Stand off at Bank

Déjà vu.

Well, that’s how I felt today. I never I thought I would venture through Pope’s Head Alley so soon. The morning I attended the protest at the Excel Centre. It was good humoured and was a carnival atmosphere. The cops just stood there. An announcement was made at around 12.45pm that there was a protest at Bank because of the death of the man yesterday. Details are  sketchy and the media, being fed the line by the cops, state it was a death by ‘natural causes’.

 And so much misinformation is being thrown around by the media which is being contradicted (such as protesters were pelting the cops with bottles as they tried to get to the dying man etc etc).

Again, this is a media who peddled the big fat lie fed to them by the cops about Jean Charles de Menezes, wearing a thick jacket with wires sticking out of it and vaulting the ticket machines!

So I am highly skepitcal of the account coming from the cops and the biased media. And assuming it will be another whitewash and truth further covered up. No accountability or responsibility. No justice. And the media backing up the establishment’s account (yeah, remember Orgreave?!?!)

I headed for Bank from Canning Town. The cops were stopping and searching people inside the station, I was fortunate and wasn’t. But again, over-the-top policing.

I got to Bank. People had converged onto the green space, where remembrances were being stuck on a board for the dead man. The atmosphere peaceful. There were some chants of ‘Shame’ towards the cops but that was it. I chatted to a couple of people who told me about being violently evicted from the Climate Camp. More evidence of sickening police brutality.

I wandered around took pix. Around 2.30pm (not sure of the exact time) the cops started to get aggressive about people blocking pavement and they started to move back onto the road. One bloke commented behind me about why the cops were doing that. I started to feel that something bad was going to happen.

The cops started to close in on the green space (don’t know what it is called) and reinforcements started to appear. I ran into the road to take pix of the protesters standing on the green. The cops were getting more and more aggressive. They grabbed some bloke I don’t know why and when a woman remonstrated with the cop, he grabbed her with one hand and the other being pulled back ready to punch her. I tried to get a pic but my camera was too slow (and the video on my camera is pathetic).

We need, for one thing, organised legal observers armed with videos on demos like we used to!!

I turned my head and there were cops on horses screaming at us to get off the road (it reminded me of Wapping). We were separated from the main protest with cops making sure we didn’t cross the road back to them. And then they started to move us further back where I ended up not seeing what was happening. All I could see was groups of cops running up towards the Bank of England and attacking with their batons in the usual frenzy.

I left about 5pm and there was still a stand-off. The cops were making sure you couldn’t see what they were doing. I hope protesters in the stand-off had cameras and videos.

It was a peaceful protest, the cops wanted a ruck and they kicked it off. I was utterly angry, again, witnessing this level of police brutality. People were scared with tooled up cops ready for a fight advancing towards you. I know I was.

Indeed, ‘shame on them’. What about them being made responsible for their crime spree…?