Police are not confused about how much force they can use in what situation - given past abuses of their authority they can't get a blank cheque

Claims made by police spokesmen on BBC News 24 that police are “confused” about what level of force they can use and that this is making it difficult for them to deal with rioters need to be taken with a huge pile of salt. The line they’re pushing is that in the past police have ended up in court for simply trying to prevent crimes. They know that’s a lie. The only police who ended up in court or fired were those involved in the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes after massive incompetence by senior officers given the power of life and death over others; and others like the officer who repeatedly assaulted bypasser Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests; the officer who attacked the loud but tiny environmentalist protester Nicola Fisher with a baton (and got off with it) ; and the officer who dragged a prisoner across a police station before throwing her face down into a cell.

Others who should be facing charges of grievous bodly harm and endangering lives have got off with it. They include the policeman who beat peaceful student protester Alfie Meadows so hard with a baton that he would have died if he hadn’t had emergency brain surgery – and the officers who tried to turn the ambulance carrying him away from the nearest hospital as protesters being treated in the same hospital as injured police offended their sensibilities (presumably on the usual theory held by the stupidest and worst police officers that all protesters are criminals).

 Some police spokesmen are trying to use the riots to reverse planned job and funding cuts. That’s fair enough. I support increasing the number of police and i'd guess most people do. However they’re also using them to try to demand a blank cheque to use any amount of force they feel like in any situation and to try to get the public to place them above the law. That won’t wash.

If they’re confused about how much force they can use when they’re not up to the job – they can use what the law allows – the amount required to defend themselves and others and to prevent serious crimes – and no more.

No blank cheques to beat up anyone they like.

The initial rioting in Tottenham seems to have been caused by police shooting Mark Duggan (who may or may not have been armed but we now know definitely did not fire first – or at all) and by fifteen riot police subsequently beating a single 16 year old girl who was one of a large group of family, friends and neighbours of Duggan demanding answers from them, after she threw a leaflet and possibly a stone. That underlines the fact that giving the police a blank cheque to do as they please and believing them without question (even though their spokespeople lied about De Menezes , Tomlinson and other cases) will not make the public safer or reduce crime, but is likely to cause it instead.

The police know that when they act in self-defence or the defence of others with the amount of force necessary in the situation they’ll have public support and be acting within the law. They have to be in no more doubt than the rioters that they can’t launch random attacks on people or break the law without facing consequences. If the police were allowed to be above the law, it would only breed contempt for it and them, which would be bad for everyone.

Riot police beating 16 year old girl protesting Duggan shooting may have sparked the first riots - in Tottenham , London

The riots across London and other English cities have obviously involved a lot of opportunist theft and violence many actions that can’t be justified in any way, like the burning of public housing and three men run over and killed by a hit and run driver in Manchester – and far from it all being children out of control, there are plenty of looters in their 20s and some parents sending their children to loot shops according to eyewitnesses.

The shooting of Mark Duggan doesn’t seem to have been the only spark that started the first riots, in the Tottenham area of London, though. Reports by eyewitnesses  quoted on the Guardian website say that after Duggan was shot and killed by armed police, Tottenham community leaders and Duggan’s partner, family, friends and neighbours, among others, came on to the street to demand to know exactly what had happened. Hours later, with no answers provided, a 16 year old girl approached a line of riot police saying “We need answers, talk to us” and throwing a leaflet and possibly a stone at them. Fifteen riot police then jumped on her with shields and batons and began to beat her, triggering a riot (1).

Various eye-witnesses all agree that the initial gathering in the street was peaceful. Some claim some of the group were armed and carrying petrol, ready for looting and burning, though others deny this (2).

The media has quoted Metropolitan police spokespeople as saying Duggan was a “well-known” “major player” (i.e senior gangster) who was armed with a gun at the time he was shot (3).

This might be true. Or it might not. Metropolitan police spokespeople have said many things that turned out to be completely untrue about people they’ve shot the wrong people dead in the past, most notably Jean Charles De Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot as a suspected suicide bomber in in an operation involving unbelievable levels of incompetence, carelessness and stupidity from people trusted with the powers of life and death over others.

Met spokespeople claimed De Menezes ‘jumped the ticket barrier’ on entering an underground station (CCTV footage and eye-witnesses disproved this), claimed he was wearing a bulky jacket with wires coming out of it (again proven false) and that police had called in medics by helicopter to try to revive him after the shooting (which seems pretty unlikely since they’d shot him 8 times in the head).

