Right to protest & free expression
18-08-2012
Netpol Report into the policing of protest
A detailed report launched on 24 July by the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) highlights how promises made by the police to ‘adapt to protest’ after 2009′s G20 demonstrations in London have been forgotten in a remarkably short space of time and a far more intolerant ‘total policing’ style response to protesters has developed in the UK.
The report, which covers a fourteen month period from late 2010 to the end of 2011, paints a bleak picture of the state of the freedom to protest in the UK. It documents how the tactic of containment known as ‘kettling’, the use of solid steel barriers to restrict the movement of protesters, the intrusive and excessive use of stop & search and data gathering, and the pre-emptive arrests of people who have committed no crime, have combined to enable an effective clamp-down on almost all forms of popular street-level dissent.
The report can be downloaded here:
http://netpol.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/wainwright-report-final1.pdf