New website for royal wedding, jubilee and olympics policing

Those involved in the Judicial Review into the Metropolitan Police’s apparent policy of pre-emptive arrest have put together this website: PagentryandPrecrime.wordpress to gather all the information (Youtube videos, press releases, personal statements) etc into one place.

At the end of this month (29th) it will be one year since the royal wedding.

At the end of May (28th) the court case into the police’s illegal actions will begin.

The website aims to be a one-stop shop for interested citizens as well as journalists. Pleas spread the word!

Judicial Review of Pre-emptive Royal Wedding Arrests

For anyone wanting to know what happened next about the Royal Wedding/Starbucks Zombie arrests, here it is: we got organised; we found more people who’d suffered the same treatment; we found some brilliant lawyers and we’re going to have a Judicial Review into the Metropolitan Police’s Actions.

Unlike a Private or Civil Law claim (which would have been easier to achieve), this is an investigation which can and will go as high up the chain as is necessary to find out what the policies were and who made what decisions. Private or Civil Law claims would have almost certainly ended up with the police throwing some compensation money at us before we ever got to a judgement – but we, the claimants, said wasn’t about money – we wanted a proper investigation and a judgement at the end of it to set a precedent for future policing.

Today I got the news that we have been granted permission for that Judicial Review. Needless to say I am delighted. Official press release below:

Judicial Review of Preemptive Royal Wedding Arrests

Fifteen people who were arrested preemptively on the day of the Royal Wedding have been granted permission to challenge their arrests by way of Judicial Review. The claimants, who were arrested from different locations across central London, had not committed any crimes. Those arrested included people on their way to peaceful protests, as well as people the police merely suspected of being on their way to protests. None of the claimants were charged and all were released almost as soon as the public celebrations had finished.

“It is our view that the treatment of our clients was unlawful under common law and was in breach of their fundamental rights under the European Court of Human Rights articles 5, 8, 10 and 11,” said a spokesperson from Bhatt Murphy. “The apparent existence of an underlying policy that resulted in those arrests is a matter of considerable concern with implications for all those engaged in peaceful dissent or protest.”

Those arrested include members of the ‘Charing Cross 10’ who were on their way to a republican street party, the ‘Starbucks Zombies’ who were arrested from an Oxford Street branch of Starbucks for wearing zombie fancy dress, and a man who was simply walking in London and was stopped and arrested by plainclothes officers because he was a ‘known activist’. The arrests have been dubbed ‘precrime’ in many circles.

The arrests, all said to be to prevent anticipated breach of the peace, are part of a trend on the part of Metropolitan Police of using increasingly heavy-handed tactics against peaceful protestors, which manifested itself most recently in the threat to use rubber bullets against students protesting against the rise in tuition fees. Such tactics create a ‘chilling effect’ which dissuades others from protesting in the future.

The use of such tactics, which on the day of the royal wedding appears to have gone so far as to include a policy of carrying out preemptive arrests in order to intercept and prevent public protest and other dissent, raises questions of constitutional significance with regard to the role of policing in a democracy. The granting of permission for a Judicial Review means that those tactics will now be subject to the full scrutiny of the High Court in a 5 day hearing some time in the next year.

Bhatt Murphy is a leading civil liberties firm which specialises in police misconduct, prisoners’ rights, deaths in custody and immigration detention.

Open Letter to William and Catherine Windsor re: Precrime Arrests

Dear William and Catherine Windsor,

Congratulations on the wedding. How’s married life treating you? As per your instructions, in lieu of a gift, I will be making a donation to charity. I’ve chosen a legal aid charity. There’s some self-interest in that choice, but I’ll get to that later.

I don’t mean to put a dampener on things, but I would like to bring to your attention that on the day of your wedding (and even, in various incidents, the day before your wedding) the Metropolitan Police force arrested over a hundred people pre-emptively on the suspicion that they may, in the future, breach the peace.

People who had not broken any laws were detained at your grandmother’s/grandmother-in-law’s pleasure.

This is illegal, and constitutes an abuse of police powers.

These people were not a cohesive group and did not have cohesive aims. Some of them were protesting the cuts, some were republicans, some of them (myself included) did not have any stated aims at all, we just looked unconventional. All these people had in common was that the Metropolitan Police thought they looked like they may, in the future, breach the peace or cause a public nuisance.

When they were arrested some laughed – initially, some cried, some were fairly uninteresting in their behaviour, though they were dressed a bit funny. (That’s me in the bridesmaid’s dress – look, I made an effort!)

In this massive, sweeping abuse of police power people were arrested for possession of signs, possession of pens, and possession of their own credit cards.

If this sounds laughable that’s because it is – but it’s also deadly serious. The police are there to make the country safe for all the people they serve, not to silence the first sign of possible dissent. You, as heirs to the throne, are more than aware of the freedoms this country has fought for, and surely appreciate that this cannot continue unchecked.

On the day of your wedding, indeed for your wedding, it got nasty. Really nasty: retired anthropology professor Chris Knight was detained for 25 hours and his house and car were searched multiple times; pacifist protester Charlie Veitch was moved to an undisclosed location and denied his right to a phonecall or a lawyer; two transgender people were sexually assaulted by the police; at least two people were arrested on spurious grounds after filming others’ arrests, and more cases are coming to light as the days go on.

Whilst I’m not saying that these sweeping abuses were your fault, they were absolutely done in your name. We even have a policeman on video saying so in as many words 57 seconds in to this video here.

Therefore, I would be most grateful if you, the happy couple – and heirs to the throne – could let the Metropolitan Police know that you disapprove of these illegal and abusive actions.

Sincerely,

Hannah Eiseman-Renyard