Similar lies by police came in the case of Ian Tomlinson, a newsagent walking home, who was ‘kettled’ along with (mostly peaceful) G20 protesters after a handful of protesters smashed a bank window. Police then set a dog on him and one officer hit him with a baton and shoved him twice, resulting in his death. They then invented stories about protesters pelting them with bottles as they tried to save the life of Tomlinson, who had supposedly had a heart attack due to the protesters’ actions. They went on to employ a coroner known to be dishonest to deal with the post-mortem. (In this case the policeman involved was eventually fired).

This does not prove they are lying about Duggan having had a gun, but it means the word of the police can’t be automatically trusted and we have to wait for a full investigation to find out the facts.

Initial investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission have found that the police’s original claim that Duggan was shot after firing on armed police officers is wrong. IPCC investigators found the bullet lodged in one officer’s radio, which Duggan had supposedly fired,  was a police issue one, not the kind of ammunition in the gun they claim Duggan had (4). This suggests that the police fired first, the police were the only ones who fired ; and at least one police officer lied about this, though it’s possible other police genuinely believed Duggan had fired the shot that hit the radio.

We can’t be certain whether either side is telling the truth or the whole truth here of course, about the shooting or the beating, but given the extremely poor record on honesty of Metropolitan Police spokespeople, anyone taking claims as fact without waiting for an inquiry will be relying on a source that has proven less than reliable in the past.

(1) = Guardian.co.uk 07 Aug 2011 ‘Tottenham riots: a peaceful protest, then suddenly all hell broke loose’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riots-peaceful-protest

(2) = See (1) above

(3) = Telegraph 08 Aug 2011 ‘London riots: Dead man Mark Duggan was a known gangster who lived by the gun’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8687403/London-riots-Dead-man-Mark-Duggan-was-a-known-gangster-who-lived-by-the-gun.html

(4) = Guardian.co.uk 09 Aug 2011 ‘Mark Duggan did not shoot at police, says IPCC’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/mark-duggan-police-ipcc

Racism, sexism and religious sectarianism are problems for all democracries - not just for Arab democratisation

There are also some serious problems coming from some of the opponents of the dictatorship, who don’t seem that keen on democracy being extended to women or Coptic Christians. Women protesting for equal rights in Tahrir Square were threatened, shouted down and told that this was the “wrong time” to discuss equality for women and that their demands were “against Islam”, while days earlier 12 people were killed in fighting between Muslims and Coptic Christians in Cairo (1) – (2).

In Libya both sides have attacked migrant workers, Gaddafi’s people attacking them as suspected “foreign agents” while some rebels and protesters attack them as suspected “foreign mercenaries” (3) – (4) This is part of a long history of racist attacks on migrant workers in riots in Libya – for instance in September 2000 around a dozen migrant workers were killed in rioting against them by Libyans (though rioters attacking black migrant workers with guns, iron bars and cars in Italy is not unknown either) (5) – (6).

However, looking at the history of other democracies, this is not unusual. There were riots attacking blacks by whites and lynchings of black people in the North of America during the American Civil War when Lincoln announced black units would be fighting alongside white ones in the Union army; and it was a century later before desegregation in the Southern states (7). Democratisation is slow, difficult and uneven. It can take decades and centuries, not just months – and the process can slip backwards or be reversed as well as going forwards. So these are no reasons to think that Arab countries can’t become democracies too, apart from the fact that many protesters believe the dictatorship’s secret police may have been stirring up trouble between different groups.

(1) = Christian Science Monitor 08 Mar 2011 ‘In Egypt's Tahrir Square, women attacked at rally on International Women's Day’, http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110308/wl_csm/368302

(2) = Guardian.co.uk 09 Mar 2011 ‘Muslim-Christian clashes in Cairo leave 11 dead’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/09/muslim-christian-clashes-cairo

(3) = Human Rights Watch 26 Feb 2011 ‘Libya: Security Forces Fire on Protesters in Western City’,http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/02/26/libya-security-forces-fire-protesters-western-city

(4) = Al Jazeera English 28 Feb 2011 ‘African migrants targeted in Libya’,http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122865814378541.html

(5) =Ronald Bruce St. John (2008) ‘Libya : From Colony to Independence’, Oneworld publications, Oxford, UK, 2008, p 228 of paperback edition

(6) =Human Rights Watch 04 Feb 2010 ‘Italy: Speed Investigations of Rosarno Attacks’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/02/04/italy-speed-investigations-rosarno-attacks

(7) = Leslie M. Harris (2003) ‘In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863