Policing – Page 4 – Wis[s]e Words

Dutch police’s takedown notice for “Al Quida magazine” is illegal

Published on April 11, 2011

Public Intelligence hosts issues of Inspire, supposedly a magazine run by Al Quiada. For some reason the Dutch police took offence to this and demanded they remove the magazine from their server:

he National Crime Squad (DNR, Dienst Nationale Recherche) of the Dutch National Police (KLPD; Korps landelijke politiediensten) has threatened to shut down Public Intelligence if we do not remove the issues of Inspire magazine which are made available on this site. In a request made to our hosting provider in late February, the Dutch National Crime Squad demanded that we remove all issues of Inspire magazine from our website and refrain from distributing any further issues of the publication. The notice describes the magazine’s content as “illegal” under Dutch law: “Due to the content of this magazine which is considered illegal according to the Dutch law due to the inciting content related to Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, we would like you to remove this magazine from your website.” The notice goes on to state that if the content is not removed from this site, the Dutch police “will under the force of circumstances take down your website on the dedicated server in the Netherlands according to Dutch Law.”

It’s unclear why Dutch police thought it needed to take action against a foreign website for hosting an allegedly dodgy webzine –it’s not as if they’ve solved every crime in the Netherlands or even manage to keep up with bicycle theft– but one thing is clear: this demand was illegal. First, if this was an official demand, it would’ve needed to have been authorised by the officier van justitie (Dutch equivalent of a D.A.) but after a rechter-commissaris had granted permission for this authorisation. This hasn’t happened in this case. Second, Dutch police are not allowed to asks people to voluntarily do anything that they normally would need jucidial authorisation for. Otherwise it would be very easy for police to intimidate people into doing things they have no right to ask from them because they wouldn’t have been able to get judicial authorisation.

In this case this demand wasn’t authorised and quite likely wouldn’t be, so the Dutch police acted illegally and against guidelines set out by the ministry of justice by asking Public Intelligence to take down this “Al Quida magazine”. The responsible people for this therefore need to be slapped on the wrists.

(More at Arnoud Engelfriet’s excellent internet law blog. (Dutch))

Murderer of Ian Tomlinson to escape justice

Published on July 23, 2010

The Crown Prosecution Service dedices not to bother with charging Ian Tomlinson’s killer:

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said there was “no realistic prospect” of a conviction, because of a conflict between the postmortem examinations carried out after the death of Ian Tomlinson last year.

The newspaper seller died following the demonstrations on 1 April 2009 in central London. The official account that he died from a heart attack was undermined when the Guardian obtained video footage showing a riot officer striking the 47-year-old with a baton and shoving him to the ground shortly before he collapsed and died.

In a written statement the CPS admitted that there was sufficient evidence to bring a charge of assault against the officer, but claimed a host of technical reasons meant he could not be charged.

Tomlinson’s stepson Paul King, flanked by his mother, Julia, said: “It’s been a huge cover-up and they’re incompetent.”

King said: “He [Starmer] has just admitted on TV that a copper assaulted our dad. But he hasn’t done anything. He’s the man in charge … why hasn’t he charged him?

“They knew that if they dragged this out long enough, they would avoid charges. They knew just what they were doing. They’ve pulled us through a hedge backwards – now we have to go on living our lives.”

Is anybody surprised by this? Has there ever been a high profile case of police murder where the subsequent investigation led to a meaningful conviction, rather than at best a slap on the wrist? Ian Tomlinson, Jean Charles de Menezes, Harry Stanley, going all the way back to Blair Peach or Liddle Towers, ther have always been reasons why a prosecution could not happen or an officer was “punished enough” already. Who watches the watchmen is not just the tagline to that Alan Moore comic but also the single most important question we can ask about the police and justice system. Can we trust the police not to kill is for no reason? Can we trust them not to cover up if own of their own does kill us? Can we trust the justice system to investigate and prosecute, never mind convict a police officer when the worst does happen? So far, the answer to all these questions is no…

G20 does Toronto

Published on July 1, 20103 Comments

Civil liberties suffered, yet Black Block weenies could still riot. Two stories that caught my eye from Toronto, that show how ridiculous police repression and misrepresentation has become. Before the G20 meeting it had been announced that not just the places the great and good would meet would out of bounds, not just the security fence supposed to protect it, but that anywhere within a radius of five metres from the fence would be verboten. Walk close to the fence and you could be arrested without course, based on an old World War II era law supposed to deal with enemy sabotage. Funny thing is, this widely announced five metre rule did not exist:

The rule seemed straightforward when the news broke last Friday that the Ontario government made a regulatory change to a little-known act in secret.

Come within five metres of the summit security fence and you’d better have some identification or risk arrest.

