Identity of Police Officers in Guardian Fitwatch Video

Three Fitwatch activists have lodged a complaint with the IPCC about their arrest and imprisonment at Climate camp last year. The story and video of this arrest was reported in The Guardian and picked up by a variety of news outlets.

However, most of the footage has obscured the details of the officers, but clearer pictures can be seen here.

Whilst we realise these are not FIT cops, given it's a story about Fitwatch, we thought it only fair we should name them - and it should be noted that EK127 Alan Palfrey, who is getting a bit of a reputation for turning a blind eye towards police violence, is seen skulking in the background.

Firstly, the Evidence Gatherers who filmed this footage:

10475 - Last - is the female officer
9038 - Sellan

8871 - Wiltshire
9589 - Sabcar

The officers involved in the arrest were:

PC 1259 - Nicholas Fisher - (I think - perhaps another fitwatcher could confirm - this is the heavily tattooed officer who is seen putting his hands around a fitwatcher's neck, and who is not wearing a number).

PC 5988 - Jessica Lawe - female cop

PC 6303 - Christopher Lawless (no, I'm not making this up)

PC 6509 - Davis

PC 5915 - Flint

As regular readers of the blog will realise, this was not an isolated incident in terms of Fitwatch, protest, or the country as a whole. However, it is great that this coverage has been generated, and we will continue to challenge this policing by whatever means we can.

CO11 review database

The Met are in the process of weeding data and images of protesters from the CRIMINT database that they are unable to justify retaining, according to the Home Office. In a response to parliamentary questions they state that CO11, the Public Order Branch are conducting a ‘manual review’ of photographs they have taken on demonstrations and political assemblies. This follows the Court of Appeal case of Andrew Wood, when it was found that the Met were not justified in retaining pictures of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade activist.

The criteria the police are using to ‘review’ entries on the database is unclear. Senior officers within CO11 have previously stated that intelligence can be held on people who have no criminal record, and who have done nothing unlawful. An awful lot seems to depend on the subjective judgement of FIT officers, and the estimated ‘threat’ from groups such as environmentalists and anti-militarists, or pro-Tamil or Palestinian demonstrators.

In an effort to find out just what data the police hold on them FITwatchers and others have applied under the Data Protection Act to see the information on file. The police have been slow to respond, and so far very little has come to light. The NUJ announced last week that they are making a formal complaint to the data commissioner about the failure of the public order unit to provide details of the data they hold on journalists.

It’ll be interesting to see how much information is eventually revealed – the police will undoubtedly try and hide behind the ‘national security’ and ‘prevention of crime’ exemptions to the Act. Additionally many protesters might justifiably be wary of making data requests, as it inevitably means providing a name and address and details of demonstrations attended. But potentially this is a useful way of getting a better picture of the scale of the information held, and any readers of this blog who would like more info or support for doing this should e-mail us at defycops@yahoo.co.uk

On the buses

This photo was sent to us by a demonstrator on the Mayday protests in Brighton. It shows two Sussex police evidence gatherers escaping the attention of the Mayday marchers by filming from the top deck of a bus.
FIT and evidence gatherers at the Brighton demo were given an exceptionally hard time. Evidence gatherers were pushed out of the crowd as it assembled near Brighton pier, and their cameras were the focus of constant attention from that point onwards. Photographers crowded them, demonstrators squirted water at them, FITwatchers blocked them. So presumably, these two took it upon themselves to escape from all that and hide on the top deck of a bus where no-one would notice them.
There is just one problem with that decision – it quite possibly meant that their filming of the march from this point was unlawful.
Their problem is RIPA, The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This defines covert surveillance as follows:

9) For the purposes of this section—
(a) surveillance is covert if, and only if, it is carried out in a manner that is calculated to ensure that persons who are subject to the surveillance are unaware that it is or may be taking place;

Just like hiding out of sight in a bus with a video camera, then?
This type of surveillance is perfectly lawful if the police have justified it and obtained the appropriate authorisation. It is, apparently, quite an onerous process. According to an ACPO review it takes on average five hours to fill in the forms for an authorisation. Somehow I suspect that these two just didn’t bother to do that.
Normal FIT surveillance escapes all this because it is OVERT rather than COVERT. This means, according to the Met, “officers should clearly identify themselves as police officers and not hide the fact that they are filming”*.
COVERT filming, as defined by RIPA, carried out without authorisation, is of questionable legality. I am sure Sussex police, concerned as they are to prevent breaches of the law, will now conduct a thorough enquiry, discipline those involved and destroy the footage taken. Of course.

