Church and State blog: Declan assaulted in the local internet café

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Declan assaulted in the local internet café

Yesterday evening Declan once again took a trip to a police station, this time to Limehouse PS which is the nearest one to our local internet café off Whitechapel Road.

He went in the middle of one of these summer storms and had to wait for almost an hour to talk with an officer, but he wasn’t deterred: the internet café in question is the only place around in which I can install a program so I can upload pages to the NAC website – I should be able to log in to my SiteGround account with my username and password but I am blocked from doing so (see blog of 9 May “SiteGround confirms our website has been hacked”).

This particular bloke is well known to Declan, and we are pretty sure from his drinking on computers that he is a resident of the Salvation Army’s Booth House hostel for homeless men, located around the corner from the internet café (and across the road from the huge East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre). Declan has also submitted a written complaint to the manager of the internet café against the guy for racially aggravated harassment just hours before we had a major run in with police at our sleeping pitch (see blog of 17 June “More police intimidation at the place we sleep, Salters”; for two Google map photos of where we sleep see blog of 5 June “Salters back in the spotlight”).

As Declan told the officer who took the report, he is sick and tired of homeless who seem to think that when it comes to us they have some sort of carte blanche to say and do pretty much what they like: Declan has been assaulted in the middle of the night in a winter shelter run by the West London Churches, crime reference no. 6002035-07 (see here); we have both been assaulted in the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission (see here for Declan, crime reference no. 4204886/07; and for me here, crime reference no. 4217341/07); we have been robbed of all our money and documents in the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Day Centre, crime reference no. 4215697/08 (see here); Declan has been further assaulted in the Catholic Manna Day Centre, crime reference no. 3021917/08 (see here) and the Dellow Centre, crime reference no. 4204029/09 (see here); and Declan has even had a homeless arrested for a threat to kill, crime reference no. 7221/07 (see blog of 8 September 2007 “Application to the European Court of Human Rights” para. 30).

Not one of these cases has resulted in a prosecution. And it’s not just because there never seems to be any witnesses. The robbery of all our money and documents, for example, was struck out due to the police being unable to obtain any CCTV footage whatsoever from the Dellow Centre (see here). Then there is Declan’s case against one homeless man, against whom he has three crime reference numbers, which was struck out due to the police being unable to obtain the identity of the suspect from the Dellow Centre even though they do know his details (see here). In fact, since 10 April last year, Declan has been washing in the street as a result of harassment and intimidation by homeless people in the Dellow Centre and Manna Centre, the only two day centres available to us since our barring two years ago from the Whitechapel Mission due to concerns about our safety (see blog of 14 May of “Letter to Archbishop Vincent Nichols”).

So now Declan has yet another crime reference number to add to his bourgeoning collection, 4215223/09 for common assault (caught on CCTV). This is the chronology Declan handed to police last night:

CHRONOLOGY

(1) 16 JUNE | 4.30-4.45pm the customer of the Internet cafe ("the customer") is continually abusive towards me, seemingly drunk; I am the only other person on an upstairs computer and regrettably did not write down actual words shouted across the floor at me. | 4.45pm I report the abuse to a member of staff downstairs who then requests of the customer where he sits that he quieten down. | 4.45-4.50pm the customer continues his tirade in abusive outbursts ("you have no fuckin' manners", "you are an Irish grass", etc). I do not know how the customer knows that I am Irish, but I suspect he is homeless and resides in the Salvation Army Booth House, a hostel for homeless people across the road. | 4.50-5.10pm I sit downstairs waiting for a computer to come free - impossible to work upstairs in the sole company of the customer. The member of staff requests from me a written complaint that he will present to the Manager. The member of staff informs me that the customer has already been barred for drunken behaviour, but was readmitted by the manager following his plea and promise of good behaviour. | 5.10pm I leave the internet cafe, no computer having come free. I read to the member of staff my "Chronology (1)" before leaving and inform him that I will drop a copy to him on my return. | 6.00pm I hand the member of staff "Chronology (1)", as requested.

(2) 27 JUNE | 5.05pm the customer vacates his computer at the same time as I make my way downstairs to pay for an extra three hours. As soon as I turn to go back upstairs, he proceeds to come down. Sensing trouble, I wait for him to pass. Rather than walk straight out the door or around me to the counter (which would have been no trouble at all), he comes straight at me, hitting my right shoulder with his right shoulder to move me out of the way of his chosen direct route to the counter. He makes some quick comment to the member of staff and leaves. I comment to the member of staff that this guy has just assaulted me with a shoulder charge, to which the member of staff replies that he has no idea what this guy's problem is. | 5.30pm I hand the member of staff a copy of "Chronology (2)", as previously requested. I ask for the address of the local police station, to drop them a copy of this chronology.

[5.45pm on leaving the internet café, the member of staff presents me with a business card for Limehouse police station, and confirms that the assault would have been caught on CCTV.]

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Declan assaulted in the local internet café

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