Is ACPO one quango we can all come together and agree needs killing off? It is fast becoming some sort of Guild of Chief Headbashers, like something out of Ankh-Morpork.

So if you now attend a demonstration, in the full knowledge that the police have proposed using this technique, you have consented to it and can no longer complain?

Fellow traveller, thats a bit like saying that if the government pass a law against wearing green, and you ear green in full knowledge of the consequences, then you have fully aconsented to being put in prison so you can no longer complain. People should be allowed to wear green without having to accept they will suffer certain repressive consequences. THe same goes for demonstrating.

Yes, I agree fully with your point about the outrageous nature of the proposition. I simply wanted to elucidate the police position – that if they’ve warned you beforehand about the use of a measure, they believe you’ve agreed to it by showing up. A bit like fixing a warning notice ‘proceed at one’s own risk’ – the responsibility for any bad consequences now rests with the person who decides to ignore the warning.

oooh sorry – misinterpreted you.

From: http://www.acpo.police.uk/about.html

“The Association [ACPO] has the status of a private company limited by guarantee. As such, it conforms to the requirements of company law and its affairs are governed by a Board of Directors.”

ACPO currently has ~280 members, including non-police. It would be nice to know the identity of senior police officers who are eligible for membership but do not subscribe. Members from the Isle of Man or Channel Islands may be members, even though they do not implement UK law.

So we have an organisation that has no legal authority, and is simply a members club in the same manner as a car enthusiast club. However, ACPO has been ordained with special status in the media and parliament. Its opinions are presented as those of all senior officers, but we are given no evidence to support this claim.

You may wish to research how ACPO works to determine the validity of its claims. So visit: http://www.acpo.police.uk/about_pages/free.html

“ACPO is a private company and the Office of the Information Commissioner has confirmed that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to the Association, since Schedule 1 of the Act does not include a definition which covers ACPO.

Nonetheless, ACPO is very willing to place much of its information in the public domain. Some of this information is already published on this web site, mainly in the section headed ‘Policies’.

What ACPO is unable to do is to respond to requests for information under the Act. The organisation is too small and there are too few members of staff to be able to conduct the necessary research and to compile the responses. [More follows at link]”

You see, ACPO is big enough to tell you what to do, but too small to tell you why.

I’ve no problems about the existence of ACPO. But when using policy and information provided by it, everyone needs to remember what it is: a private members club with modest resources.

And who exactly is ACPO, and when did we vote them in?

IME ACPO is just another excuse, or a backdoor rabbit for abusing us.
They don’t got my consent.

Sick, sick, sick, and not democratic or acceptable at all. I can’t believe anyone would agree to work for them. Just another symptom of everything that’s wrong with this country – another unaccountable bunch of cunts that think they can rule us. Sorry for the language, but it’s true.

I never agreed to them, so I won’t answer to them. End of.

I mean, I hate liberal wishy-washy bullshit as much as the next person, but I hate non-democracy even more. And I hate being expected to accept the fact of ACPO even more than that.

Since I’m sure ACPO’s staff is big enough to monitor what’s said on here, may I remind them that they’ve missed a trick?

They should have commissioned a poll to show that the vast majority disapprove of demonstrations and demonstrators (to say nothing of Grauniad readers and Liberal Conspirators)…

Perhaps we could run a sweepstake on which ACPO member will be the first to resign to run as a BNP candidate for Parliament?

Question is, how does one strike the balance between not making life a misery for protestors and preventing protestors from causing damage? Kettling was unpleasant but it was used due to a fear that the protestors weren’t going to be particularly peaceful.

Can we have some taster days, where a bunch of us get together and get kettled by the police, just so we know what we (well, the ones that survive anyway) would be letting ourselves in for on a real demo? Sounds like a good business proposition. Anyone up for it?

No, Zeno, somebody might die.

Maybe I’m missing something here. This post speaks of a report by ACPO into protest policing and links to a Guardian article which is about the report by the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. I am not aware of any report by ACPO into protest policing.

The OP was satire! (and rather good at that)

Irritated by all the fuss about this

Working class football fans have been subject to these tactics and worse from the police for decades, now all of sudden, because a few middle class designer “protestors” had their lattes spilt it’s Police brutality.

@ 12 & 17:

Salient differences, as I spent a lot of time pointing out both on here and at home, are as follows:

1) There is a difference between confronting the violent few at the bank and kettling the entirely peaceful and stationary Climate Camp, followed by 6 hours of sequential, violent assaults which were met by people sitting down with their backs to the paramiliataries: the details of the case I made can be found starting from here and reading forward.

2) Specifically to Richard @12: there was zero risk of vandalism, violence and mayhem at Climate Camp. If you follow through the Culpability series linked above, I’ve also linked the Legal Observer report and a considerable analysis of available evidence.

3) It has become apparent via Tom Brake MP that the police may have been actively, as well as passively, inciting crowds to violence. It would fit a developing pattern: lots of people noticed that there were more cameras than masks in the famous shots of window-breakage, and the Met had the gall to claim, on 8th April, to his family, that Ian Tomlinson was killed by a protester disguised as a TSG officer. There was never any doubt in official minds that there would be violence done, nor that it was to be blamed on the (entirely legal!) protesters at CC.

Also, think about what a kettle is for; it’s for bringing the things inside it to boiling point. The tactic has never been for calming situations down. This observation is just as true when used on football fans as when used on protesters. It’s always been about organising a fight which can trivially be made to look as though the other guy started it, while also guaranteeing your side will win. Bizarrely, that’s exactly what happened. It’s almost as if the people organising this knew exactly what they were doing: even had a strategy, and executed it very effectively. The wheels only come off when it became apparent they’d been caught on camera “executing” said strategy.

