Police threaten to physically remove us from where we sleep

It looks like things are going to get violent tonight at our sleeping pitch – a porch of the Salters’ Hall located on a derelict highwalk (see blog of 5 June “Salters back in the spotlight” for two Google map photos of the pitch). A short briefing: on Thursday night we found three notices stating that the Salters’ Company would report to “the authorities” anyone found sleeping in the porch (see here); and on Friday night we found two additional notices from the City of London Police (see previous blog here).

As I have written previously, we have been sleeping in this porch since January. For some months prior to this, we slept about twenty paces from the front entrance of the same building, down some twelve steps. Prior to that, we slept for almost two years in a porch at street level until a trellis gate was installed … on Declan’s birthday! In the previous blog, I also gave a short description of the occasions I have been assaulted while sleeping on a street level.

Anyway, at about 10.30pm we were woken up by the Beadle to the Salters’ Company, Michel Goeller - the Salters’ Company, one of the Twelve Great City Livery Companies, grew up in the early Middle Ages, and plays an important part in the system of local government in the City of London, reflecting its historical roots. (In Friday’s blog I actually publish a picture of the former Law Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who is the Master of the Salters’ Company.) “I have to ask you to move,” he says. When I tell him he needs a court order to get us to move, I thought he was going to burst out laughing. Instead, he returns with two City of London police officers.

One of the officers gets my attention with his foot and I know immediately that we are onto another level. According to the two of them, they don’t need a court order to remove us from the porch, and neither do they need to arrest me if I refuse to move. Under the law, they say, police are entitled to remove us and our belongings with reasonable force. If we move back in tonight, they say, police will return and move us by force – and throughout the night if they have to. In their opinion, it is in our best interests to find another place, even if that means that I am at greater risk of being assaulted.

So it seems that when the June 2008 issue of The Pavement, a free magazine for London’s homeless, reported that the local council needed a court order to get a rough sleeper moved on from a multi-storey Hampshire car park, they forgot to mention the council could have saved taxpayers’ money by having police throw him and this belongings onto the street (see blog here). Another example, of course, is squatters: the Telegraph reported yesterday that squatters living in a house owned by Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen, who are facing a formal sleaze probe over their expenses, have been ordered to leave by a judge.

Anyway, I am hoping tonight the application of “reasonable force” will not include me getting tasered. This is shocking:

British Police Taser and Beat Man

Nottingham police use excessive force on a man, he had his legs kicked from under him and was tasered three times, handcuffed then punched three times in the face by one officer.

Just in case, this afternoon Declan emailed City of London Police Commissioner Michael Bowron (copied to Lord Lloyd of Berwick):

Subject: My complaint against the City of London Police

Dear Commissioner Bowron,

I refer to your email of 18 June signed by Darren Pulman, Staff Officer to the Commissioner, acknowledging receipt of my email of complaint to you of 17 June regarding stop at Salters' Hall: CAD 10903 of 16/06/09. My subsequent email of complaint to you of 18 June, having been further issued on the morning of 18 June with false records (386s) in relation to said stop, was acknowledged on 26 June as received by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

As you are aware, my wife and I are of no fixed abode and have been sleeping rough in the City of London since 3 November 2006, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) having terminated my joint claim JSA on 27 September 2006 because I did not sign on for Jobseeker's Allowance two days before I was actually due to do so on 29 September. (We slept in a porch in the City of London until a trellis gate was installed on 4 September 2008; as from 12 September, we have been sleeping at Salters’ Hall, 4 Fore Street, London EC2Y 5DE.)

I wish to confirm that at 11.00pm last night PC 300CP and PC 360CP from Bishopsgate police station insisted in the company of the Beadle to the Salters’ Company, Mr. Michel Goeller, that my wife and I move out of our sleeping pitch – a porch of the Salters’ Hall located on (a derelict) St. Alphage Highwalk. When my wife requested the court order to which she is entitled, PC 300CP informed her that he was not in need of any such order and that she had to vacate the porch immediately. My wife refused as a result of having nowhere else to sleep, the upshot being that PC 360CP issued us with two 386s for the stop, PC 300CP informing my wife in the presence of Mr. Goeller that if she returned to the porch tonight City of London police would use “reasonable force” to move her and her belongings away – and throughout the night if she does not desist from returning.

