Policing - new material (79)
01 January 2007
I spy, Gary Mason. Police Review 3.11.06, pp27-28. This article considers the alarmingly rapid spread of covert surveillance from highly specialised branches of policing and the intelligence service to most councils and boroughs in England and Wales and its deployment to provide evidence in "low-level" crimes. Mason discusses the use of technology, such as digital audio tape systems and wireless CCTV surveillance systems, to tackle anti-social behaviour and sees the cost of such schemes as a "problem" - one that can be solved by councils sub-contracting the task to "specialist covert surveillance companies".
Aftermath of the Anti-Terrorism Police Raids in Forest Gate on 2 June 2006. Newham Monitoring Project, 27.9.06. This report, the first by a grassroots community organisation active in the area rather a police or government funded agency, is a serious attempt to consider the ramifications of the Forest Gate raid rather than seeking to excuse it by invoking the so-called "war on terror". In particular the report is highly critical of the Metropolitan Police's strategy of failing to keep local residents informed of developments and expresses concern at the lack of mechanisms for local people to raise their concerns and receive informed responses. This meant that the local communities were both kept "out of the loop" and unable to express their wider concerns about the police shooting of a local man and the severe disruption to regular patterns of community life. Available at: http://monitoring-group.co.uk/News%20and%20Campaigns/research%20material/Policing/Aftermath_FG_Raids.pdf
News from the fence and beyond. Newsletter for a global anti-G8 process no. 2, December 2006, free, 4 pp. The German and international mobilisation against the G8 summit, to take place between 6 and 8 June this year in the northern German city of Heiligendamm, is organised by a wide coalition of social justice - anti-capitalist - migrant's rights groups and trade unions. This newsletter is useful for anyone interested in the debates surrounding the mobilisation and arguments against the G8 as an undemocratic institution. This and more information on the common call published by a coalition of groups for the G8 to be opposed and disrupted through the means of civil disobedience is available from http://camp06.dissentnetwork.org/ and http://www.g8-2007.de/.
Informationen. Komitee für Grundrechte und Demokratie No 2, March 2007, free, pp4. The German Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy provides information about the repressive police and security measures implemented in Germany to stifle protests against the G8 summit in June in Heiligendamm. Despite the existence of a wide coalition of groups preparing the protests against this year's summit, and without mention of the critique they are putting forward against the G8 lacking a democratic basis to decide on neo-liberal policies with often disastrous consequences for poor populations world-wide, the protests are already being criminalised by police and governmental spokespersons as "violent" in an attempt to split the protest movement into "legitimate" and "illegitimate" elements. The Committee has announced the formation of a civil liberties monitoring group during the summit. The newsletter also contains general news updates in the civil liberties field in Germany. Available from: info@grundrechtekomitee, www.grundrechtekomitee.de.
Criminal Intelligence, Gary Mason. Police Review 26.1.07. The use of police paid informants is rarely written about in any great depth. Mason's article is less concerned with this "darker side of police history" than "what the service is doing to professionalise the use of intelligence contacts" since the publication of the Hoddinott report in 1999. He considers developments in the Met (dedicated source handlers and a sophisticated database) and South Wales (divisional source units, database and trained handlers) and best practice guidelines issued by ACPO an