What we are seeing already from police and the Integrated Security
Unit (ISU) as the G20 meetings in Toronto draw closer, is the widespread
manipulation of public sentiment to the effect that protesters are ‘dangerous’,
‘criminal’, and hell-bent on violence and destruction -- the fabrication of a
pre-justification for the deployment of future violence by the state.
Effectively using terror to trounce our right to democratic
protest and free speech, members of the ISU, in connection with CSIS agents,
have repeatedly harassed non-violent activists in a manner more commonly seen
in countries with a secret police, public denunciations, and disappearances.
The police have publicly advertised the purchase of new weapons to use against protesters, including an LRAD system, new riot gear, and hundreds of new
cameras; they have paraded in front of the media in a massively-aggressive show
of force; and they have leaked internal communications requesting the services
of area doctors and the existence of a converted factory lot that will serve as
a makeshift concentration camp for arrested demonstrators. For the police, the
summits represent a massive public windfall of both financial and social
capital with which to purchase new toys and to openly bend the law.
The police are effectively trying to deter less-committed,
less-radical, and first-time activists from ever showing up while
simultaneously antagonizing more radical elements by picking a fight they
already know they can win. The police and the media are happy to go out of
their way to stress how a majority of the 1.2 billion dollars being spent on
security for the summits is clearly not to protect a bunch of VIPs from
terrorists (who may crash their fancy dinner parties), but rather simply to
protect those VIPs from having their precious schmoozing interrupted by
informed and angry citizens wishing to express themselves freely outside of the
meetings.
Even 9 years ago, when the G8 met in Genoa , Italy
Predictably, the police also turned out in force, viciously
attacking and injuring more than 400 unarmed civilians (caught in the wrong
place at the wrong time), journalists, and activists with a combination of
chemical weapons and less-lethal projectiles. Mass arrests were not yet common
police practice, but those 300 or so arrested were subject to verbal
intimidation, beatings, and the threat of rape. Genoa also marked the first
recorded death of a protestor at a demonstration in the Western world (since
the movement gained momentum in Seattle in 1999), when Carlo Giuliani was shot
in the head and run-over, twice, by a member of Italy’s military police, the
Carabinieri.
If the scenes on the streets of Genoa Diaz School
In a rare move, just last month, twenty-five members of the police
were found guilty of planting evidence, faking the stabbing of an officer in
order to frame the activists, causing grievous bodily harm, and wrongful
arrest.
Much like the build-up of hysteria prior to the G20 meetings in
Toronto later this month, the UK media all but predicted a bloody revolution in
the streets before G20 leaders gathered in London in April 2009. The final cost
of ‘Operation Glencoe’ to British taxpayers? Just over £1,600 per protester.
With the pretext of confronting and
stopping ‘violent’ protestors already firmly in place, the police could get
about doing what it is they actually do: protect, with weapons and
physical/psychological violence, a bunch of people that should rightly be
considered criminals (e.g., presidents implicated in war crimes and torture,
bankers who have stolen from the poor to give money to their rich friends,
politicians calling for ‘austerity’ through the gutting of social spending,
etc.) from a bunch of unarmed citizens that rightly do not want them eating
lobster dinners in their city.
As the protests approached, the chairman
of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Andrew Dismore, a British MP, said
that, "The police have a duty under the Human Rights Act to facilitate
protest and not frustrate it. If they act in a confrontational way and use
confrontation language, they will start to provoke the kind of behaviour they
are seeking to prevent.”
As is common, the police instituted their
tried-and-true strategy of provoking small disturbances as a justification for
mass arrests and the lock-down of certain areas, while isolating and cornering
(now called ‘kettling’) smaller and more radical groups in order to better
attack and intimidate them.
Not only did police officers openly
assault non-violent demonstrators, including women and the elderly, but
officers were also implicated in the death of a newspaper salesman simply on
his way home from work. Ian Tomlinson, 47, was struck by batons and shoved to
the ground from behind before dying on the sidewalk moments later. Initially,
the police tried to hide the fact that they had assaulted the man prior to his
death, and even went so far as to blame demonstrators for hampering the
response time of medics. Unfortunately for the police, video evidence suggested
otherwise.
In response to comments later made by the
police watchdog, Chief Inspector of Constabulary Denis O’Connor, that the
violence by police was “unacceptable” and that it was “hugely concerning” to
see evidence of officers breaking from their colleagues to openly assault people,
the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers called the response
“proportionate” and said, “I can’t find any other country that doesn’t use
water cannon, CS gas or rubber bullets.” Well, then!
For a mere fraction of the security costs associated with the
upcoming Canadian summits, Pittsburgh police in September 2009 got to have all
kinds of fun bashing non-violent protestors, tear-gassing students and faculty
on a university campus, and generally doing whatever they could to make the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution look like a vague suggestion.
Police deployed fencing, checkpoints, and roadblocks throughout the downtown
core, and used sound cannons, less-lethal rounds of ammunition, tear gas, and
pepper spray against demonstrators. They also arrested journalists and people
just going about their business. In apparent disregard for the right to
peacefully assemble, the security services played the following message across
their new LRAD speakers: "BY
ORDER OF THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH
The message was clear: the city is not yours, you do not have the
right to protest, go home, and shut up.
Now, I am not against individual cops. I have friends and family
who are cops. They are great people. Two cops I had a long conversation with in
Washington once were receptive to my arguments (despite not being ‘allowed’ to
talk to demonstrators), and my arresting officer in NYC conveniently hid the
fact that I was wearing a bandana so that I wouldn’t be charged with the more
serious crime of inciting a riot under that city’s ridiculous no-mask law of
1845. Cops help little old women and save people from harm. There is no doubt
about that.
What I am against, however, is the institution. I have only
written about policing at demonstrations, but you need not look far for
evidence of racial profiling, corruption, homophobia, sexism, and the
testosterone-fueled reactionary crap that results from putting the law and a
gun in the hands of every member of a very large gang. Because I’m lucky enough
to be a working class white heterosexual male, I rarely, if ever, come into
contact with the police outside of a demonstration. It’s on the street during a
protest that I am most likely to come up against an institution that has
assaulted me with pepper spray and tear gas, which has arrested me and held me
longer than is legal. (All for perfectly legal activities, I might add.) It is
the poor, the homeless, and visible minorities that are on the front lines of
the battle against the police. They might actually get a slight reprieve from
the violence and harassment the constantly face during the G20 while 5,000 cops
are busy destroying democracy in and around the fence.
The police, as an institution, are not neutral defenders of the
law. They are armed to protect the rich from the poor, to protect criminal
world leaders from their citizens, to follow orders in a military chain of
command. They have an agenda, and it isn’t until you’re on the other side of
that agenda that you truly realize what that storm trooper cop dressed in riot
gear really represents.
Is it possible the police in Toronto
Unfortunately, it is more likely, based on past and current
evidence, that the police will instead use some combination of minor property
damage and police provocateurs (yes, they do that) as a justification to
unleash an arsenal of weaponry on non-violent and unarmed citizens. They will
break the law, they will injure, they will scare, and they will arrest.
Hopefully this time they don’t kill anyone.
And instead of arresting the real criminals, the ones inside the
meeting, instead of doing the right thing, of following the law and the
constitution, of making me eat my words, of risking becoming heroes to millions
of people by going into the summit and arresting the war criminals and bankers,
the people guilty of the real violence and the real destruction, they will,
almost assuredly, prove me right.
So get ready for the coming storm, Toronto
(That is, if the police haven’t scared
everyone away already.)
No comments:
Post a Comment