Today's discussion about the news

It's probably just as well you're not in charge of any police tactics, given that you can't seem to accept that humans in crowds behave in unfortunate ways. I too hate how football crowds behave, but I'm not going to claim to know how to police them. I'm not sure if you think it would have been better to disrupt 20,000 protesters (or however many there were) than one person who appears to have been gunning for conflict, but that's how it's coming across.

Hey look, I've never pretended I am a policing expert. Far from it.

I am however of the view if the police took a zero tolerance policy for hooligan behaviour (aka, arresting anyone and everyone who breaks the law) and equivalent at these protests, the troubles would stop fairly quickly.

Problem is, they don't have the manpower. But I don't see why that absolves the police from criticism. If my company ballses stuff up because we don't have enough employees, that's still our problem.

If using a few unfortunately chosen words (and the transcript suggests that even that is debatable) is the worst thing that happened at a demonstration involving thousands of protesters (some of whom might or might not have been trouble-makers), then I think that would probably go down as a policing success.

Little or no control over demand, lol.

I mean, they could catch the criminals. Give over.

Does your company depend on how much public funding they are given to have enough people to do their job?

Just draft in a load of recruitment consultants to sort out the next riots 😄

Yeah, so how much problems is this wind up merchant really going to cause?

I appreciate in the modern world the idea that we arrest people for breaking the law is novel. The police always have an excuse not to. Not enough, police, not enough funding, blah blah.

Had not realised, Falter is not some random guy going about his business, he has been a high profile anti-semitism campaigner for many years. His face might well have been known to the police, hat or no hat.

So the real issue here is yet another chip on your shoulder, this one being the police?

There are plenty of examples of the police being more "proactive" and then being criticised for a heavy handed response - see the miner's strike, G20 protests. I suspect you'd be complaining in those instances too, I remember plenty were on here with the G20 protests, it really is a case of damned if they do damned if they don't. I watched a documentary on The Met that was filmed after all the scandals that saw Cressida Dick resign. In one instance they were called to a reported knife incident in a fast food restaurant and responded as you would hope. When they arrived the person didn't have a knife and they were completely surrounded by people filming them and complaining about police over-reaction, WTF are they supposed to do?

I think it can be fair to say that the guy is a wind up merchant, that's his bit, and that his wind up merchant bit proves his point; that it is potentially unsafe to be visibly Jewish around these protests.

Now I get that the rozzer needs to keep the peace and uphold the law, but it's quite plain to see that he understands the problem with that lack of safety.

Now, he's doing the "keep the peace bit" but he's not really doing the "upholding the law" bit, and I can entirely see why if you're Jewish that gives anxiety.

Furthermore, because the pro Palestine movement is largely a lefty thing, there's some massive blind spots about the motives and the impacts of these demonstrations, and it does my head in.

If I'm a Jew, it's hard not to read the rozzer as saying "yeah, it is unsafe, and we can't protect you, so we'll move you" which is what the police always do - blame the vicitm because it's less hassle in the moment.

I suspect the police would do similar if either a Jew or a Palestinian were to try something similar with an EDL protest. They're not doing it for any biased reasons and it doesn't prove a point at all. If you are a member of a group that is being protested about then it isn't a good idea to try to act in a way that will wind up that group. It's not the same thing as people from that group being unable to go about their day to day business when there isn't a protest happening which of course they should be free to do.

And I'd suggest that the transcript evidences that they were trying to do exactly that, in effect "If you're just trying to get somewhere safely, we'll help you." But it looks plain that he wanted to put himself in harm's way, or get arrested: not actions of someone who just wanted to get somewhere safely.

Maybe there are antisemitic thugs in the crowd but i don't think inciting violence and then arresting the participants is a good idea for anybody involved.

I have flicked through the full length video and it seemed like the police officer was being polite, calm and professional throughout.

I'm not sure what you think the correct response would be in that situation RC?

It looks like he did do some walking against the flow while a march was going on and didn't get beaten up. Must have been very disappointed.

Didn't the proposed accommodation get sold to locals?