The temporary regulation, which was passed in secret June 2, did decree that all streets and sidewalks inside the fence were a public work until 11:59 p.m. Monday. Under the Ontario Public Works Protection Act, that allowed police to search people trying to enter that area.

But there was no power to search people coming within five metres of the fence, said ministry spokeswoman Laura Blondeau.

“The area designated by the regulation as a public work does not extend outside the boundary of the fence,” Ms. Blondeau said.

Asked Tuesday if there actually was a five-metre rule given the ministry’s clarification, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair smiled and said, “No, but I was trying to keep the criminals out.”

In the grand scheme of things this may sound like only a little fib, compared to all the other security measures in place for the G20, the ones that were legal. However, it does show how easy it is for any police force to go beyond the already over broad powers handed to them by a compliant government and parliament. It’s not just Canada either, as this story of a young photographer being arrested for taking pictures of an army cadet parade in Romford shows. Again it shows police officers making up laws to attack behaviour they disagree with or find suspicious without it being actually illegal.

Back to the G20. Despite the intense security measures and the hordes of police on the streets, the socalled Black Bloc “activists” still managed to rampage through the city without consequences, as the eyewitness account in the video below shows.

While violent wankers got no hindrance from the police, unrelated proper peaceful demonstrators were attacked and afterwards the “threat” they presented was monstrously inflated:

Chief Bill Blair, who told reporters the items were evidence of the protesters’ intent, singled out arrows covered in sports socks, which he said were designed to be dipped in a flammable liquid and set ablaze.

However, the arrows belong to Brian Barrett, a 25-year-old landscaper who was heading to a role-playing fantasy game when he was stopped at Union Station on Saturday morning. Police took his jousting gear but let Mr. Barrett go, saying it was a case of bad timing.

In addition to the arrows – which Mr. Barrett made safe for live-action role playing by cutting off the pointy ends and attaching a bit of pool noodle covered in socks – police displayed his metal body armour, foam shields and several clubs made of plastic tubing covered with foam and fabric.

That’s right, the “weapons” above where from some poor LARPer, Live Action Role Player caught up in the G20 circus! Ridiculous but evidence again for how much police forces will lie to justify their actions. As said, this is something that’s ingrained in many if not most police officers, but it also serves a higher, more political goal. The story about the G20 protests thanks to this strategy of stringent security, threat inflation and police repression has never been about the merits of the protests, but only about whether all these precautions were needed and if the police didn’t go too far. It has become a law and order story, rather than a political one.

Police violence at Rotterdam May Day demo

Published on May 4, 20101 Comment

From a posting on Marxmail, an eyewitness account of police violence against this year’s May Day celebrations in Rotterdam:

Here’s some video I shot of the police attacking the Mayday demo in Rotterdam. I realize that police attack demos somewhere in the world every day, but this was rather significant because this demo has been held traditionally (for 30 years I understand) on mayday starting at the city hall in Rotterdam, but this time the police announced that we wouldn’t be allowed to march (supposedly because the sticks our flags were on could be “weapons”) and then told us we had to clear out of the area completely. After moving in and causing people to retreat and forcing us into smaller groups, they attacked the group still in front of the building with clubs, horses, and a dog, arresting 14. I only realized how close I got to being trampled by a horse after watching my own video!

http://www.xs4all.nl/~meisner/1meiRotterdam2010/CLIP0165.AVI
http://www.xs4all.nl/~meisner/1meiRotterdam2010/CLIP0175.AVI

Why the police attacked this time (again, for a traditional demo with a permit) isn’t clear, but might reflect a strategic shift against protest in context of the economic crisis. Or it might just be that they thought they could get away with it, partly since the demo was a lot smaller (about 500) than the usual 1-2000 (due to poorer organizing this year, I think). But this is held every year more or less without incident, so no one expected it. And I understand that the police also arrested people at the Mayday demo in Nijmegen, so this might signal a crackdown on the left and protesting in NL.

I’ve seen the excuse about sticks/flagpoles as “dangerous weapons” used before when police needed some reason to harass a demo, both here and in the UK. It’s absurd, but can be sold to the newspapers. The original poster overthinks the reasons for this police aggression; I doubt that the police has explicitely gotten orders to crack down on political protests. If I had to guess I’d think that it’s a side effect to the Rotterdam police overreacting to what happened at the Hoek van Holland beach party of August last year — where inept policing and rioting football hooligans led to the police accidently shooting and killing an innocent man. Since then the Rotterdam police has become a lot harsher in dealing with potentially dangerous situations and since leftist demonstrations of this kind have always been seen as worrisome by them, it’s no surprise that this happened. Wrong, but not surprising.