Over the last week there’s been a steady stream of video’s of the police violence at the G20 protest – it seems strange we’ve not seen anything from the police surveillance cameras: weren’t they working or do they show something worse? Here are some videos from The Guardian.

Man walking away from police bitten by dog.

Plainclothes policemen with batons.

Press photographers told you will go to jail if you continue taking photographs.

Riot police break up climate camp

Something out of a dictatorship not a democracy.

Dave Highbury has a video that apparently shows the police blocking the ambulance sent to Ian Tomlinson – even if this wasn’t the actual ambulance it contradicts the police’s claim that they did everything possible to assist Tomlinson

Hat Tip: Liberal Conspiracy.

Another piece of the Jigsaw in what happened to Ian Tomlinson.

This video from The Guardian shows the attack on Ian Tomlinson at a G20 protest in London, shortly before he died. It shows Tomlinson, who was not part of the demonstration, being assaulted from behind and pushed to the ground by baton-wielding police.

How many others where assaulted? We’ll never know – the police did everything in their powers to keep photographers away, such as reported by The British Journal of Photography when police used Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to move journalists during the demonstration. Are we on the road to a police state or am I being over dramatic.

The man who died during the G20 demonstrations in the City of London had been pushed back minutes earlier by police officers, the Independent Police Complaints Commission confirmed yesterday.

Revealing that it was now managing the City of London police’s investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson, the IPCC said he had been blocked from walking home from his job at a newsagent’s by a police cordon. Owen Bowcott and Paul Lewis, The Guardian.

At the G20 demonstrations the police used a tactic known as kettling, which is basically containing demonstrators and refusing to let them leave for hours – in the G20 case eight hours. There are many problems with kettling or containment and the death of Ian Tomlinson highlights one – he was not even involved in the demonstration.

The death is bad enough, but to compound matters the police openly lied, with the latest witness statements and photographs contradict the version of events put forward by police immediately after his death.

What is happening to democracy in our county, surely we’ve the right to protest? We should be thankful that people took photographs as photographing a police officer carries a 10-year-sentence under the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 and if they hadn’t we’d only be left with the word of the police.

I’d like say when are we going to rid ourselves of this government: the trouble is the alternative will be worse – indeed what has happened to our democracy when photographing a police officer carries a 10-year-sentence?

This week the Metropolitan Police has launched a new anti-terrorist campaign.

Don’t rely on others. If you suspect it report it.

Londoners are being asked to trust their instincts and report suspicious behaviour to help combat terrorist activity.

Just one piece of information could be vital in helping disrupt terrorist planning and, in turn, save lives.

This national publicity campaign across England and Wales raises awareness of the Anti-Terrorist Hotline and gives the public examples of suspicious activity and behaviour. The public are encouraged to trust their instincts and report anything confidentially to the Anti-Terrorist Hotline, where specialist officers will take their call.

This campaign utilises London specific media: radio and press, posters at tube and rail stations. As part of the national campaign there will also be national press and national commercial radio advertising, large outdoor posters and advertising on the rears of buses. To ensure the campaign reaches minority communities, there will also be advertising in minority media press titles.

Press advertising will appear in national newspapers and on main commercial radio stations. In London, this includes the Evening Standard, Magic, Heart, Total LBC, Smooth and Capital FM.

The press ads seek to raise awareness of some of the items/activities which may be needed by, or be of use to, terrorists. It asks the public to consider whether they have seen any activity connected with them which may have made them suspicious.

So don’t go looking at CCTV camera’s, creosote your fence or any number of DIY projects, otherwise you could find yourself spending an uncomfortable amount of time with MI5 officers. This is madness, most police officers could not spot terrorist activity and as Watching them watching us at Liberal Conspiracy writes:

There is no evidence that any Islamic extremist or Irish terrorists or Animal Rights extremists or neo-Nazi extremists, who have exploded, or tried to explode bombs, or set off incendiary devices, have been deterred from doing so by the presence of CCTV cameras. Some may have been tracked down partially through the help of CCTV footage, after their attacks or attempted attacks, but that is not what this poster is implying.

There is no evidence that any of them who have actually had access to any explosives, have ever been caught in the act of “terrorist reconnaissance” of CCTV cameras, neither by members of the public (which is what this poster misleadingly claims), nor by regular Police street patrols, nor even by any covert surveillance of known suspects.

This will be a waste of time and money – all the campaign will achieve is a climate of fear; maybe that’s the point. The whole thing smacks of something more akin to Soviet era Russia and the KGB in which neighbour spies on neighbour.

Car Crime More Important Than Rape

An internal inquiry describes how cases were mishandled in a department that was “understaffed, underskilled and overburdened”. It also documents claims by members of Southwark’s Sapphire team that management treated car crime as a higher priority than sex offences, because it was under pressure to meet targets for solving cases. The percentage of rape allegations that end up in court is notoriously low. Rachel Williams, The Guardian.

No one should be surprised – solving “easy crimes” has been the method of operation of our police forces for decades.

I suppose I’m rare in my view that generally companies will do anything for profit – morals don’t often enter into the question.

In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan have been convicted of receiving $2.6 million bribes.

Ciavarella, 58, along with Conahan, 56, corruptly and fraudulently “created the potential for an increased number of juvenile offenders to be sent to juvenile detention facilities,” federal court documents alleged. Children would be placed in private detention centres, under contract with the court, to increase the head count. In exchange, the two judges would receive kickbacks. Source: CNN.

