best. In 2002 the police rioted, attacking a free party held after the Ashton Court demo and injuring a number of civilians. At a demo on College Green March 20th, the day the Iraq war broke out, the police attacks on the protesters were so severe, that 2 civilian police auxiliary workers, who were in the crowd exercising their democratic right, chose to resign form their posts in protest.

The credibility of the anti-war policing operation has been further undermined by the failure of police evidence in court. A failure under scrutiny that suggests attempted legal harassment of democratic protestors by an overly authoritarian police force.

Shaun Davies, arrested at College Green on March 20th this year, while protesting about the start of the war in Iraq, appeared at Bristol Magistrates court on 13th October. Despite there being 8 police statements against him and no-one to testify on his behalf, he was acquitted of the charge of causing intentional "harassment, alarm or distress"