Sunday, January 16, 2011

just checking

As Edward Woollard starts his two years and eight months sentence for dropping a fire extinguisher off Tory Party HQ,

Commander Bob Broadhurst, the Metropolitan police's head of public order, said: "We all recognise and respect the fundamental right to peaceful protest.

Is this the same Commander Bob Broadhurst whose boss who, in the wake of the Mark Kennedy unmasking, is getting a stern letter from Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee?

"During our inquiry into the G20 protests, [MPs] explicitly asked Sir Paul Stephenson and commander Bob Broadhurst about the deployment of undercover officers," said Vaz. "I am disappointed they appear not to have given us the full facts."

Is this the same Bob Broadhurst who spent the weeks leading up to 2009's G20 protests talking up the threat of unrest so any police action would seem justified?

Is it the same Bob Broadhurst who was in charge of the Met's G20 operation on the day, where officers were sent in to baton people exercising their 'fundamental right to peaceful protest', and continued even as they held their hands in the air and chanted 'this is not a riot'?



Is it the same Bob Broadhurst who, after all the kettling, bloodshed and death inflicted by police, said 'My officers did what I asked them to'?

2 comments:

Dunc said...

"We all recognise and respect the fundamental right to peaceful protest."

Well, as long as it's the right sort of peaceful protest, obviously...

merrick said...

Dunc, they definitely have a right sort of protest in mind. It's the stuff that's compliant to the power it seeks to challenge, and is utterly ineffectual.

in fact, if we substitute these words the police make sense.

"We all recognise and respect the fundamental right to ineffective protest and complete obedience."