Victory for Critical Mass campaigners

Jeff Jones

Just flagging this story up:

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/v ... ners-19467

eternal_headwind

Although it is a victory for critical mass, it does depend rather on the idea that this is a 'traditional procession' and is therefore exempt from the public order act. I wonder if the saw exemption would apply to new critical mass events.

Thanks for flagging it though, very interesting. Note the right hand link to the new york police officer assault footage. This is also worth a look

d_c

You can read the judgement here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... etro-1.htm

They seem to make it clear in the notes to the judgement that any new CM ride would also be exempt.

NWLondoner

While i do not necessarily agree with Critical Mass it is good to see the Law Lords applying common sense.

The Met. would ban everything if they had their way. Much easier to Police if nothing ever happens and civil liberties are banished.

pneumatic

The NYPD thing is outrageous!

Don't they vet or train their police officers in the land of the free?

eternal_headwind

Somewhere in the policeman's mind a button marked 'protect society' was pressed. Somewhere along the line that transated to 'attack the cyclist threat'. It would be interesting to know how he was briefed on his duties. What did the police team think they were there for? What did his colleagues say before, during and after the assault.

I say this is interesting because all violence starts off as mental violence, even if that phase only lasts long enough to complete the sentence 'wot r u lookin at?'.

I propose that if you extract the physical violence from the new york assault, then that incident and the Met's behaviour are very similar / identical. At the Met someone is trying to commit violence against cyclists and are focusing their efforts through the courts.

The published material to date speaks of a personality or group within the Met that believes it is in hostile confrontation with cyclists. We have two options if we feel action is required on this point. Option one is to rehumanise ourselves in the eyes of the police. If they see us as people and not prey then the battle is (partly) won.

They other option is to make the police lose the conflict. I don't recommend that anyone try this, because folks are a bit sensitive about terrorism these days, although....

...there is one good thing about terrorism. Since it became a bit of an issue a lot of communities have put efforts into building intercommunity links. If we consider ourselves to be a community against which there is prejudice, perhaps we could learn from other communities about how they cope wth reversing the trend.

shawnrohrbach

More interesting than the overtly violent reaction on the part of the NYPD thug is the ferociously violent and obscene language of the participants in the Bicycling Magazine forums directed at Critical Mass. While this thread is somewhat grounded and thoughtful, a similar contribution I made to the Bicycling Mag forum resulted in some fairly threatening emails from forum participants; all I did was link to a news item about the same incident. Yes, and we all know most if not all of those participants in the Bicycling Mag forum are in the US of A.

boybiker

While its a kind of victory against the police who do get above themselves sometimes I and most people I know would rather walk than be represented by these CM morons.

Tourist Tony

Eternal_headwind wrote:

Somewhere in the policeman's mind a button marked 'protect society' was pressed. Somewhere along the line that transated to 'attack the cyclist threat'. It would be interesting to know how he was briefed on his duties. What did the police team think they were there for? What did his colleagues say before, during and after the assault.

I say this is interesting because all violence starts off as mental violence, even if that phase only lasts long enough to complete the sentence 'wot r u lookin at?'.

I propose that if you extract the physical violence from the new york assault, then that incident and the Met's behaviour are very similar / identical. At the Met someone is trying to commit violence against cyclists and are focusing their efforts through the courts.

The published material to date speaks of a personality or group within the Met that believes it is in hostile confrontation with cyclists. We have two options if we feel action is required on this point. Option one is to rehumanise ourselves in the eyes of the police. If they see us as people and not prey then the battle is (partly) won.

They other option is to make the police lose the conflict. I don't recommend that anyone try this, because folks are a bit sensitive about terrorism these days, although....

...there is one good thing about terrorism. Since it became a bit of an issue a lot of communities have put efforts into building intercommunity links. If we consider ourselves to be a community against which there is prejudice, perhaps we could learn from other communities about how they cope wth reversing the trend.

I've been on rather more than a few CMs in London, and the above rings true. The majority of the coppers have a niice, relaxed attitude to us. Inspector Gruffydd is always pleasant; as an example, he once asked Valiiant for his name and address. Sam replied "Shall we wait until I've done something you need it for?"
The Inspector: "Fair enough", with a smile.
Apart from some newbie arseholes, the coppers on duty are fine, but as sad above there is always the weight of their manager;s expectations hanging Damocles-style.
They have tried the "stop at red" game, and seen the mess it causes. The trustafarian games are, however, an acute face-reddener for all cyclists.

eternal_headwind

Tourist Tony, have you any experiences for newbie coppers being unreasonable?

Tourist Tony

Yes, I have. By newbies, I mean that the policing was for a while done by a regular set of cyclists, and then it began to be rotated through different groups, some of whose cycling was a little unpractised in style.
It seems to have settled down again now.
What I found on a number of occasions was that a small number of individual coppers were seriously offensive in their comments and attitude. The anecdote I quoted above is more typical. I remember cycling over Waterloo Bridge side by side with a Cymro copper chatting happily when a ped loon came walking the wrong way down the road, in the middle of the lane trying to push riders over. I don't push easily, so he then tried to push my new friend...words of advice were given.
On the other side, we had a particularly objectionable copper one time. The police had tried to impose a red-light observance, which simply split the Mass into chunks that then stopped and waited for each other. Realising this, their CO started directing riders to keep together.
Our new friend then tried issuing FPs to riders directed through red by his colleagues....

Most of the old bill are regulars now, and know how it works. They find new things to pull on every now and again, such as the volume of sound systems, but there is an edgier atmosphere without their presence. There are some truly nasty drivers out there who WILL drive at you.

I have no problems with the police. They are doing a job, and believe that they need to control CM. I go there for a ride with friends, a meal and a beer.