4) Football violence and its complete lack of association with legitimate political protest got thoroughly explored at the time. Among other things, I pointed out that the protest and political action group Liberty have for several years been involved in defending and assisting groups of football fans abused by aggressive police tactics. Please note the distinction between fans and firms; and also bear in mind NightJack’s comments, for all they are no longer available, on the subject of ‘truncheons to tazers’.

5) One of the salient differences between what happened at Bishopsgate and the police kettling a football riot is to do with legal intent. CC knew damn well they had no plans to step outside the law. Their protest was legal; they knew it.

Football violence is organised by people who know perfectly well they intend to break the law. It is, in fact, organised with the specific intention of breaking the law.

CC suspected that lawbreaking would happen; after the run-around they got from the Met, and some of the extraordinary media commentary leading up to the event, they could see this coming. Knowing that they had nothing to hide from independent legal observers, they organised some; including four MPs. They did everything right to make sure that these observers would be beyond reproach, even by the Met; including registering all the observers with the Met command team and setting up police liason contacts with police-registered mobile phones.

Football firms setting up a derby fight do not organise legal observer teams. This is because they know in advance that the observers will observe the football hooligans breaking the law.

In the event, the legal observers at Bishopsgate documented considerable evidence of illegal activity by police officers: as expected. They turned over in excess of 400 witness statements, full documentation of their own observer reports and a very coherent timeline of events to a finally galvanised IPCC, who have opened at least three inquiries as a result of the CC legal report combined with the Guardian’s investigations.

Compare and contrast with the Racial Attack firm, an organised violence crew with a very dubious name who wear Milwall’s colours. They tore up Bexleyheath as a celebration of St. George’s Day, and had to be suppressed by TSG units after a 300-strong riot had mauled its way out of the pub car-park and onto the high-street. You will notice that they did not organise a legal observer team first.

The comparison you’re making every time you liken police tactics between these two situations is not “hooligans who break windows” with “hooligans who break heads”; it’s “hooligans who break heads” with “concerned citizens exercising democratic rights”.

JQP ftw.

One senior policeman said on TV that we can demonstrate if we go and talk to the police about it first. So a spontaneous demonstration is not allowed. Police state? Or policed state?

“Football violence and its complete lack of association with legitimate political protest got thoroughly explored at the time. Among other things, I pointed out that the protest and political action group Liberty have for several years been involved in defending and assisting groups of football fans abused by aggressive police tactics. Please note the distinction between fans and firms; and also bear in mind NightJack’s comments, for all they are no longer available, on the subject of ‘truncheons to tazers’.”

I don’t say football violence I said football fans, and I have directly witnessed football fans, including families, women and children being herded like cattle by police horses and made to wait hours to leave grounds.
These are people who have no intent to break the law and have not broken the law. The implication of your answer seems to be that legitimate political protesters should be treated with kid gloves by the police becuse most are peacfull and there are only a minority of troublemakers (as there are in almost all random large crowds) but footballers attending a legal and policed event should expect to be treated badly beause, er, a minority of them are troublemakers.

Racist Millwall fans are a lazy cliche, and wholly unrepresetative of the millions who vist football grounds around the country without incident, every week of the season

Matt @21: A football ground of the sort that you refer to is a totally different kettle of fish from the streets. It is a private place to which people go by consent of the owner. At the same time a league football stadium is a designated sports stadium, subject to rules requiring a police presence (paid for by the club) and with specific duties for the police to perform. I know a steward who works my local soccer stadium, and he explains what they do and what the police do inside the stadium: it is a managed situation, and with the rules quite clear.

But outside on the street is different: I have seen only this last season a kettling on the street after a league football match – it was disgusting, and actually attracted more trouble as youths and even young children appeared and started disturbances outside the police cordon. Even the police officers were embarrassed at having been told to do it. Luckily it lasted less than an hour – and, for the avoidance of doubt, the police behaved perfectly towards the people kettled.

Matt Munro @21:

The distinction you draw so vigorously is the same one I am drawing: your quote is this,

I don’t say football violence I said football fans

and mine:

Please note the distinction between fans and firms

You then go on to say:

These are people who have no intent to break the law and have not broken the law. … The implication of your answer seems to be that legitimate political protesters should be treated with kid gloves by the police becuse most are peacfull and there are only a minority of troublemakers

What I actually said was:

The tactic has never been for calming situations down. This observation is just as true when used on football fans as when used on protesters. … the protest and political action group Liberty have for several years been involved in defending and assisting groups of football fans abused by aggressive police tactics. Please note the distinction between fans and firms;

All of my further commentary is about the well-known phenomenon of organised football violence. I am just as clear as you on the distinction between the innocent fan kettled in a mob and the firm warrior who’s in the same cordon.

However; I am also aware, as a result of the research for the posts I linked, that the Climate Camp action was not taken against a peaceful group with violent elements, it was taken against an entirely peaceful group, geographically distinct from the violent elements via about eight lines of police and four streets.

My comment high-lighted the fact that political groups such as Liberty are, and have been since the late 90s, actively concerned for football fans who have been victims of police tactics. The dichotomy people draw between the two groups is a false one. I have also considered that there is a problem with wide-spread, organised violence among football supporters: this is not a new or challenging observation.

My suggestion that comparing the Climate Campers to the firms is spurious may have been misplaced, if that was not your intention; but I beg forgiveness for the assumption, given how many people were vocal and aggressive in drawing that comparison at the time. I ended up having to make a post about it to decongest other people’s comment threads.

This morning’s IPM on BBC Radio4 featured a retired senior police officer, Dave Rose, who was highly critical of the lack of front line leadership by senior officers at the G20 protest. Exactly what I witnessed at the small kettle on the street after a football match, although previous match aftermaths had been closely supervised by senior officers. So the new guidance that has taken those senior officers away from the frontline has to be reversed.