Top Spanish cop lays out plan to prevent recording and circulation of police actions.

donvito99 wrote: »

And one of the reasons for this is, to come back to the topic, people illegally covering their faces.

It

is

not

illegal

to

cover

one's

face.

talla10 wrote: »

Gda Corcoran was found not guilty of all charges in court and to the best of my knowledge no member of AGS was deemed to have broken any laws on that occasion.
Several students were later convicted of offences.

He was found not guilty. But the whole country saw him on the news.

http://www.politico.ie/component/content/article/205-garda/2421-state-settles-garda-assault-case-for-25000.html

Four years after the May Day protest 2002, the state has settled the case of Annette Ryan, who told the High Court she was assaulted by gardaí. By Frank Connolly
A four-year ordeal arising from the Reclaim the Streets protest in May 2002 ended in the High Court this week for a former president of the students' union in the National College of Art and Design. The court heard Annette Ryan, 39, was at the protest when she was assaulted by a garda, handcuffed, thrown in a Garda van, taken to Pearse Street garda station and strip-searched.

On Monday 11 July the state settled her action for false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, assault and wrongful arrest after the court heard conflicting video and witness evidence including a bizarre claim by gardaí that there is now a policy to strip-search every person they arrest and detain in custody.

"I was standing on Burgh Quay when a female garda came from behind me and grabbed the beer-can I was holding. I pulled it back and the next thing I knew Garda Donal Corcoran lifted me off my feet and threw me on the ground. Then he knelt on my back. My face was pushed into the ground, I was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a Garda van. There was a man who was bleeding from the head in the van.

"I was taken to Pearse Street station where two female guards wearing laytex gloves told me to take my clothes off. One of them was very aggressive. After I was strip-searched I was put in a cell for an hour and then charged with breaching the peace and disorderly behaviour," Annette Ryan told Village. The charges were subsequently struck out in the summer of 2003 after five district-court appearances by Ryan.

Her first appearance in the High Court ended abruptly after two days last month when her barrister, Michael O'Higgins SC, objected to statements by gardaí being entered into evidence without first being provided to his client.

In their new statements, members of the Garda claimed she had been waving the beer-can in a threatening way before her arrest and had not been manhandled by Corcoran, a claim that was disputed by video evidence. Corcoran was charged with assaulting other protestors on the day and was subsequently acquitted.

During the eight-day hearing a taxi-driver gave evidence for the state during which he claimed that he had been bitten by Annette Ryan during a row in the city centre last year. Ryan admitted that she had bitten the taxi-driver after he had prevented her from getting out of his car and broken her finger.

Her solicitor, Yvonne Bambury of Ferry's Solicitors, recognised the taxi-driver as the accused in a case brought by his wife against him for verbal assault some months ago. It emerged that the surprise state witness had 22 previous convictions including for assault.

The case ended on 11 July after Judge Elizabeth Dunne agreed to a request by Annette Ryan's lawyers to introduce evidence contradicting a number of Garda witnesses. A garda told the court last week that it was universal policy to strip-search every person arrested and detained in a garda station. This was to establish whether the suspect was carrying any dangerous objects. A number of her colleagues supported this claim.

However, three witnesses who were not strip-searched when they were arrested and detained during the Reclaim the Street protest, and since agreed to testify for Ryan. The state's team, led by Conor Maguire SC, offered to settle the case. Ryan received a sum of €25,000 and her full legal costs for the 10-day hearing.

"I was very relieved as I knew my legal team, who were working on a 'no foal no fee' basis, would not have been paid if I did not win. The case was not about money. What happened to me and other people involved in the Reclaim the Streets event was fundamentally wrong and the compensation I received fully justifies my decision to bring this case," said Ryan.

There are anonymous posters complaining about anonymous protesters.

The Spanish police are a throwback from Franco's time. I've seen them use violence numerous times to deal with situations when it wasn't needed.