And amazingly the detention centres operated by Mid Atlantic Youth Services Corp., are still operating and are not a target of the federal investigation, according to court documents which state the company cooperated in the investigation – a spokesman from the company denied that its current owner, Gregory Zappala, knew about the kickbacks. So the paymaster goes Scot free.

Hat tip: Monbiot.com.

It seems appropriate as the government rejects the recommendation of it’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to downgrade ecstasy form class A to Class B, that Johann Hari talks about why we should legalize drugs – a position I’ve always supported.

One startling fact that Hari reports is a Pentagon report which warns Mexico and Pakistan could face a “rapid and sudden” collapse.

“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,” the assessment of worldwide security threats says. “How that international conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state.” Source: National Post.

As Hari points out

When you criminalize a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn’t disappear. The trade is simply transferred from pharmacists and doctors to armed criminal gangs. In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up – and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of London or Los Angeles, where teenage gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3000 percent profit margins on offer. Now imagine this process on a country-wide scale, and you have Mexico and Afghanistan today.

Drugs syndicates control 8 percent of global GDP – which means they have greater resources than many national armies. They own helicopters and submarines and they can afford to spread the woodworm of corruption through poor countries, right to the top.

Why Mexico? Why now? In the past decade, the US has spent a fortune spraying carcinogenic chemicals over Colombia’s coca-growing areas, so the drug trade has simply shifted to Mexico. It’s known as the “balloon effect”: press down in one place, and the air rushes to another. When I was last there in 2006, I saw the drug violence taking off and warned that the murder rate was going to skyrocket – but I didn’t imagine it would reach this scale. In 2007, more than 2000 people were killed. In 2008, it was more than 5400 people. The victims range from a pregnant woman washing her car to a four year-old child to a family in the “wrong” house watching television. Today, 70 percent of Mexicans say they are frightened to go out because of the cartels. Source: Johann Hari.

The more you look, the more obvious it becomes that a war-on-drugs is a war with only one outcome and that’s victory for criminal gangs and drug cartels. Once you accept this fact – and however much you might delude yourself otherwise it won’t change this fact; people take drugs, lots of people, regardless of the law and these people are putting huge sums of money into the hands criminals – for how much longer are we going to continue do this? Sadly it seems we’re doomed to carry on until there’s not an honest politician or law enforcement office left – then like Mexicans we’ll all be in fear of the drug cartels. It’s time to legalize.

What is the alternative? Terry Nelson was one of the America’s leading federal agents tackling drug cartels for over thirty years. He discovered the hard way that the current tactics are useless. “Busting top traffickers doesn’t work, since others just do battle to replace them,” he explains. A crackdown simply produces more violence, as an endless pool of young men hungry for the profits step into the vacuum and fight off their rivals. Nelson concluded there is an alternative: “Legalizing and regulating drugs will stop drug market crime and violence by putting major cartels and gangs out of business. It’s the one surefire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?”

Of course, the day after legalization, a majority of gangsters will not suddenly open organic food shops and join the Hare Krishnas. But their profit margins will collapse as their customers go to off-licenses and chemists rather than to them. The incentives for going into crime and staying there will be decimated. Norm Stamper, the former head of the Seattle Police Department, says plainly: “Regulated legalization of all drugs will drive drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive.” Source: Johann Hari.

Until then, the world’s drifting into the hands of some very dangerous people.

Yesterdays mornings Radio 4 Today program had a look at Finland’s criminal justice system and its treatment of juvenile offenders by Mark Edwards. Here’s some extracts from Edwards interview, which certainly give pause for thought.

I was in Finland, a country travelling down a very different philosophical road from Britain. While the UK locks up around three thousand juvenile offenders, Finland’s criminal justice system incarcerates just three.

“We do not think the proper way to take care of a child is by punishing the child”, says Kurt Kylloinen, director of the ‘reform school’ I was visiting outside Helsinki.

…

The age of criminal responsibility in Finland is 15, although in practice very few youngsters under the age of 21 are dealt with by criminal justice system. Children who break the law are seen primarily as welfare cases.

Over 60% of children locked up by the state in the UK are known to have mental health problems. In Finland such youngsters are more likely to be patients in well-funded psychiatric units.

When I explained that in England and Wales children as young as 10 are dealt with under the penal code – and in Scotland as young as eight – the reform school’s psychologist Merja Ikalainen looked aghast.

MI: I don’t have words for that. It sounds so horrible.

ME: You think it’s immoral?

MI: It is.

ME: Why? If a young person knowingly commits a crime?

MI: That’s not a young person. That’s a child. They need care.

ME: But shouldn’t a child have to suffer the consequences of their actions?

MI: Suffer! You use words that sound really horrible. A child shouldn’t be suffering. The word suffer sounds really sad.

…

Many people in the UK will find the Finnish model extraordinary. The feeling is mutual. Finland is a low crime society and, although police report a slight rise in youth offending, the Finns regard Britain’s “obsession” with prison as barbaric and ineffective. Source: The BBC.

Personally I’ve always thought prison is generally a waste – it predominantly produces nothing but highly trained career criminals or complete basket cases. If prison is to be primarily punishment then I guess here in the UK our prison system fits the bill. However if we wish to do something about our high rates of crime then we really should look to Finland. We’ve been locking them up for decades and it really hasn’t changed a thing.