(a) Green Diplomat?

I know some people hate cut-and-paste news blogs, but I just wanted to make sure at least a couple of people know about this. My personal feeling is that MPs should be holding police to account on behalf of their constituents, not being the police’s apologists.

Via email:

Via The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/15/greenpolitics-police

*Minister Vernon Coaker apologises for misleading MPs over police injuries

*Home Office minister says sorry to parliament after Guardian reveals most police injuries from climate protest were from insects or heat

A minister has apologised to parliament for telling MPs that 70 police officers were hurt during a climate change protest after the Guardian revealed that most of the injuries were inflicted by insects or the heat.

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, told MPs at Commons question time today: “I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn’t the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled.”

The apology followed a Freedom of Information request from the Liberal Democrats, which showed that no officers in the £5.9m police operation at Kingsnorth power station in Kent during August had been injured by protesters. Instead, police records showed that their medical unit had dealt mostly with toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and “possible bee stings”.

David Howarth, the Lib Dems’ justice spokesman, asked Coaker to “revise his conclusion” that the policing was “proportionate and appropriate”.

“Large numbers of protesters were injured at the hands of the police, especially by baton injuries,” he said.

Coaker said that he would be meeting with representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers to discuss the “lessons to be learned” from Kingsnorth and that the National Police Improvement Agency was carrying out an inquiry into the handling of the demonstration.

Labour’s David Taylor said: “When people expressed concerns about the vigour and resources devoted by the police to the Kingsnorth climate camp we were told that it was justified because there were dozens of injuries that occurred. Unless the protesters are to be held responsible for wasps and the weather, aren’t we to conclude that the justification used at that time was wholly bogus and vacuous?”

===================================

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/15/kingsnorth-climate-change-environment-police

*Those Kingsnorth police injuries in full: six insect bites and a toothache

*• Kent force admits no officers hurt by protests
• £5.9m police operation ‘colossal waste of money’

John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian, Monday 15 December 2008

When climate camp protesters descended on the site of the Kingsnorth power station for a week-long summer demonstration, the scale of the police operation to cope with them was enormous.

Police were accused of using aggressive tactics, confiscating everything from toilet rolls and board games to generators and hammers. But ministers justified what they called the “proportionate” £5.9m cost of the operation, pointing out that 70 officers had been injured in the course of their duties.

But data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act puts a rather different slant on the nature of those injuries, disclosing that not one was sustained in clashes with demonstrators.

Papers acquired by the Liberal Democrats via Freedom of Information requests show that the 1,500 officers policing the Kingsnorth climate camp near the Medway estuary in Kent, suffered only 12 reportable injuries during the protest during August.

The Home Office has now admitted that the protesters had not been responsible for any injuries. In a three-line written answer to a
parliamentary question, the Home Office minister Vernon Coaker wrote to the Lib Dem justice spokesman, David Howarth, saying: “Kent police have informed the Home Office that there were no recorded injuries sustained as a result of direct contact with the protesters.”

Only four of the 12 reportable injuries involved any contact with protesters at all and all were at the lowest level of seriousness with no further action taken.

The other injuries reported included “stung on finger by possible wasp”; “officer injured sitting in car”; and “officer succumbed to sun and heat”. One officer cut his arm on a fence when climbing over it, another cut his finger while mending a car, and one “used leg to open door and next day had pain in lower back”.

A separate breakdown of the 33 patients treated by the police tactical medicine unit at the climate camp shows that three officers had succumbed to heat exhaustion, three had toothache, six were bitten by insects, and others had diarrhoea, had cut their finger or had headaches.

Coaker claimed in a parliamentary debate in September that the police had acted “appropriately and proportionately”, despite hundreds of complaints over unnecessarily heavy policing and calls for an investigation of police conduct by MPs, MEPs, councillors and members of the public.

Norman Baker, the Lib Dem MP for Lewes, who had called previously for an investigation of police tactics, said: “I personally witnessed unnecessarily aggressive policing, unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters, an extraordinary number of police on site, and tactics such as confiscating toilet rolls, board games and clown costumes from what I saw to be peaceful demonstrators.”

The list of items deemed potentially dangerous by police and seized from protesters included glue, marker pens, board games, cushions, carpet, wood, paint, and scissors as well as bicycle locks which could have been used to lock protesters to fences. Police also seized anything that could have been used to set up camp, including spades and duct tape, generators and hammers and nails.

Howarth said: “That the minister could defend as ‘proportionate’ a £5.9m policing operation in which there was not a single injury to police officers caused by the protesters beggars belief. The threat posed by environmental direct action is being systematically overblown by both the government and the police.

“I hope the government and the police will now stop trying to portray peaceful protesters as somehow equivalent to terrorists or violent extremists. In light of this new evidence, one has to ask, were climate campers so heavily policed because they posed any genuine threat of violence, or because they posed a challenge to government policy?”

Nick Thorpe, a spokesman for the climate camp, said: “Policing of peaceful protest has become increasingly heavy-handed. We saw thousands of officers swarming around a legal camp in a colossal waste of public money. The police and the government claimed there was a ‘violent minority’ of protesters but this Home Office admission reveals this as a complete fiction.”