This account of how Saturday’s anti-lockdown protest in London was policed absolutely disgusts me. I’ve been around the block a bit and have been to many a protest both as a participant and a journalistic observer. I’ve seen the police go in hard both for the wrong reason against the wrong targets but I’ve also seen the police do the same for the correct reason to stop one group tearing the shit out of their opposition for example.

But the sort of policing that is described in the post below which is taken from Lockdown Sceptics is something else. It is policing by officers who are not just seeing violence as a woeful necessity to keep the peace, but something they are actively looking forward to and enjoying. This is policing that does not target the violent, but instead targets, with the intent of intimidating, the ordinary law abiding British subject. This is not the policing that we pay for and deserve, this is a bunch of out of control capricious, uniformed, nasty thugs in action.

There is of course the usual tactics that police use in public order incidents which I’ve seen before such as officers removing their ID numbers and which those of us who were at conflicts such as Wapping and the Poll Tax Protests, recall well. But there was additional stuff here. There was the intimidation of the elderly protestors, the deliberate victimisation and targeting of the vulnerable as if to send a message to the protesters that says ‘If we can do this to this granny what will we do to you?’ What the police are doing with regards the anti-lockdown protesters is of a degree that we’ve not seen in the UK since the miners strike where police violence and intimidation was rife and completely unrestrained by officers in senior management positions. I pray that one day there will be some form of ‘Nuremburg II’ for these revolting excuses for police officers and their leaders

Here’s the article in question from Lockdown Sceptics

The policing of Saturday’s anti-lockdown protests was deeply sinister and unjustifiably heavy-handed. I say that as a seasoned demonstrator and a globe-trotting football fan. I’ve been around the houses and back, but this was different. I could almost taste the lust for violence on the part of the police from the moment I arrived in Parliament Square.

Gangs of highly menacing masked-up policemen came up very close, way beyond the designated two-metre distancing rule. They were towering above me – I’m not a tall woman – peering right in my face, smiling, smug and sneering. By the time I’d been crowded by the third PC asking “What are you doing?”, “Why are you here?”. etc., I could tell that the general vibe was that they were there to intimidate, gloat and bully under the guise of policing in a civilised manner.

There were around 2,000 armoured robocops compared to between 700 and 1,000 concerned citizens, a ratio of over  2:1.  Strange, because when my son was mugged at knifepoint, as many others have been in my locality, there wasn’t a policeman in sight. When my 81 year-old mother, who lives alone, had an attempted break-in, with her front door being kicked in and then a van reversing into it, she had to wait four days before the police visited.

It was a hugely mixed London demographic. Young, old, black, white, dogs, a snowman, a unicorn and a few ghetto blasters. Just freedom-loving people from across our great City questioning the insanity of yet another damaging lockdown and yearning for freedom. Before we even left Parliament Square, there had been a couple of arrests.

An articulate guy with a megaphone was trying to firm up the latest set of completely nonsensical rules. He was asking the police questions and repeating the answers over the megaphone so that we could all understand what we could and couldn’t do. He was aggressively carted away for absolutely nothing. He wasn’t rude or dangerous, he was just trying to communicate.

To be honest, it was the swarms of police that made social distancing impossible. We set off down Whitehall harmlessly in our own small groups, mine no more than three, a really interesting bunch of people, who were there for a range of reasons. We passed the cenotaph in good spirits, until the army of police horses pulled in front of us and then officers blocked our path. It’s a well known police tactic, called kettling, used to break up aggressive groups at football matches. It splits crowds up, but also creates panic and confusion.

Next came the charging groups of big burly riot police, heading toward various random people. It was indiscriminate and remarkably forceful. My camera footage shows the full volley and disproportionate force and how many officers were used to take down people, leaving them face down on the pavement, while they wrenched their hands up behind their backs.

There was no rhyme nor reason to who they picked on or why. I believe that was part of the tactic of wider intimidation. I also noted that many badge numbers were covered up and masks made the police unidentifiable. Again deeply sinister. When people were forced to the ground other officers formed circles around the group to stop observers from seeing or filming what was happening. I politely asked what the person on the ground had done. An officer told me to get back, leave, or I would be arrested.  No amount of questioning elicited an explanation. Eventually, I moved on. Not far because we were blocked and told to go back. There was nowhere for us to go

By now there were more police arriving in vans. To make it even more surreal, I saw a guy dressed as Frosty the Snowman being charged at and thrown to the ground awith such violence you would have thought he had just robbed a jewelry store.  His only “crime” was walking up Whitehall in a Frosty the Snowman suit.

I witnessed another group of police charge down a young woman. The officer who led the charge was well over six-foot tall and he pushed her with such force she flew to the ground. She was screaming. Again, hands behind her back face down.

Really disturbing. I wanted to come to her aid, but was told to leave or be arrested by an incredibly aggressive officer who yelled in my face. His colleague was calmer and told me: “You must go or I promise you, you will be arrested.” But he refused to tell me what for. He was completely out of control – they were all out of control. I backed off and he kept coming towards me shouting at me to leave and move back.  I retreated some more, passing yet another young woman being arrested.

It was an abrupt and rude awakening. I’ve not witnessed anything like this before. How have we been stripped of our freedoms and ended up with our paid servants attacking and abusing citizens in our streets for exercising their right to protest peacefully?