Police Police Me?
Another week, another protest at Exam Schools, another botched attempt at crowd control from the University Bulldogs. Except this time, 'crowd' is a bit of an overstatement. A handful of middle-aged protesters involved in a peaceful and really rather small demonstration should not trouble, one would imagine, any force with pretensions to policing ability. But even in these less-than-heightened circumstances we find a situation descending into a mess of chaotic bad judgement and bitter recrimination. No doubt ready for more action after the slightly more tense encounter between the Anti-Nazi League and Peter Sichrovsky two weeks ago, the University Police appear to have seriously over-estimated the degree of force necessary to counter what was clearly a minimal threat to security. And whereas the ANL's message, involving as it did such emotive terms as 'Nazi Scum,' could, if one was seeking to justify the Police's desperate over-reaction in that case, be seen as provocative to violence, there is no such justification for the response to the Oxford Global Action group. There is no evidence that the group were intending anything other than a peaceful protest. And the disruption caused to ordinary students and members of the public by the University Police's over-the-top action was totally unacceptable. We await the official statement on the precise cause of this debacle; 'communication failure' is the best the Police can hope for, and even then, you would think 'communication' would be one of the things a Police force made sure it got right as a matter of course. More likely, and unfortunately, is that what we're looking at here is the latest chapter in the sorry recent history of our beleaguered force. How many more bungled protests, angry members of the public and outraged students will it take before the University begins to listen? The Bulldogs are no longer adequate to deal with the pace and range of situations that arise in a modern university town. The time for serious reform is now.
16th Nov 2000