British police use unprovoked violence and restraint as punishment for observers who ask them to identify themselves at protests

In this shocking video from the Climate Camp protests at Kingsnorth Climate Camp, two people who ask cops who've illegally removed their badges to identify themselves are tackled, deliberately injured, and arrested. As is clear from the video, the police singled out anyone who photographed or monitored police activity at the protest, and used extreme, unprovoked force to prevent themselves from being identified as they committed crimes against the peaceful protestors.

Arrested for asking a policeman for his badge number

• [Takuan]

  http://www.writetothem.com/

• [Anonymous]

  Why do protesters just mope around and watch when all this shit goes down?

• [rollerskater]

  pretty soon the british will need to have an exodus to a new New World and a revolutionary war to break off from the oppressive government.

• [Anonymous]

  No, not a police state. No way.

• [Takuan]

  do they screen out those that derive sexual gratification from inflicting uninvited pain on others? If so, how? How do we know this is effective? How many police have been dismissed for showing symptoms of psychopathy after being hired?
  Kent or West Yorkshire have any answers?

• [Takuan]

  time the British asked themselves: why are people they hire as policemen so able to take to torture so naturally and easily? Grabbing a unresisting (and innocent) woman by throat, grinding a pressure point and generally physically debasing her like a piece of meat is not something normal people do. Don’t you want your police to be normal? Psychopaths only make good secret police.

• [Takuan]

  “The pair were immediately spotted by police surveillance officers when they arrived at the Kingsnorth demonstration. Narrating the surveillance video, the officers called them the “Blue Brothers” in an apparent reference to their outfits.

  “Got the Fit Watch people now coming out of the camp,” the officer added as he moved the camera closer. “All dressed in black hoodies. Dark glasses.”

  His footage reveals that at least four of the officers – part of a team drafted in from West Yorkshire – were not displaying their badge numbers. It also recorded Apple asking one of the officer to reveal his badge number. The officer refused.

  “Well you do actually have to tell me,” Apple said. “If someone requests your number – if a member of the public requests your number – you do have to give your number.”

  She asked Swain to photograph the officer. “I’d like a picture of this officer so I can make a complaint,” she said. “It’s West Yorkshire police – no number.”

  As Swain lifted her camera, a second officer, who was not displaying his badge number, stood in her way and informed the women they would be searched. They offered no resistance but were wrestled to the ground seconds later.

  A third Fit Watch campaigner, Geoff Cornock, a 52-year-old from Cardiff who was standing nearby, was also pushed to the floor and arrested for obstruction. He was released on bail the following day.

  Cornock’s charges were also dropped, and he is joining the women in their complaint to the IPCC.

  Both Swain and Apple were pinned to the ground in restraint positions for around 15 minutes. Apple had her head pushed into the ground by an officer without a badge number. Moments later, the same officer placed one hand around her neck in a stranglehold position, apparently attempting to show her face to the police camera.

  He then pressed his fingers on pressure points in her neck to move her across the road.

  Several metres away, Swain was also being pinned to the ground. The footage captured her groaning in pain and telling an officer to stop standing on her foot. The camera panned down to show the officer’s boot clamped on top of Swain’s foot. The officer said: “I am not on your foot.”

  Told in passing that she was being arrested, Swain replied: “For what: taking a photograph?”

  Later, the footage captured Swain complaining about her treatment. “You have no right to grab someone from inside the climate camp, drag them out here, and tell them that you are arresting them for obstruction,” she said.

  She was turned on her side while officers removed her shoes. Her legs were bound with black leg restraints before several officers carried her into back of a police van.

  Apple claimed that, after the pair had been taken to a police station, officers refused her permission speak to a solicitor.

  The following morning, Apple and Swain were remanded in custody to Bronzefield women’s prison.

  They allege police told magistrates that they feared the pair would cause “physical or mental injury” to officers if they were allowed out on bail.

  “I am quite shocked that someone can end up in prison for simply taking a photograph,” Swain said. “I have a home life. My children were expecting me home, my partner was expecting me home. My boss was expecting me to turn up to work. None of those things happened.”

  She said her incarceration contributed to her losing her job as a community development officer.

  Apple, whose son was four when she was held, added: “It has got to the stage where every protest is so repressively policed that it’s become impossible to have a voice on the streets.”

