Gardai were not out of control

Wednesday May 08, 2002 10:57

by Andrew - Off my own bat

Reading some of the posts here and listening to media coverage it is clear that some people are keen to scapegoat a few Gardai for what happened. The suggestion is that only 6-8 were involved in a single incident of violence. This is not what happened.

The worst of the Gardai violence was on Dame street but this did not happen down some back alley. This was an attack by a group of 60 Gardai led by senior officers in full public view. The Gardai that were most furious in carrying out this assult where they knew they could be seen by the senior cops obviously felt that they had their permission to do so. Likewise with the removal of numbers, they did this knowing there were senior officers present, they obviously did not feel that these senior cops would question them on this. We are unlikely to find out if this was actually a formal premission more likely it was simply the Gardai acting as they often do when cameras are not present.

In addition this was not a one off 'loss of control'. As shown by other reports on indymedia and extracts from my report at http://struggle.ws/wsm/news/2002/rtsMAY.html below since at least 16.00 a number of Gardai had been involved in hitting protesters on the head with batons, beating one man unconsious, stopping indymedia filming these assaults and beating people they had arrested both on the way to Pearse street and in the cells there.

So what we have is not a brief loss of control by a few officers but a pro-longed attack on the freedom to protest involving arrests, beatings and attacks on the media from around 16.00 to after 19.30. Consider also the other attacks on protests this year and it is quite clear that these methods are approved from the top of the force down.

Before the extracts from the report one comment. People are rightly annoyed about SWP/GR hijacking what happened and calling a protest on their own rather then arranging one with RTS or the defendents. This is not new, the SWP fancy themselves as our leaders and like to make decisions for us.

Despite this it is important that Thursdays protest, if it goes ahead, is as big as possible. So turn up and demand that the speakers should be the RTS organisers and those arrested and injured (who are willing to attend) rather then a string of SWP election candidates. Obviously I think this should be conditional on a statement from the RTS organisers asking people to support the event. Reclaim the Protest!

Extracts from
http://struggle.ws/wsm/news/2002/rtsMAY.html

Around 16.00
"From this point the cops were obviously trying to provoke a fight by shoving people around. Whenever they got a response they would try and haul that person out of the crowd to arrest and beat them. For the most part they failed as others would rapidly haul the person back. So they pulled their batons and charged into the edges of the crowd resulting in the first injuries and the first arrests of the day (they managed to drag one young man on crutches along the ground to a van). In this way they succeeded in pulling the car behind their lines."

"A little later at the same point they pulled a homeless man out of the crowd. A group of five or so cops they proceeded to beat him senseless before throwing him in the back of a van. When others tried to intervene to stop the beating they threatened to arrest them also. As this happened in the side street the vast majority there were unaware what was going on and continued partying."

Around 18.00
"As cop numbers built up they became increasingly aggressive at the edges of the crowd and managed to make another couple of arrests through provoking people by snatching beer cans out of their hands. When the victim objected they were arrested and at least one of these people was beaten in the Gardai van on the way to Pearse St police station and again in the cells."