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julietWhat happened when the police broke (illegally) into the RamPART Centre in E London (features tasers & the police stealing people's phones, among other things).
The phone thing goes: "Is this your phone?" "Yes." "Prove it or we'll nick you for stealing it." It's a tactic to get people's names & addresses, basically (because you are not obliged to provide a name & address when stopped-and-searched). I've witnessed (at Climate Camp last summer) other similar tactics to get names, including taking cards out of a wallet and reading them (also illegal under stop-&-search legislation), reading notebooks (ditto), and some truly outrageous racial discrimination while I was doing my legal-observer thing, where an Italian guy was threatened with arrest under the Immigration Act unless he provided name, address, and *his landlord's phone number*, whereupon they *phoned the landlord*. So, yeah, I'm furious and saddened, but not surprised.
(RampART link)
The phone thing goes: "Is this your phone?" "Yes." "Prove it or we'll nick you for stealing it." It's a tactic to get people's names & addresses, basically (because you are not obliged to provide a name & address when stopped-and-searched). I've witnessed (at Climate Camp last summer) other similar tactics to get names, including taking cards out of a wallet and reading them (also illegal under stop-&-search legislation), reading notebooks (ditto), and some truly outrageous racial discrimination while I was doing my legal-observer thing, where an Italian guy was threatened with arrest under the Immigration Act unless he provided name, address, and *his landlord's phone number*, whereupon they *phoned the landlord*. So, yeah, I'm furious and saddened, but not surprised.
(RampART link)
