PC plod hasn’t learned much from the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes it seems, as the experiences of David Mery, arrested for suspicious behaviour on the Underground, shows:
7.21 pm: I enter Southwark tube station, passing uniformed police by the entrance, and more police beyond the gate. I walk down to the platform, peering down at the steps as, thanks to a small eye infection, I’m wearing specs instead of my usual contact lenses. The next train is scheduled to arrive in a few minutes. As other people drift on to the platform, I sit down against the wall with my rucksack still on my back. I check for messages on my phone, then take out a printout of an article about Wikipedia from inside my jacket and begin to read.
The train enters the station. Uniformed police officers appear on the platform and surround me. They must immediately notice my French accent, still strong after living more than 12 years in London.
They handcuff me, hands behind my back, and take my rucksack out of my sight. They explain that this is for my safety, and that they are acting under the authority of the Terrorism Act. I am told that I am being stopped and searched because:
- they found my behaviour suspicious from direct observation and then from watching me on the CCTV system;
- I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates;
- two other men entered the station at about the same time as me;
- I am wearing a jacket “too warm for the season”;
- I am carrying a bulky rucksack, and kept my rucksack with me at all times;
- I looked at people coming on the platform;
- I played with my phone and then took a paper from inside my jacket.
This is not a list of suspicious behaviour, this is a list of pretexts under which anybody can be arrested. In fact, one of those criteria, keeping a “bulky rucksack” with you at all times is in direct conflict with what every Londoner has been taught for over twenty years, to always keep your luggage with you in case it is mistaken for an IRA bomb! If you can be arrested for that, you can be arrested for anything and any pretence at living in a free society is gone.
What is worse, as the article makes clear, this whole incident will be kept in police databases, in the UK and abroad for an unknown period of time, marking Mery as a suspicious character –in other words this wrongful arrest will in itself make it much more likely Mery will be arrested again! No smoke without a fire after all and if the police stopped you once, they must have had a good reason…