*Met police Use of Overt Filming / Photography Policy Statement, taken from Wood v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [2009]EWCA Civ 414 §13

G20 FIT officer at protest against police violence

The police officer on the left of this shot is PC Palfrey, a regular FIT officer well known to FITwatch bloggers. He was identified by a number of readers of this blog as being part of the FIT team that was on the scene when Ian Tomlinson was assaulted, just before he died at the G20 protests. It is likely that he, along with his FIT colleagues, issued the instructions that led to the TSG's violent behaviour, and possibly to a man's death.

Given all this, it is more than a little ironic that this same man was on FIT duty at the recent protests in London against police violence. This picture was taken on the United Campaign Against Police Violence rally in London on the 23rd May. Neither PC Palfrey, nor his FIT colleagues, appear particularly concerned by issues of police violence and deaths in custody.

Thanks to Jules for the photo.

C stands for ...

This is C1738, out at New Scotland Yard for the United Campaign Against Police Violence demonstration. When it was pointed out that he appeared to be missing a letter, he insisted he wasn't. He was unwilling to say which branch C represents. We can all have a good guess what it stands for, though.

If I had a face like yours I'd join the Met Police

NI90 in Parliament Square yesterday.

Probably too late to warn him about what happens when the wind changes!

Is this the end of Forward Intelligence?

The Met today lost a key legal case in the Court of Appeal over the retention of photographs taken of protesters by Forward Intelligence Teams.

Andrew Wood, a campaigner for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, took a civil case against the Met in 2005 after he had been followed and photographed by FIT officers. The FIT team harassed him after he attended a shareholders meeting of Reed Elsevier, the company which then hosted the DSEi arms fair in London’s Excel centre.

In the initial hearing at the High Court, lawyers for the Met maintained that they did not retain the photographs for further use. “This is not about some secret national database” they insisted. Wood lost the case.

After that, FITwatch mounted a number of legal defences to obstruction charges, based on the fact that FIT teams collected and collated data onto a central system which breached privacy rights. Initially FIT officers giving evidence denied this. Then back in December, PC Dan Collins blew the lid off the database racket. During the trial of three people using banners to block the cameras of FIT teams, he was unusually and remarkably honest. Yes, he said, they did enter details of individual protesters into a database. Thousands of them.

Liberty, who had taken Wood’s case, then accused the Met of misleading the court. They appealed the decision on Wood to the Court of Appeal.

Todays judgement calls for the police to destroy the photographs taken of Mr Wood, and casts doubt on their ability to continue to collect data on people when there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Presumably, this means their practice of sitting outside meetings taking photographs of those attending will now be recognised as unlawful. It also has implications for the collection of data in any situation where no criminal offences are taking place.

It is certainly good news for the nine FITwatch activists who are awaiting trial for obstructing police cameras, some of whom have been on bail for a over a year. It will make it much more difficult for the police to maintain that they were acting lawfully when taking photographs of a public meeting and a perfectly peaceful protest!

So it this the end of the FIT? I suspect that they will attempt to weasel their way out of this ruling in some way or another. Perhaps they will just go back to pretending that they don’t keep any of the images. Or maybe they will insist they only photograph anarchists and ‘extremists’, who (of course) go around committing offences all the time anyway. Who knows?

But coming on top of everything else – FITwatchers making their life bloody difficult; two of their ‘top boys’ under investigation in connection with the death of Ian Tomlinson; criticism from the NUJ for attacking and harassing working journalists – this must surely hurt.

It’s about time you hung up the FIT jackets, boys, and got yourself a proper job.