Church and State blog: Letter to the City of London Police Commissioner

Monday, June 09, 2008

Letter to the City of London Police Commissioner

Last night at 2.40am we were woken in the porch we sleep in by a police officer, this time PC 336B of Snow Hill Police Station – in the past eleven days police have visited us a total of five times. As on 2 June, when PC 365B of Snow Hill Police Station woke us at 2.10am (we get up at 4.30am), the reason for the encounter is Operation Poncho II, but he begs to differ about the aim of Poncho II: he says it is not to “clean” the City of London but to "clean" the City of London of rough sleepers. There are two things they both agree on though: we have to leave the porch so that the City of London's Cleansing service can wash and disinfect the porch floor with immediate effect; and we can be arrested if we don’t leave. When told by Declan that an email he received on 5 June on behalf of the Mayor of London states that the Mayor doesn’t know anything about this “cleaning” business, PC 336B replies that the Mayor “has too many things on his plate”. And the police are under no obligation to inform him, he adds.

Like PC 365B, PC 336B refuses to write on our tickets that he wants us to leave the porch, that cleaners are on hand to wash and disinfect it, or that we have been informed that we can be arrested if we don’t leave. In the end we weren’t arrested and two cleaners washed around our groundsheet, water pouring onto the pavement. It was almost 3.30am.

Declan has yet to receive notification from the European Court of Human Rights as to whether his application has been declared inadmissible or the case communicated to the Government. Philip Leach in Taking a Case to the European Court of Human Rights states:

If there are no clear reasons for declaring an application inadmissible, the chamber will communicate the case to the respondent Government … When a case is communicated to the respondent Government, the Government will be provided with the Court’s statement of facts and will be asked to reply to specific questions within a stipulated time … At the same time, copies of the statement of facts and the list of questions are sent to the applicant who is notified that the case has been communicated and is informed of the time given to the Government to reply.

Since Declan received a letter from the Court in December stating that it was unnecessary for the Court to consider his request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court because the Court would be examining his application “shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008”, he would be forgiven for asking at the reception of our c/o address, the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre, if there is correspondence for him. Last week one if not two staff seemed to be put out by his request to check the records for mail to be signed for by him. So last Friday Declan sent a formal request for this information by registered post to the Chief Executive of Providence Row Charity (of which the Dellow Centre is a part), Ms Jo Ansell. He still has to receive a reply.

For the record, Declan sent the following email letter to the Commissioner of the City of London Police, Mike Bowron, and a copy of same to his PA, Sara Coker, who Declan talked to on the telephone this morning (mike.bowron@city-of-london.pnn.police.uk, sara.coker@city-of-london.police.uk):

Subject: Heavey v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 22541/07)

Dear Commissioner Bowron

I am writing to bring to your attention a submission I made to the European Court of Human Rights on 12 May 2008 in the above case, citing a violation of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights. (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.) My wife and I are of no fixed abode, and have been sleeping in a porch in the City of London since 3 November 2006.

Please find attached a copy of my registered letter of 17 May to Prime Minister Gordon Brown together with the aforementioned submission therein referred to. I also attach copy of the police tickets issued to my wife and I on 2 and 9 June under Operation Poncho II.

Please be advised that on 2 June (2.35am) and 9 June (3.00am) police officers threatened my wife and I with arrest pursuant to Operation Poncho II if we did not leave the porch we were sleeping in so that the City of London's Cleansing service could wash and disinfect the porch floor with immediate effect – on 2 June we were told by PC 365B of Snow Hill Police Station that Operation Poncho II is aimed at "cleaning" the City of London, including private property; last night we were told by PC 336B of Snow Hill Police Station that Operation Poncho II is aimed at "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers.

I can confirm that the Autumn/Winter 2007 issue of Talkback, the community news magazine from the City of London Police, states that Operation Poncho II is 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".

Further, I am in receipt of an email on behalf of the Mayor of London, Mr Boris Johnson of 5 June signed by Mr Nathan Winch, Policy and Projects Officer, Community Safety Team, stating:

The Mayor is unable to intervene in individual homelessness cases such as yours, but is concerned that rough sleeping persists in London. During his election campaign he backed the target of the organisation Homeless Link to end rough sleeping in London by 2012, through the provision of appropriate support, accommodation and prevention services. Using the Police to 'clean' the streets of rough sleepers is not part of this policy.

In the event of error in transmission, please note that the order of attachments is as follows:

GordonBrown.doc
RegistrarECHR.htm
BorisJohnson.htm
CardinalMurphy-O'Connor.htm
CertificateAttendanceRH.gif
police-tickets2.6.08.jpg
police-tickets9.6.08.jpg

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

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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Monday, June 09, 2008

Letter to the City of London Police Commissioner

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