One which stands out in my mind was the night of the World Cup final. I was in the very centre celebrating with an Irish friend who had been visiting and it was about 5am in the morning and things had calmed down. Everything had been peaceful that night...nobody causing any trouble as is the case here in the centre most of the time. You don't see fights break out here like you do in Dublin, say. I don't think I've seen one since moving here.

Anyway, 3 police vans pulled up and a load of police jumped out and started to indiscriminately beat the ****e out of people. They came running towards myself and my friend and we had to run away or we would've got hit. The police had the centre square surrounded as all of us who had been on the square 5 minutes previously looked on. They stood there for 2 hours with their batons in hand and arms crossed surrounding the plaza. It was all so bizarre and completely uncalled for.


I've been to maybe 20 protests here in total since moving here and they've all been peaceful. People don't drink at them or use them as an excuse to party or cause trouble. I was blown away when I attended my first one just how civilised they were (The Spanish are very civilised people anyway). There's a handful of anarchists in this city that are hellbent on causing trouble but generally they keep their heads down unless the police provoke something. I've seen the police use bullying tactics at these and physically remove people from areas by simply grabbing them and dragging them. It's very obvious they've tried to provoke something in order to get baton-happy.

This is not the majority of police here but it's many of them. I was drinking a can on the street one night (illegal now in Madrid but hardly the crime of the century) and I had 8 police surround me shouting at me to put the can in the bin. 8 police! Many of them let the power they have go to their head using any excuse to cause trouble. We need police here to police the police.

donvito99 wrote: »

Dame St was a triumph for Gardaí. There's something entertaining about a handful of violent student protesters getting a hiding that maintains my respect for this country and its organisations.

Yea, it was a real triumph for the cops alright. Guards removing their numbers, beating citizens over the head with truncheons, refusing to co-operate with the subsequent internal Garda investigation and non telling the truth in court. It was a real high point for Irish democracy.

Truth of the matter is the cops were hard as nails when dealing with a non-threatening, non-violent protest and they were soft as shyte when they had to deal with a real riot at the love ulster march.

What the cops did at RTS in 2002 is one of the (many) reasons why the Garda Ombudsmans Office was established, because the state could no longer trust the Gardai to carry out their own internal investigations.

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I can't talk for anyone else, but you get 2 sets of epaulettes, so depending on the situation you may not get the chance to change them from your shirt to your fleece to your jacket to your high-vis or vica-versa (especially if you've been called to an emergency when you were doing something else and needed to grab your gear quickly). I'm not defending anyone who does it deliberately (I agree with you, it can happen), but it's not always deliberate and usually an oversight. Nor, am i saying that those members in the videos forgot to put them on or deliberately took them off.

Also, taking off the epaulettes is just delaying the inevitable. There are not that many Gardai, and they will get identified eventually. And yes, there was peaceful protestors, but there were also those looking to cause trouble. Some of that "peaceful" protest was far from (read up on Breach of the Peace).

I was referring specifically to Reclaim the Streets in 2002. A lot of the Guards there were not wearing their numbers. AFAIK only cops in Dublin and Cork had to wear numbers at the time, later in 2002 this was requirement was extended to all Gardai partly because of the public outcry caused by RTS (I am open to correction on this).

I personally saw guards taking off their numbers as they arrived at the scene. The issue was widley reported in the media at the time and was raised in the Dail.

In fairness, I wasn't really trying to have a go at you, your post regarding people covering their faces at protests is a fair question. However, some of sillier posts in this thread got my dander up!

There is no country in the world where if you take on the police you won't have the proverbials beaten out of you. Indeed in some countries you will probably be shot.

Here's a tip if there's a riot going on and you are not involved. Walk away, don't try and help and don't tell a policeman that you 'Know your rights'. In the heat of the action they will hit you hard and say sorry later or not as the case may be. A riot is not a spectator sport.

As for covering your face. Well if you turn up at a peaceful legal protest with a covered face. Everyone is entitled to believe you are either a modest person or there to commit violence. I tend towards the latter. It may not be illegal but it's a definite clue that you don't intend to be peaceful.