I beg to again point out that my wife and I do not wish to be sleeping in the street. We have been denied benefits by the DWP because I did not sign up early enough – even though we were both doing so in a timely fashion. And I have exhausted the appeals process: my case has been dismissed by the High Court (Judicial Review), Court of Appeal and European Court of Human Rights, despite that I was denied the internal appeal process by procedural impropriety on the part of the DWP. We have informed the homeless organisation Broadway that all we require is a reinstatement of my joint claim JSA and the payment of a deposit on a flat, a small fraction of what we are entitled to in accumulated arrears. That we are dealing with such an obvious "mistake" (however deliberate), I cannot imagine what is motivating the officials to deny us benefits to which we are entitled.

I am copying this email to former Law Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the Master of the Salters’ Company c/o the Clerk to the Salters’ Company at clerk@salters.co.uk.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc Lord Lloyd of Berwick, Master of the Salters’ Company

Police ‘No sleeping’ sign in the place we sleep, Salters

As I said in yesterday’s blog “Salters’ Company threatens us with ‘the authorities’”, the night before last we arrived to our sleeping pitch – a porch of the Salters’ Hall located on a derelict highwalk (see blog of 5 June “Salters back in the spotlight” for two Google map photos of the pitch) – to find three notices on official headed paper stating that the Salters' Company would report to “the authorities” anyone found sleeping in the porch. Last night there were two additional notices, this time on official notepaper from the City of London Police, stating as follows:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

Please do not sleep in this area or leave your personal belongings.

In the previous blog I mentioned that The Salters’ Company, one of the Twelve Great City Livery Companies, describes itself as a company very largely devoted to charity; it also plays an important part in the system of local government in the City of London, reflecting its historical roots. I also explain that under the Human Rights Act 1998 people have the right to sleep in the streets and that Salters need a court order to move us on. (I also publish a picture of Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the Master of the Salters’ Company, and a former law lord.)

Nonetheless, I am actually prepared to break any court order that would put me back on street level: within two weeks of sleeping in the street somebody sat on the right hand side of my face (see here); I was grabbed by the ankles while I was asleep and dragged out of the two-step porch and down the pavement two or three metres, then a few hours later I was kicked in the back (see here); a guy repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders as his mates stood by (see here); and I was urinated on (see here). I would actually feel safer in a cell!

In Thursday’s blog “Still no resolution!”, I wrote that there wouldn’t be any need for a cell if the homeless organisation Broadway got a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) acknowledging an error in respect to the payment of our benefits and committing to the payment of a deposit on a flat, a small fraction of what we are entitled to in accumulated arrears - we came to England in 2003 and for two years attempted to get NAC up and running; we went on benefits in July 2005; the DWP terminated our benefits on 27 September 2006 because Declan did not “sign on” two days before he was due to do so on 29 September. Broadway, of course, never seem happy about the task, I assume because we never succeeded in getting this from the High Court (see here), Court of Appeal (see here) or the European Court of Human Rights (see here).

What would motivate the DWP to deny us benefits to which we are entitled? Well, there can be no explanation other than to run us back to Ireland, where an organisation like NAC wouldn’t stand a chance of seeing the light of day. In fact, Ireland is currently shuffling through a law creating penalties for blasphemy, an offence that has never properly existed in the Irish state. The proposed law states that a person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000. Irish writer Michael Nugent comments in the Index on Censorship that the law “treats religious beliefs as more valuable than secular beliefs and scientific thinking”.

I uploaded this video featuring Nugent, titled “Blasphemy Is Not A Crime Part 1” (parts 2 to 9 can be accesses here), to a Guardian article “Who asked for Ireland's blasphemy law?”, which I posted to the NAC website yesterday .

