Advice from the Climate Camp legal team to G20 protest participants
Posted By fotdmike on April 14, 2009
FURTHER LEGAL CALL OUT
First an important clarification: if you were assaulted by a police officer (who wasn’t?) and may wish to bring a legal claim then you should NOT also complain to the IPCC/police.The advice being received from activists who have been here before and specialist solicitors is that you should NOT make a complaint until after you have finished suing them. The deadline for complaining is long enough to be able to do this, as long as you take notes to aid your memory later, etc.
If you complain first, the contents of your IPCC case will make their way in the police’s favour into your case suing them. This also applies to people whose evidence could support someone else suing the police, which is a more difficult one to navigate practically.
For more general depressing stuff about the reality of the IPCC/police complaints process, see Society Guardian 8 April 2009, “The worst of all outcomes” by John Crawley a former IPCC commissioner.
We were assured by the Met when we met them that police officers would wear their numbers. (We are talking about police constables.) If you have evidence they did not please let us know. Photos and films would be useful, with time and location.
We were also assured the law about filming and photographing police officers would not be used – what was your experience? Contact us.
Legal Team
legal(at)climatecamp.org.uk
Comments
Leave a Reply
Please note: Comment moderation is currently enabled so there will be a delay between when you post your comment and when it shows up. Patience is a virtue; there is no need to re-submit your comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.