  The Kent police assistant chief constable, Andy Adams, said yesterday: “We recognise that people have made complaints, and we are dealing with these in accordance with our normal procedures.

  “There is a judicial review under way and, during that process, Kent police is unable to comment on individual cases.”

• [Takuan]

  “terrorism, if you suspect it report it”
  http://www.kent.police.uk/Contact%20Us/How%20to%20report%20an%20inc.html

• [Anonymous]

  Special forces in police uniform who where drawn in to make up the numbers… hence no collar numbers and lack of normal police restraint.

• [Mojave]

  What’s with the blurred cop faces? Did the guardian do that? Let us SEE the bastards!!!

• [Takuan]

  #89 posted by zikzak , January 7, 2009 8:05 AM

  Sure Tom, if you want to use your camera for other things as well, that’s allowed. In fact, I find carrying a video recorder is useful in all kinds of ways.

  Rather than a shitty cellphone camera or an expensive DV cam, I use a hacked disposable digital camcorder: http://www.maushammer.com/systems/cvscamcorder/

  That way if it gets lost or destroyed it’s no big deal. In fact, if I end up shooting something important, I can pass the camera off to someone else without a second thought to avoid having it seized.

  Another interesting tactic is to put postage and your address on the camera, so that you can either drop it in a mailbox immediately (where it’s safe from the cops), or slip it to another bystander and say “mail this”.

• [Anonymous]

  When the people finally rise up against this and treat the police like they treat us it’s going to be a glorious day.

• [mdh]

  Shoes and haircuts.

• [Brett Burton]

  Wow. I think I’d almost rather be arrested in Texas.

• [dragonfrog]

  @7

  Why are we not requiring police uniforms to include sport-jersey like shirts with their name, department, and number on them? For that matter, the jackets that say “POLICE” or “FBI” should also have the agents last name and number.

  I agree entirely – every police uniform should have the officer’s last name and badge number inscribed just as clearly as on a sport jersey. Number on front and back in high contrast 8-inch letters and on both shoulders in 2-inch letters; name in 2-inch letters front and back. All riot armour, bulletproof vests, etc. should also have an outer shell that has the same information with the same visibility.

  Most importantly, it law that anyone wearing a police uniform (whether a professional police officer or not) with the numbers removed or obscured, is guilty of impersonating a police officer; they should also be subject to the same restrictions on carrying weapons that any civilian is; any violence in resisting arrest for such an offence (including a citizen’s arrest) should also count as “resisting arrest,” “assault,” etc. before the law.

  Once those laws go into effect, there needs to be a concerted, nationwide publicity campaign to make sure everyone knows that if they see a police officer with badge number hidden, they are not to obey any command from the officer, but to consider them a dangerous armed criminal.

• [Takuan]

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/05/query-g20-assault-case-officer

• [Anonymous]

  Why are we not requiring police uniforms to include sport-jersey like shirts with their name, department, and number on them? For that matter, the jackets that say “POLICE” or “FBI” should also have the agents last name and number.

• [nemofazer]

  Thanks for the link Takuan. I’m contacting my mp.

• [WoodE]

  Use ‘qik’ or something like it. Phones can be confiscated, but if video and pics are streamed live to remote servers, the act of confiscation itself is recorded. http://qik.com/

  Anybody know other apps doing this job?

• [Takuan]

  write the bastards!

• [Takuan]

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/19/metropolitan-police-kettling-human-rights

• [shadowfirebird]

  We don’t have to require police to wear their ID differently.

  We only have to require the police to fire any officer that fails to display their name badge, or fails to give their ID when asked for it.

  This is the same basic principal that requires the police to fire an officer that assaults a member of the public, or that deliberately arrests them for a crime that doesn’t exist.

  Wait, we don’t do *that* in the UK either….

• [shadowfirebird]

  No, not a police state. A police state is where the government controls the police and the police do whatever they like.

  In the UK no-one appears to control the police.

• [murrayhenson]

  Moral of the story: the police are not to be trusted, ever. They aren’t your friends, they aren’t there to help you, they aren’t there to protect you and they really don’t want to listen to what you have to stay. Just like with vampires, it is best not to invite them into your home (or your life).

  If you give them the slightest opportunity they will utterly, hideously and thoroughly ruin your day.

• [Anonymous]

  Get ready for this in the US.

  More govt power with no transparency= more of this stuff.