Interrogated by the police
Last night at 11pm we had a visit from two policemen; their van parked a few feet away. A policeman actually stopped for a few minutes at our patch the second night we were sleeping rough, his last word being that the weather should pick up for us come the spring!
Anyway, I was asleep. Thought I was going to get my first decent night’s sleep in a week. So, I open my eyes and see two dark figures standing beside me (I sleep on the outside) almost blending in with the darkness of the night. Declan is already starting to sit up in his sleeping bag, getting ready for a full-on interrogation.
After asking for some documentation, one of the policemen starts asking questions: where have we come from, how long have we been in London, how long sleeping rough, what were we doing before sleeping rough, whether either of us has ever been arrested … While this questioning is going on, the other policeman is silent, taking notes.
Then he asks Declan what else is he doing. (Surely this is not a question you ask a homeless person who is sleeping rough?) We assume he wants Declan to talk about my blog. Police seem keen on restricting freedom of speech.
After Declan informs him that our unemployment benefit was unlawfully suspended and then unlawfully terminated in the middle of judicial review proceedings, and that we have a renewal hearing on 11 Dec in the High Court in London, his questions become more provocative: what if the judge doesn’t reinstate, what if the Court of Appeal doesn’t reinstate, and then, rather than go for “straws in the wind”, why doesn’t Declan get a job, and why don’t I clean the buildings around our patch.
Before they leave the silent policeman gives Declan two tickets, one for him and one for me, each containing the name of the street our patch is in, and the reason they stopped, namely that we are “rough sleepers”. All throughout the 15-minute interrogation, Declan is cool as a cucumber – avoiding thus a trip to the police station.
Gene Sharp, described as “the man” when it comes to strategic non-violence, has written that police are experts in violence, and are trained to deal with opponents who use that method. He points out that using violence against “violence experts” is the quickest way to have your organisation or movement crushed.
There is no doubt that being homeless is quite a disadvantage. You can be searched for no particular reason, stopped and even thrown into a police van. No doubt the Department for Work and Pension was aware of this when they terminated our benefits.
Because we have been under surveillance for so many years now, I have made it my business to get to know police methods and techniques. Plenty of people are under surveillance: civil rights, anti-war and political groups.
From 1956 to 1971 the FBI conducted more than 2000 COINTELPRO operations (a series of counterintelligence programs designed to neutralise political dissidents) before the programs were officially discontinued in April of 1971, after public exposure, in order to “afford additional security to [their] sensitive techniques and operations”.
At the moment in the US, organisations are training anti-war activists (who attend marches) in the various forms of strategic non-violence to resist police provocation.
