PDF of the Judgement on all Four Judicial Reviews
This was released by the High Court at 10:00 AM today, Wednesday 18th of July.
hicks-others-commissioner-police-metropolis-judgment
The claimants need a little time to look into our options, but we strongly disagree with the conclusions of this judgement and may seek to appeal it.
Posted on July 18, 2012, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Pageantry & Precrime 
Is it just me or are the police witness statements rather revealing; showing both contradictory statements among officers at the same scene, and a lot of incorrect information being passed down from the senior figures? Then there’s the court seemingly setting a rather low bar for arrests with regard to breach of the peace (particularly Mr Hicks’s case, where the possibility that he might go somewhere where he might make a fuss and might cause people to get into a fight seems to have been enough)…
I think this quote from paragraph 70 sums it up quite well: “Owing to the fact that they were shouting ‘this is what democracy looks like’ we contained the group to prevent them from leaving the location.”
[Also, the judgment is now up on Bailii for anyone who doesn’t like pdfs: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/1947.html ]
Not to mention the video evidence shows that they weren’t chanting anything – they were standing around waiting for friends to come back from a sandwich shop https://pageantryandprecrime.wordpress.com/video/
That adds to the contradictory nature of the police reports, one mentions the group “surg[ing] towards” the police cordon when they tried to arrest, another states they were just quietly talking, while yet another mentions shouting. Most rely on the breach of peace ground for arresting, (having only been told about the “climbing gear” and placards), only one mentions arresting an individual due to the risk of actually climbing anywhere, only one mentions arresting them for their own safety.
It seems to me that if you’ve got 9 police officers arresting 9 people in the same group at the same time on the same orders, but with at least 4 different reasons give for those arrests, something isn’t quite right.