Declan appeals to the Independent Police Complaints Commission

As I stated in yesterday’s blog, things are very much on the boil, particularly at our sleeping pitch, Salters’ Hall (see blog of 5 June “Salters back in the spotlight” for two Google map photos of the sleeping pitch). Last night around midnight we were harassed by three workers from the homeless organisation Broadway. It was of course two workers from the same organisation who visited us with two police officers on the night of 28 May in what turned out an encounter of surreal proportions (see blog “Last night something surreal happened”). Declan and I did all our talking that night and had no interest in pointless conversation, but these three guys did not seem too happy about it.

“We’re reading your blog and just wonder if you would be willing to air your views to two of our mental health workers that I have here with me,” one of them blurted on being ignored, like all of a sudden we were sleeping not in Britain, but in Russia! (Declan has actually been to the police already about one of these workers for harassment and intimidation; he retains a With Compliments slip dated 29 April from Bishopsgate police station wherein PC Thomas, 409CP, registers his name against front office clerk Claire Stevenson’s description of the guy’s behaviour as “intrusive” and “inappropriate”.)

Well, if they are reading my blog, they shouldn’t bother coming back any time soon: as I have written in previous blogs, I was told recently in the canteen of Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Day Centre that I should “lap dance for donations” (for more on the Dellow in particular, see blog of 14 May “Letter to Archbishop Vincent Nichols”).



Tonight the BBC is showing “Famous, Rich and Homeless” about five celebrities who undertook ten days of sleeping rough, soup runs and hostels in a bid to put homelessness in the spotlight. Bruce Jones told The Sun how he lost control of his emotions when he walked through the front door of his luxury home in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, to be reunited with wife Sandra. He says: “She gathered me in her arms and I’m not ashamed to say that I broke down and wept like a baby.” I suppose our survival of sleeping rough for over two and a half years is pretty amazing. Add to that that I am maintaining a blog, developing a website and we have a petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning that has been already signed by 24 Nobel laureates, and I would say it is probably unique. Not to mention that we have also been through the High Court (see here), Court of Appeal (see here), and European Court of Human Rights (see here).

To add insult to injury, it seems that Declan’s complaint last Thursday to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate against two City of London police officers, having been further issued with false records in relation to their encounter with him and me at our sleeping pitch two nights previous, has now been dismissed. Apparently DC Nigel Anderson, in the Directorate, still hasn’t the first clue what Declan is complaining about (see previous blog). Well, this is Declan’s appeal this afternoon to the Independent Police Complaints Commission - an automated generated acknowledgement confirmed they have received the email:

Subject: Complaint

Dear Sir/Madam,

I refer to the attached copy of my email and attachment of 22 June to DC Nigel Anderson, in the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate, regarding the behaviour of two City of London police officers on the night of 16 June at Salters' Hall, St. Alphage Highwalk, Fore Street, Moorgate, London (CAD 10903).

I wish to appeal to the Independent Police Complaints Commission on the grounds that, in the absence of hearing further from the Professional Standards Directorate, I have not been given enough information about what the investigation has found.

My wife and I are of no fixed abode and have been sleeping rough in the City of London since 3 November 2006. (We slept in the same porch until a trellis gate was installed on 4 September 2008; as from 12 September, our sleeping pitch has been located at Salters' Hall.)

Please would you acknowledge receipt by return email.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey

Declan responds to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate

It very much seems that Declan's complaint last Thursday to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate against two City of London police officers, having been further issued with false records in relation to their encounter with him and me at our sleeping pitch two nights previous, has fallen on deaf ears. Yesterday Declan received three emails from DC Nigel Anderson, in the Directorate, and in every single one the detective makes out that he hasn't the first clue what Declan is complaining about.

Things in fact are very much on the boil, particularly at our sleeping pitch, Salters' Hall (see blog of 5 June “Salters back in the spotlight” for two Google map photos of the sleeping pitch). The Salters’ Company describes itself as a Great City Livery Company very largely devoted to charity; it also plays an important part in the system of local government in the City of London, reflecting its historical roots. The company not only fund raises for science education (Declan's petition to the United Nations on research cloning of embryos and stem cells has now been signed by 591 scientists and academics, who include recognised authorities from the world’s leading universities and research institutes, as well as 24 Nobel laureates, and this despite several months of serious spamming), but runs a project for the homeless.

