Church and State blog: Letter to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Letter to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis

First thing yesterday morning, Declan received an email from the supervisory police officer who is overseeing Operation Poncho II within the City of London Police, Superintendent Lorraine Cussen of Snow Hill Police Station – Declan emailed City of London Police Commissioner Mike Bowron on 9 June (see previous blog) after we were threatened with arrest on 2 June (2.35am) and 9 June (3.00am) if we didn’t leave the porch we sleep in at night (to beyond City boundaries) so that the City of London's Cleansing service could wash and disinfect the porch floor with immediate effect. Having read this email, we are none the wiser except that we can expect to continue being threatened – things are to “continue for the foreseeable future”. Oh, and Cussen is not refuting that the City of London's Cleansing service is being (unlawfully) used by the City of London Police to expel us to beyond City boundaries.

So this evening Declan sent an email letter to Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, Britain’s most senior police officer, who is responsible for the policing of the metropolitan area in the capital city of London, with the exception of the City of London (a "heads up" letter, so to speak: his jurisdiction is "beyond City boundaries", to where the City of London Police are attempting to expel us by unlawful means). Declan continues to look 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.

Philip Leach in Taking a Case to the European Court of Human Rights states:

The Court is not bound by strict rules of evidence, and may rely on all forms of evidence. The standard of proof applied by the Court is that of ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’, although this is not interpreted as the same high degree of probability as in criminal trials … The Court has stated that it will allow a degree of flexibility: ‘taking into consideration the nature of the substantive right at stake and any evidentiary difficulties involved. It has resisted suggestions to establish rigid evidentiary rules and has adhered to the principle of free assessment of all evidence’.

This is the email from Superintendent Cussen:

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

Mr. Heavey,

Your e-mail has been forwarded to me, as I am the supervisory police officer who is overseeing Operation Poncho II within the City of London Police.

I note your concerns outlined below. However, the City of London Corporation, together with other partner agencies (the City of London Police being one of the main partners) have been recently criticised by the Communities for London Government Department (CLG) because the City rough sleeper population has significantly increased over the last year. The City of London has in fact the highest density of rough sleepers in the country.

Reducing the number of rough sleepers nationally is a government objective and therefore the City of London Corporation are required to act accordingly.

Rough sleeping is also an issue which is regularly raised by the City Community within the new Neighbourhood Policing Model, which we, the Police, are also tasked to address.

Broadway, a homeless charity, has recently been employed by the CoL Corporation to work with rough sleepers, to provide access to support services. Over the last few weeks we have had some very successful results with some 23 people now re-housed and a large percentage of rough sleepers awaiting access to accommodation. We have also been able to repatriate some Polish rough sleepers, providing them with access to accommodation and training.

Therefore I would fully recommend engaging with Broadway, if you have not already, as they will be able to help you find accommodation.

The City of London Corporation have a duty to cleanse the streets, which does include doorways of private property. Issues around defecation and urination remain a constant problem and the cleansing will continue for the foreseeable future. The City of London Police also have a duty to check on the welfare of individuals, which will also continue for the foreseeable future.

I hope that this helps to clarify our current position.

Lorraine Cussen
Superintendent Snow Hill BCU

And this is the email letter Declan sent to Commissioner Blair (ian.blair@met.police.uk):

Subject: Operation Poncho II

Dear Commissioner Blair

I am writing to you as Britain's most senior police officer, responsible for the policing of the metropolitan area in the capital city of London, with the exception of the City of London. My wife and I have been sleeping in a porch in the City of London since 3 November 2006. I wish to bring to your attention that under the City of London Police’s Operation Poncho II the City of London Police are attempting to move my wife and I beyond City boundaries with the (unlawful) use of the City of London's Cleansing service.

Please find attached a copy of an email I received yesterday from Superintendent Lorraine Cussen, the supervisory police officer who is overseeing Operation Poncho II within the City of London Police, and a copy of my email letter of 9 June to City of London Police Commissioner Michael Bowron, to which Superintendent Cussen refers.

As I stated in the aforementioned letter to Commissioner Bowron, 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 (to beyond City boundaries) so that the City of London's Cleansing service could wash and disinfect the porch floor with immediate effect. Please note that Superintendent Cussen does not refute that the City of London's Cleansing service is being (unlawfully) used by the City of London Police to expel my wife and I to beyond City boundaries. (We have been sleeping in this porch without any complaint against us for over a year and a half (3 November 2006): we bed down at 9.00pm and get up at 4.30am, save Saturday and Sunday when we get up at 6.30am; we do not smoke or drink; and almost every night my wife wipes the porch floor clean. Further, all our contacts are within walking distance of the porch, and we have never found a more suitable place to sleep, neither within the City of London nor beyond its boundaries.)

Superintendent Cussen recommends that my wife and I engage with Broadway, a homeless charity, which has recently been employed by the City of London Corporation to work with rough sleepers, to provide access to support services. In this regard, I beg to point out that on 22 November 2006 the Dellow Day Centre recorded on my wife's registration form that St Mungo's, London's largest homelessness organisation, had informed the centre that neither of us could be referred to a hostel "due to not being on any benefits". Having had to go on state benefits in July 2005, the Department for Work and Pensions ceased our allowance entitlement on 27 September 2006 because I did not “sign on” two days before I was due to do so on 29 September.

My case in respect of the ceasing of entitlement to allowances is currently before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and I am awaiting notification (c/o Dellow Centre) from the Court as to whether my application of 8 September 2007 has been declared inadmissible or the case communicated to the Government. My most recent letter from the Court is a letter of 22 November, reference ECHR-LEO.1R CO/PHA/gz, signed for the Registrar by Legal Secretary C Ovey, stating: "I acknowledge receipt of your letter of 22 September 2007 and enclosures. With reference to your request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, I can inform you that the Court will examine your application shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008. It would therefore appear unnecessary to consider your request." You will note that on 12 May I made a submission to the European Court of Human Rights, 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.

In relation to our ongoing efforts to get ourselves off the street, my wife and I are in the process of trying to raise £4,000 to run a campaign in support of my petition to the United Nations on therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and for the treatment of disease, which since 22 October 2007 has been signed by 519 scientists and academics, including 22 Nobel laureates.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc City of London Police Commissioner Michael Bowron

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.

Church and State blog

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Letter to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis

About me

My Picks

Church and State

Blog Archive