Printing Police Lies

The policing of the G20 protests at the beginning of this month was routine. Policemen hiding their identification numbers and beating up peaceful protesters is as much a part of British life as grey skies and red buses. Across 20 years of protests, I have seen policemen swapping their jackets to avoid identification, hurling people against vans and into walls and whomping old ladies over the head with batons ...

The police behave like this, despite the opprobrium of left and right, because they know they will get away with it. They know that the government won’t rein them in; that the Independent Police Complaints Commission eats out of their hands; that the sternest sanction an officer can expect for beating or killing a passer-by is some extended gardening leave. They know that in a few days’ time the rightwing press will revert to publishing stories about the anarchist baby-eaters seeking to turn Britain into a bloodbath.

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G20 police blog boasts about a 'good kicking'