Follow me on Twitter

Monday 13 December 2010

From the police blog



The following is a comment placed on the wonderfully nuanced 'Police Inspector Blog'.
There's alot one could say about this site. But I've settled for the inversion of reality performed by 'Steve'. His talk of 'rising up the force continuum'  would be funny in a Darth Vader type way, were it not so bloody serious.
Anyway, Steve, who I am presuming is a police officer, is not happy about the increasd use of  'Book blocs' during student demos and the negative effect this is having on police tactics.
I believe that 'Book blocs' originated in the Italian student movement. This link by the Wu Ming Foundation provides information as to geneaology. Book blocs are five or so feet high, made of polystyrene (??) replete with lo-tech covers alluding to the writings of various canonical thinkers (popular book covers include 'Negative Dialectics', 'One  Dimensional Man' 'Catch 22' etc).
'Steve', our presumed police officer, refers to these books as 'weapons.' Now I suppose the student holding aloft  'Our World is Our Weapon'  is probably making more than a glib 'knowledge is power' type statement, but still... weapons?  Really?
Steve
'I noticed that the little shits have started to make themselves shields disguised as placards from what looks like slabs of foam, they even seem to have handgrips on the back and one I saw on the news was being held by a number of students and all being used to push police back or to prevent the yob from being pushed back or struck. Clearly they are also bringing weapons* to their ‘peaceful protests.

Student 'book blocs'
'The students have upped the ante and are making police tactics that are currently being used less effective. The police are going to have to rise up the force continuum to keep on top of this lot. Somehow I think the use of horses and lack of dogs is a sign of this and heres hoping next time the water cannons and CS are rolled out.'
* your correspondent’s italics

No comments:

Post a Comment