This is the third email Declan received yesterday from DC Anderson:

Subject: Complaint

Mr Heavey

Thank you for your response but I am still none the wiser.

I need to know exactly what it is that the officers did or didn't do that you disagree with. Did they make specific comments to you or your wife, or was it something else?

I also need to know what false records were you issued with and can i have a copy, please?

Thank you

Nigel Anderson

And this was Declan's response, to which he has yet to receive a reply of any description - it was written very much with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) in mind:

Subject: Complaint

Dear DC Anderson,

I understand from the attached copy of your third email to me of even date regarding my complaint to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate that you still have no idea what I am complaining about: in your second email you wrote: "Having read the correspondence that I have I need to establish exactly what it is you are complaining about"; and in this third email: "Thank you for your response but I am still none the wiser".

I again regret that, with respect to what I am complaining about, I have nothing to add to the first paragraph of my email to Commissioner Bowron of 18 June, which states the following:

Thank you for your email of even date signed by Darren Pulman, Staff Officer to the Commissioner, acknowledging receipt of my email of 17 June regarding stop at Salters' Hall (CAD 10903 of 16/06/09). I wish to make a complaint against the officers' behaviour: this morning at Bishopsgate police station I was further issued with false records in relation to said stop.

This email to Commissioner Bowron goes on to reconfirm the details of the stop on the night of 16 June when two City of London police officers from Bishopsgate police station, PC 208CP and PC 671CP, were summoned by two security guards to the sleeping pitch I share with my wife at Salters' Hall, St. Alphage Highwalk, Fore Street, Moorgate. You write: "I need to know exactly what it is that the officers did or didn't do that you disagree with. Did they make specific comments to you or your wife, or was it something else?" I further regret that I have nothing to add to the third and fourth paragraphs of the aforementioned email to Commissioner Bowron, which provide as follows:

I reconfirm that at 10.00pm on the night of 16 June two City of London police officers from Bishopsgate police station, PC 208CP and PC 671CP, were summoned to our sleeping pitch at Salters' Hall by two security guards from the company Guarding UK who were patrolling (a derelict) St. Alphage Highwalk. PC 208CP informed my wife that he was not in need of a court order and that she had to vacate the porch, and highwalk, immediately. My wife refused as a result of having nowhere else to sleep, the upshot being that the two police officers and two security guards left, PC 208CP informing me on leaving that if I wanted our copies of the record of the stop to which we were entitled I should call into the police station in the morning to collect them.

On both my wife's 386 and my 386, PC 208CP writes that this stop occurred on "St. Alphage Highwalk"; as I brought to his attention at the time of the stop, in the porch and over my wife's head there was a notice which reads: “CCTV Surveillance. Salters’ Hall. Images are being monitored and recorded for the purposes of crime prevention and public safety. The scheme is controlled by the Salters’ Company.” PC 208CP also writes on both 386s that the outcome of this stop was that "persons moved on"; neither my wife nor I moved on: we slept at Salters' Hall on the night of 16 June, last night, and will do so again tonight as a result of having nowhere else to sleep.

You asked in your second email what I am seeking to achieve from making this complaint ("I would also like to establish what it is you are seeking to achieve from making the complaint"). I beg to again point out that, at the very least, I now have an "Exhibit B" titled "Complaint dated 18 June 2009 to the City of London Police Professional Standards Directorate" with appendices for the solicitor appointed to my wife in the event of the arrest she been repeatedly threatened with pursuant to Operation Poncho II. My wife will further request of this solicitor that he/she defend her case under the Human Rights Act 1998 with reference to said complaint and, if necessary, appeal accordingly.

You ask me for a copy of the false records I was issued ("I also need to know what false records were you issued with and can I have a copy, please?"). I would be happy to send you a copy of the two 386s in question by post. Could you please provide me with the postal address to which these 386s should be sent?

As I stated in my previous email, I would very much like to receive by email the literature to which you referred in your second email this afternoon ("Have you had the opportunity to read any leaflets issued by the IPCC about the complaints procedure. If not I can supply them either in hard copy or by email!"). Perhaps you would be so kind as to also provide me with this information by return email.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey