Earlier in the year, we carried a piece raising concerns with the policing at the Kingsnorth climate camp.
It’s not just our own councillors concerned with the conduct of the police at that event. A report in the Guardian suggests that people at all levels of governance from councillor to MEP have raised concerns.
Norman Baker MP said, “I personally witnessed unnecessarily aggressive policing, unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters, an extraordinary number of police on site, and tactics such as confiscating toilet rolls, board games and clown costumes from what I saw to be peaceful demonstrators.”
Now, according to a report in today’s Guardian, a combined effort from Lib Dem MPs has exposed the police activity at the camp as an enormous waste of time and money.
Whilst Government sources were keen to portray the protesters as violent and dangerous, Lib Dem FOI requests have revealed that injuries were not a result of clashes with demonstrators, but from bee stings, heat exhaustion, and a bad back caused by slamming a car door.
The Guardian report is well worth a read.
EDIT: also worth a read: the report over on Home Office Blog.
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Vernon Coaker said:
“”I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn’t the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled.”"
That has slight parallels with Sir Iain Blair statements after the DeMenezes shootings when he told the press that the shooting was directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation.
That’s two incidences regarding major police operations where very senior figures have been, either wilfully or mistakenly, incorrectly briefed about a situation.