More harassment by the police

Last night at 2.10am we were woken in the porch we sleep in by a police officer, this last visit makes four times in four days (see previous blog). It transpires that this is no longer about "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers as previously, but about the "cleaning" of the City of London. So could we please pack up and leave so that the cleaners (two cleaners in a van) can get on with the job of disinfecting the porch, says PC 365B of Snow Hill Police Station. What an insult! I may wear shabby clothes – I have great difficulty in getting them replaced: in the Manna Centre (whose building is provided rent-free by the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark) I only get a couple of minutes, every two Sundays, to find a maximum of three items from a jumble of second-hand clothes stored in a dark women's room; and in the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre whatever we need, the last time it was a pair of jeans for Declan and runners for me, the nun in charge seldom has it, and it’s never a question of wait for a few days – but we are both clean, our bags are tied, covered in black bags and well stacked, and I myself clean the porch floor almost every night. I don't know you, he replies, despite we have been sleeping there for over a year and a half.

Can we have two tickets, and could you write that you want us to leave the porch so cleaners can disinfect it, Declan asks (this is one of two questions we prepared a few days ago for more compelling evidence of a violation of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights (see blog of 13 May "Letter to the European Court under Article 34") - Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy). No problem, he says, and writes "Welfare. OP Poncho II."

"Are you in a hostel?" he asks. So Declan explains for the second time in three days that the Department for Work and Pensions unlawfully terminated our benefits over a year and a half ago because he didn't sign on two days before he was due to do so, and that he submitted his application to the European Court on 8 September 2007 with a request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court (paragraph 3 of Declan's application has a brief account of the reason for benefits). He also informs PC 365B that the Dellow Centre recorded on my registration form of 22 November 2006 that St Mungo's, London's largest homelessness organisation, had informed the centre that we could not be referred to a hostel "due to not being on any benefits" – the Court didn't consider us sleeping in the street enough to expedite the case, and Declan has yet to be notified by the Court as to whether his application has been dismissed or the Government invited to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of the case.

Even if we could get into a hostel, we wouldn't entertain the thought of it, Declan adds. The Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission barred us last June due to concerns about our safety, and the risk must have been so great that, even after writing to the minister himself and to the head of the Methodist Church in the UK, Rev Graham Carter, we were never readmitted. Declan is now unstoppable. "I have been assaulted several times by homeless, and my wife once. We have a bunch of crime reference numbers," he says, adding that we have problems with homeless both in the Manna and Dellow. (Declan forgot to mention that such are the problems with homeless that for several weeks now he has been washing and shaving in the street, see blog of 22 April “Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor”.) PC 365B has nothing to say.

Does he intend to arrest us if we don’t leave, I ask him (since on 9 May PC 698B told us he would and on 17 May PC 601B told us she wouldn’t). He replies that he can arrest us. “If we are harassing people, or drunk,” Declan adds. “Or obstructing police,” PC 365B warns. We have nowhere to go at 2.35am with all our stuff and barely the money to buy four Big Issues (a magazine sold buy homeless people on registered street pitches), but if he could write on the tickets he is going to issue us that he is going to arrest us if we don’t move, we will obviously pack up and leave, I amenably say – this is our second question. He doesn’t have to write anything, he informs us, but what about if we step down to the pavement with our bags, let the cleaners do their job, and then bed back down when they are done. I reject this proposal straight away because our sleeping bags would be soaked with water and disinfectant, and I already have a bad cold as result of all the rain and wet socks; Declan has been hospitalised with a viral infection, also because of the rain, and we have no access to healthcare … So if he is not going to arrest us, we are staying put, I insist.

In the end, he tells the cleaners to disinfect the step, no need to do the free space by the porch door – which Declan always leaves clear so we don’t block the door; the last thing we want is to cause any trouble so we also bed down at 9.00pm and get up at 4.30am (the office building also has a front door around the corner). The cleaners haven’t the slightest interest in cleaning at all: the small porch beside ours, which is so dirty not even a drunk homeless would lay in it, is left untouched; and so are the big, dirty stains along the pavement where Pret A Manger normally leave rubbish bags. In fact, with the exception of the porch step, they clean nothing. The outcome of the encounter, which we read when everything is back quiet again, is “Satisfactory”.

Operation Poncho II

So what does Operation Poncho II have to do with cleaners “cleaning” the City of London, including privately owned property? Well, according to Google, nothing. There are only three references in Google UK, one of which is official: the Autumn/Winter 2007 issue of Talkback, a community news magazine from the City of London Police. It appears that Operation Poncho II happened back in May 2007 “aimed to engage with people who are sleeping on the street, checking their welfare and offering access to support services such as accommodation and drugs and alcohol rehabilitation … a positive step towards ensuring that rough sleepers have access to housing and services before the colder winter months arrive”.

So OP Poncho II is about the "welfare" of rough sleepers. Well, that may explain why PC 365B didn’t write that cleaners were going to disinfect the porch, or that he wanted us to pack up and leave, or that an arrest was in the air. Anyway, I may be completely wrong here, but if a police officer was to issue us with a ticket in respect of OP Poncho II citing either “cleaning” or “arrest” – and it sure looks like tonight we may be adding more tickets to our growing collection – we could well be looking at prima facie improper pressure in violation of Article 34.