Don't learn - can't learn - by Richard... Friday, April 29, 2011

Don't learn - can't learn - by Richard... Friday, April 29, 2011

There was another outbreak of violence in Bristol last night as protesters gathered on Cheltenham Road last night to stand in peaceful protest against police action in last week's riots.

Things turned violent around 1am this morning, with a number of officers and protesters being injured by missiles and close-quarters skirmishes, after people took exception to the tactics used by the police and the situation escalated.

Protestor Richard Ayres claimed that mounted police officers rushed down the middle of the street. "We were knocked to the side by them and were then shoved back by riot police with helmets, shields, truncheons and dogs", he said. "I remonstrated with them peacefully, flabbergasted at the sudden turn of events".

Assistant chief constable, however, Rod Hansen claims that officers had acted to stop protestors causing trouble. And therein lies your problem. I am gradually compiling details of the riot last week, and have very substantially added to the detail already posted.

The more one finds out, the more extraordinary an event it appears. Not least, there were far more than the 300 or so protesters claimed. At a very rough estimate, there must have been more than a thousand people on the streets.

What is very evident is that, despite the idiot media and those trying to jump on the bandwagon, this was not an anti-Tesco riot. It was an anti-police riot, reacting to the aggressive behaviour of the police and the arrogance, during the riot – which they provoked – and afterwards.

This comes over in a Daily Mail report where a spokesman for Tesco says: "Last night's violence in Stokes Croft and beyond underlined that this is not an anti-Tesco protest, our store is not even open".

Having behaved so badly last week, any sensible force commander would be acutely sensitive to the local mood. There seems to have been some belated recognition of that, but by no means enough to have headed off this new demonstration. And not recognising their own culpability, they have not even begun to examine their own performance and thus fail to learn any lessons at all.

Putting police back on the streets, all tooled up with their riot gear on is just asking for trouble – it is insensitive to the point of stupidity, and demonstrates that the police have lost their instinct for consensual policing. They are now part of the problem and, each time they intervene, they do nothing but make the problem worse.

We have a don't learn - can't learn culture, and nothing good will come of it.

COMMENT: BRISTOL STOKES CROFT THREAD