The Last Straw Man

This government has given the police the power to detain people for up to 28 days without charge, longer than any other democratic country, and unsuccessfully tried to extend this twice, first to 90 days then to 42 days. It also banned protest outside parliament without police permission, introduced control orders, plans to bring in ID cards, lets the police keep a massive DNA database with the DNA of millions of people on it including those acquitted of crimes, forces ISPs to record every email we send and receive, wants to snoop on our use of social networking sites, has given the UK the highest level of CCTV surveillance in the world, and recently made it illegal to photograph or film police officers.

We all remember the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes in 2005 and the Forest Gate raid in 2006. We have all heard about how the police were extremely heavy-handed during the G20 protests in April: they beat protesters without reason; ‘kettled’ them in for hours on end; and lied about Ian Tomlinson, who died minutes after police assaulted him. But since 1969 over one thousand people have died after being taken into police custody, and not a single police officer has been convicted for these deaths. We might not be living in a police state like North Korea, but we have to take action now before the situation gets any worse.