Barking and Dagenham Borough Liberal Democrats

Never Again

The tragic death of Ian Tomlinson has raised questions about the conduct of the some members of the police during the G20 demonstrations on 1st April. We owe it to Ian Tomlinson and to the vast majority of police officers who do an excellent job in often difficult circumstances, to ensure that the right questions are asked.

There have been attempts to portray this death as an isolated incident. When video footage of the 'woman assault' subsequently emerged, it was portrayed as one of only two isolated incidents. But as more pieces of video footage appear on the internet, as more witness statements are published in the press, as more formal complaints are made to the Independent Police Complaints Authority who are investigating this, (145 at the last count), the 'isolated incident' version of events has lost all credibility.

The review of policing tactics by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Denis O'Connor, at the request of Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, is therefore welcome. But if this review is to achieve anything worthwhile, it must be a full-scale inquiry that leads to a fundamental change in the police's policy towards protest.

Future policy must respect six basic principles, which apply regardless.

Demonstrations and other peaceful forms of protest are a fundamental democratic right.

In a democracy, the duty of the police is to protect the process of democratic debate and decision rather than merely to defend the political and economic status quo. But recent events - not just the G20 demonstrations but also Kingsnorth and the pre-emptive arrests in Nottinghamshire - suggest that the police have opted for the latter. This misguided policy appears to spring from a post-9/11 obsession with counter-terrorism to the detriment of other duties, to the extent that all forms of dissent seem to have been conflated into one big threat. It must be made clear that it is not acceptable for the police to try to define the boundaries of democratic rights.

Demonstrations are usually peaceful

There are hundreds of demonstrations and other protests in London every year and most of them pass off without incident. On the rare occasions when violence and other criminal acts occur, these tend to be confined to a minority of the demonstrators present. Policing must therefore discriminate between the need to protect the rights of a peaceful majority of demonstrators and the need to prevent criminal acts by a minority. The police should never make a presumption of criminality on the part of all demonstrators nor adopt a 'one size fits all' policy. The Financial Times estimated that only 0.1% (i.e. one in a thousand) of the G20 demonstrators behaved violently. Can the same be said of the police?

Policing should be proportionate

Given the peaceful nature of most demonstrations and most demonstrators, the police must never use disproportionate, provocative or inappropriate tactics against peaceful demonstrators, such as 'kettling', baton charges, attacks with dogs, the seizure of personal property, and other forms of aggression and intimidation. When demonstrators are peaceful, what are such tactics meant to achieve? They are counter-productive, since they increase the tension and likelihood of violence. To realise this, one only has to compare the G20 demonstrations with other large crowds that the police frequently manage, by and large very successfully and with no controversy. Consider football crowds, for example. Despite a long record of violent incidents and other problems with a small minority of football supporters, the police have long managed to address the problems without resorting to over-the-top and draconian measures affecting everyone, of the sort that were adopted on 1st and 2nd April. Put bluntly, it would be considered totally unacceptable for the vast majority of, say, Millwall fans to be detained for five hours or more, so why should such actions ever be considered acceptable for people peacefully demonstrating?

It is unacceptable for any officer deliberately to obscure his or her identification number

This behaviour contravenes existing regulations and Sir Paul Stephenson's reiteration of the rules should be welcomed. Yet the practice appeared to have been widespread on 1st and 2nd April. We need to find out why. This is not the first time this has happened. The IPPC report on into the Countryside Alliance/Pro hunting demonstration outside Parliament in 2004 drew attention to "the failure of some officers to comply with an instruction to wear black epaulettes on their yellow fluorescent jackets, thus ensuring easy identification". It seems that lessons have not been learned!

The police must exercise due care and attention when making statements to the media

Predictions of violence can be self-fulfilling. The police must never exaggerate the likelihood of violence, nor should they dissemble the facts after a demonstration has occurred. The advance hype instigated by the Metropolitan Police almost certainly ramped up the tension and created an expectation of violence. This had two likely consequences; first, to scare away peaceful demonstrators, and second, to incite violence. There is also clear evidence of attempts by the Met's PR machine to dissemble the facts in the immediate aftermath of the G20 demonstrations, The Met's spokespeople had no evidence for making such statements, so why were they made? More generally, the police must also wake up to the reality that surveillance cuts both ways. Most people nowadays carry mobile phones, which can be used to take photos, record short videos or broadcast live reports via the Internet. Within minutes of an incident, this information can be posted online for anyone in the world to see. And the police cannot prevent it - not that they haven't tried. As protestors left the 'climate camp' in Bishopsgate on 1st April, the police were demanding that demonstrators delete images of police officers from their cameras before they left, under threat of seizure, falsely citing anti-terror laws as a justification. ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers) subsequently confirmed that the police could not make such a demand without a court order.

The police have Britain's reputation to consider

The best way to promote human rights around the world is to lead by example. Our political leaders will have some difficulty criticising state oppression abroad when peaceful demonstrators are being clobbered at home.

Policing a large demonstration is never easy and it would be unreasonable to expect decision-making to be perfect. However, it is clear that the strategy and tactics adopted by the Metropolitan Police at the G20 demonstrations were fundamentally wrong, with tragic consequences. We must ensure this never happens again.

• Dee Doocey AM is a Liberal Democrat member of the Metropolitan Police Authority