Via comrade and fellow blogger Hannah Kay, this particularly disturbing story emerges from West Yorkshire;
A COLNE VALLEY shopkeeper told of how he locked himself and customers in a shop as armed police swooped to arrest people in the street outside.
Shazad Nazim, the 29-year-old shift manager, shut the doors of Linthwaite Co-op on Manchester Road last night as what he described as a big police operation unfolded.
And a pregnant young mum told how she watched in horror from the passenger seat of her dad’s car across the street as three vehicles braked to a halt and armed men appeared in the road.
“My dad, Arthur, had gone into Didi’s takeaway across the road when I heard brakes,” she said.
“When I looked there were men in the road wearing balaclavas. Three other men came out of a big BMW and I was really scared.
“The cars were all unmarked and I didn’t realise they were police.”
On its own, this is sinister enough.
However, the incident appears to have precedent. Hannah has witnessed this kind of behaviour before, although last time the cops were uniformed.
As she notes;
Both times there was no fight put up by the suspects and they did not appear to be armed. Both times the suspects were held down on the road with boots with rifles pointed at their heads. Even Dirty Harry wasn't this nuts.
This is indeed an extremely worrying development. It appears to follow a trend set by the metropolitan police with the incident which led to the death of Jean Charles de Menzies.
Alongside Theresa May's plans to "untangle the knot of health and safety rules" for police, the potential for harm is untold. Especially when you consider that, already, police have used or threated to use taser guns - which can be lethal - against teenagers and the elderly, and the police brutality at the London G20 protests which led to the death of Ian Tomlinson.
Add that to already ongoing police surveillance of "domestic extremists," the (illegal) police powers granted by the Terrorism Act, the fact that unmanned drones previously used in warzones are coming to Britain, and the precedent for criminal trial without a jury, and what you have is a recipe for state repression that has been brewing for over a decade.
The West Yorkshire incident will perhaps be the first of many. As such, I'll second Hannah's call that "it's time to start campaigning against" the police. Allegedly, they exist to protect us. In reality, organisation and action may be the only things that protect us from them.
Add that to already ongoing police surveillance of "domestic extremists," the (illegal) police powers granted by the Terrorism Act, the fact that unmanned drones previously used in warzones are coming to Britain, and the precedent for criminal trial without a jury, and what you have is a recipe for state repression that has been brewing for over a decade.
The West Yorkshire incident will perhaps be the first of many. As such, I'll second Hannah's call that "it's time to start campaigning against" the police. Allegedly, they exist to protect us. In reality, organisation and action may be the only things that protect us from them.
