Frankly Fred – I don’t think the fact she’s a woman really has any bearing on it – The fact that she’s a hysterical little harpie who’s mouthing off and acting in an aggressive manner, and refusing to do as she’s told by a police officer in the execution of his duty to uphold the law and prevent a breach of the peace clearly does have a bearing on the situation, and is the only reason that force was used to prevent her, and the situation in general, getting out of hand – not because she was a woman.

As I said above, the right to protest is at all times (and always has been) tempered against the risk of a breach of the peace – I cannot see what police powers have supposedly been breached in this situation – the kettle/cordon has been judged (Austin (FC) (Appellant) & another v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis 2009) a legal method of preventing a demonstration escalating onto a riot where a minority of people are threatening to do so (as the leaflets above show), and the police have a duty and the power to use force to maintain the peace if they deem it necessary to do so.

I would support the identical use of force against a person of any sex, colour, race or religion who was acting in the same way in the same situation.

(No personal attacks, no slagging people off, entirely on topic, there Fred/Gus – lets keep it that way)

Edited to add: Surely if she felt she had been assaulted when told and pushed first time to “GET BACK” , there were adequate other people she could have spoken to to resolve the situation – people with cameras everywhere she could have got the evidence from, plenty of senior officers about, established and known methods to report a complaint to the police (eg, walked into any police station) – was the correct course of action to grab and scream at the officer, swearing at him – and when he moved away going and trying to confront him in an aggressive manner? Her actions were not self defence, the policeman was backing away and leaving her alone, but her choice to try and carry the fight to him resulted in her getting first slapped, and when she still chose to ignore what any person with an ounce of common sense would take to be a strong message, got her given a good smack with a baton.

refusing to do as she’s told by a police officer

She din’t have to do anything he told her to, as she weren’t actually breaking any law. Had she done so, then she shooduv been arrested. She was not. She had every right to occupy the space she was in. If she wanted to speak to the officer, then she also had the legal right to do so. The officer’s job is to uphold Law and Order. Not to take it into his own hands, and act unlawfully, which he quite clearly does. His actions were grossly disproportionate, and he has been rightly suspended from duty. If his bosses din’t believe he’d done anything wrong, and they could legally justify his actions, then there’s no way he wooduv been suspended.

The kettling was unjustified, and legally indefensible, as there was not sufficient evidence to support claims a riot was definitely imminent. A few posters off tinternet would not constitute evidence of intention. They cooduv been made by anyone. Granted, there undoubtedly were a tiny minority bent on causing trouble, but the police’s job was to ensure that Law and Order was upheld, to the best of their abilities. They failed to do so, as they prevented people from exercising their democratic right to protest, by impeding their freedom of movement. Since any trouble erupted after the kettling began, it can easily be argued that the police’s actions were antagonistic, and provocative. These actions are in fact the subject of a major investigation; again, if the police had done nowt wrong, they’d have nowt to defend themselves from. As to whether or not Justice shall be served, I am quite skeptical.

Now you can have whatever views about the protest/ers you like. What you can’t argue with, is the Law. Of which you seem to have a selective knowledge. But your comments are based not on legal fact, but on your own opinions and prejudice, and therefore do not carry any validity.

And your attempts to crawl out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself, with your comments re violence, are pathetic. Don’t try coming over all righteous; we know what you’re like.

Fred – have a careful read of the Austin judgement, the Kettling was clearly legal. There’s plenty of case law to also support the fact that where a police officer believes there is an imminent likelihood of a breach of the peace occurring then they have the power to demand you do something, including moving back, and the right to use force to make you do so – if you want to argue that I’m wrong in law, then back your argument up.

The Austin ruling is being challenged in the Yerpean Court of Human Rights. The Lords’ ruling seems to conflict with Article 5 of the Human Rights act.

Article 5: Right to liberty and security
1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law –
(a) the lawful detention of a person after conviction by a competent court;
(b) the lawful arrest or detention of a person for non-compliance with the lawful order of a court or in order to secure the fulfilment of any obligation prescribed by law;
(c) the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so;
(d) the detention of a minor by lawful order for the purpose of educational supervision or his lawful detention for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority;
(e) the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics and drug addicts or vagrants;
(f) the lawful arrest or detention of a person to prevent his effecting an unauthorised entry into the country or of a person against whom action is being taken with a view to deportation or extradition.
2. Everyone who is arrested shall be informed promptly, in a language which he understands, of the reason for his arrest and of any charge against him.
3. Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1(c) of this Article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial. Release may be conditioned by guarantees to appear for trial.
4. Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful.
5. Everyone who has been the victim of arrest or detention in contravention of the provisions of this Article shall have an enforceable right to compensation.

This limits the circumstances in which someone can be detained and have their freedom taken away. This covers detention for both long periods (for example, if you are in prison or are forced to stay as a patient in a mental hospital) and short periods (for example, if you are arrested). It may even cover stop and search provisions.

