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Underground > Switchboard >

Anti-war protests: anyone on-the-spot?

19:01 / 21.03.03

I ask because I'm working until 11 this evening, and have had an unusually high number of (inappropriate) requests from the police to carry out psychiatric interviews on individuals brought to the hospital, many of whom are quite obviously drunk and therefore impossible for me to accurately assess. The police know this, and usually keep such individuals in the cells until they're sober enough for a proper assessment; tonight, however, they're simply (annoyingly) dumping these people on the medical services and driving off...

... all of which suggests to me that they're intentionally conserving cell-space in anticipation of many arrests, either this evening or over the coming weekend.

Any London 'lither on-the-spot? Anyone aware of numbers of anti-war protest arrests thus far?

19:12 / 21.03.03

Beeb reporting only 22 arrests as of 1800 GMT.

19:28 / 21.03.03

I'm practically x-posting this from another thread, but anyway:

Just got in from the Old Street demo, which was quite good, c.200 of us walked round the roundabout annoying traffic, but there was some spikeyness from the crowd (mainly made up of black bloc anarcho types) and the police were pretty full on in return. A sound system was established on the traffic island and pumping for all of 30 seconds before the police decided enough was enough and kettled us. It was 50-50 in terms of aggro, and to be fair, the schoolkids were let go 'cos they got really freaked. This little exchange brightened my period of captivity:

Bill: Can I go now?
Cop: No.
My mate: Why?
Cop: 'Cos we haven't done what we're gonna do to you yet.
My mate: What are you gonna do?
Cop: I'm gonna piss on you.
My mate (gets on his knees and opens his mouth): Cool, normally I pay a fortune for that sort of thing.

Anyway eventually after SO3 took their precious pics, we were set free, and now I'm back in the office getting gently drunk. As far as I know, there were no arrests. If there were any, it would've been a handful. No one was seriously misbehaving from what I could see, it was only push'n'shove.

20:37 / 21.03.03

All he was saying, was give piss a chance.

06:02 / 22.03.03

Now why the hell didn' I think of that at the time?! In all fairness to the man, it coulda been worse... it's not as though he threatened us with anything really horrid - it's not like he threatened to wank on me or something.

Poke it with a stick

15:53 / 22.03.03

Just left the Glasgow protest - any ideas why the police presence was so huge compared to the one that accompanied the much larger anti-war protest on the 15th of last month?
I swear, I felt like we whould have had to form squares if they baton-charged us.