Hmm, detaining a bunch of people in an area, depriving them of food, water and sanitary facilities, for any length of time, would seem not to be lawful. I’d hazard a guess the Lords got it wrong, or simply thought it best to support the Police.

Of course, proving something is unlawful and actually seeing Justice served, can be two entirely separate things. As we have witnessed far too often.

RudeBoy, why do you bother ? No really, I don’t understand why you bother – I learnt a long time ago that it’s a complete waste of time arguing with labrat, all he wants to do is to ‘score points’ and engage in silly school yard taunting.

There’s no consistency in his arguments – he simply wants to argue for the sake of arguing. As an example you’ve only got to look at the stuff he’s posted on this thread. He claims that he has complete faith in the judgement of the police, and yet in the third post on this thread, he challenges the Met’s statement when they say : “The apparent actions of this officer raise immediate concerns”

He also claims that the police only ever uphold the law, and yet he regularly slags off the police on here claiming that they are all thick and know nothing about the law when it comes to knives/weapons. He trawls through the internet to find pictures of stuff published by anarchists or whatever, so that he can suggest that only ultra-leftists are concerned about police brutality, even though right-wing newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph have published articles critical of police action all this week. His posts are all a complete waste of time.

All I do RudeBoy, is maybe give ratty’s posts a quick glance/speedread, but they are really not worth much more than that. imo.

The austin judgement may be being challenged – however the unanimous judgment by the highest court in the land is currently that it was legal given the circumstances, as it was a justifiable intervention with peoples article 5 rights – read esp. para 57-64 of the judgement

Also have a good read up on King V Hodges 1974

Ah, gus – come one, can you really not argue the points – must you always go off ina hissy fit when someone actually sits down and disagrees with you in a polite fashion and says that, for example – in this case the police action was justifiable.

I have not said that the police are perfect, indeed you’ll see very early on in this thread that I thought what happened with the dead bloke was a very different issue from the poison dwarf.

Tell you what – if I’m talking bollocks about the powers of the police tell me why I’m wrong – its not point scoring, but its also not jumping on the bandwagon saying “yeah, police, bunch of thugs” I

He claims that he has complete faith in the judgement of the police, and yet in the third post on this thread, he challenges the Met’s statement when they say : “The apparent actions of this officer raise immediate concerns”

He also claims that the police only ever uphold the law, and yet he regularly slags off the police on here claiming that they are all thick and know nothing about the law when it comes to knives/weapons

I’ll defend the police when I think they are in the right, and I’ll critisise them when I think they are in the wrong – I have not said that I have complete faith in their judgement at all – but in the case of the poison dwarf, I think that the individual copper was well within his powers.

Ah, gus – come one, can you really not argue the points – must you always go off ina hissy fit when someone actually sits down and disagrees with you

Not at all. Take for example crism/aracer. He is more than happy to challenge me on here – often and regularly. It is something which he does much better than you. And yet I would never ignore his challenges, as I’m sure he’d testify. In fact I think that it would be fair to say that I’m usually ‘up for it’ when it comes to current affairs issues. But until you come up with some consistency rather than your silly ‘point scoring’, I don’t think I’ll bother thank you.

Sounds more like you cannot accept that someone is able to hold a viewpoint on the facts of the individual case rather than an entrenched position along the lines of “the police are all brilliant” or “the police are all facist perpetrators of state control” without any ground inbetween.

I don’t see your argument regards point scoring – it about whether the officer in this case was justified in his use of force or not, if he was then the entire premise of the “police thugs” argument falls apart.

If you want to try and be precious regards quality of debate, then I’d comment about glass houses and stones!

rather than an entrenched position along the lines of “the police are all brilliant” or “the police are all facist perpetrators of state control” without any ground inbetween.

LOL ! You haven’t a clue what I’ve been posting about the police on here have you ratty ? 😀

Another officer, who allegedly wrote on a social networking website that he was keen to “bash some long haired hippies” at the protests, has also been disciplined.

This gets a mention as part of this story about a copper who resigned after saying that

I see my lot have murdered someone again.

Which seems a bit of a shame really. The copper who wanted to bash people gets disciplined whereas the one who was prepared to say (but clearly slightly overstepped the mark) that things hadn’t gone well has to resign.

It’s a funny old world.

Actually, I’ve just found a longer version of the quote

Pc John Hayter, 49, a member of the elite Royal Protection Unit, wrote on social networking site Facebook: ”I see my lot have murdered someone again. Oh well, s*** happens.’

I wonder why the BBC chose to cut it down?

Anyway, so much for me giving him the benefit of the doubt, he wasn’t just admitting that things hadn’t gone well, he was saying he didn’t care that things hadn’t gone well – clearly better suited for a job in wheel clamping.