Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games

By James Slack
Last updated at 6:36 PM on 21st July 2009

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Olympic protests

Police have been given new powers to stop protesters during the London 2012 Olympics

Police have been handed 'Chinese-style' powers to enter private homes and seize political posters during the London 2012 Olympics.

Little-noticed measures passed by the Government will allow officers and Olympics officials to enter homes and shops near official venues to confiscate any protest material.

Breaking the rules could land offenders with a fine of up to £20,000.

Civil liberties groups compared the powers to those used by the Communist Chinese government to stop political protest during the 2008 Beijing Games.

Anita Coles, of Liberty, said: 'Powers of entry should be for fighting crime, not policing poster displays. Didn't we learn last time that the Olympics should not be about stifling free expression?'

The powers were introduced by the Olympics Act of 2006, passed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, supposedly to preserve the monopoly of official advertisers on the London 2012 site.

They would allow advertising posters or hoardings placed in shop or home to be removed.

But the law has been drawn so widely that it also includes 'non-commercial material' - which could extend its reach to include legitimate campaign literature.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a Government who just doesn't understand civil liberties. They may claim these powers won't be used but the frank truth is no one will believe them.'

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'This sort of police action runs the risk of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. 'We should aim to show the Chinese that you can run a successful Olympics without cracking down on protestors and free speech.'

Scotland Yard denied it had any plans to use the powers.

Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison said: 'We have no intention of using our powers to go in and take down demonstration posters.'

But critics said that - given the powers were now law - it was impossible to predict what would happen in three years time.

Campaigners said the existence of the powers was 'dreadful'. Peter McNeil, who is against the holding of equestrian events in Greenwich Park said: 'It's bullying taken to another level. It's quite appalling that this should happen in a democracy.'

The power emerged as the Home Office and police outlined the £600million security operation for the Games, which will cost more than £9billion in total.

They said hundreds of flights could have to be diverted every day, with planes prevented from passing over the main venue for the London games.

Olympic security chiefs said they expected to have to 'manage' the airspace over the Olympic Park in east London.

A senior Home Office official said: 'We do expect there will have to be some management of the airspace. We do not expect that any airports will have to close.'

The officials said they had no evidence of a specific terror threat against the Games at the moment.

But current preparations assume the terror threat level will be at 'severe' during the event, despite it being reduced to 'substantial' for the UK earlier this week. It is the lowest threat level nationwide since before the July 7 attacks in 2005.

A DCMS spokesman said: 'The advertising provisions in the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 are there to prevent ambush marketing and the over-commercialisation of the Games, not to prevent or restrict lawful protests.

'The measures will only apply to areas within a few hundred metres of the London 2012 venues. The Government is currently developing detailed regulations for advertising during the Games which will enable these powers to come into effect. The Government will be consulting on the regulations in 2010.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201171/Police-given-powers-enter-homes-tear-anti-Olympics-posters-Games.html#ixzz0jDBK1WVr

Signs of the EU police state

The Independent Newspaper and the Lib Dem party both realise, and are horrified by the fact, that we now live in what is legally a vicious, but as yet unenforced, police state. Parliament was required to pass this oppressive legislation, inside about 300 Acts over 30 years, by the five EU treaties the Queen has signed, which compel us to harmonise our laws with the EU’s. The Lib-Dems blame it on the Labour Party, concealing the fact their own slavish support of the EU makes them one of the three parties responsible. Below are some everyday signs of the emerging EU police

state you may have noticed:



The “shoot to kill” policy introduced by senior police officer Cressida Dick. Shooting British citizens was illegal under Common Law; but this has now been replaced by the EU’s Corpus Juris, which puts the government above the law. They can shoot who they like without legal risk, as the family of innocent Jean de Menezes, shot dead in Stockwell tube, know to their cost. There is no longer a right to habeas corpus.



Authoritarian Police operations, in which they learn oppressive tactics. For example, 250 police officers to arrest just two innocent men in Forest Gate on 2nd of June 2006. They shot one of them, who, unusually, lived. Another on the 10th August: massive raids imprisoning 24 innocent people for the “transatlantic airline bomb plot,” which was government fiction. Half are still in prison.



Dhiren Barot, 34, of Willesden, NW2, was sentenced in November 2006 to forty years in jail for “Terrorism”. No, he’d never killed, maimed, or indeed, done any damage at all. A search of his flat found the incriminating evidence: He had no bomb making equipment, gun or money. But he did have the most terrorist accessory of all: a video camera with 3 year old clips of his visit to Wall St. If this was research, it was not up to the level of a Tom Clancy novel. After being held in jail for two years he “confessed.” Anyone would, after two years of interrogation in the cells. And no one cares. Yes, he hated the government, but on this basis we could all do 40 years for thought crimes. (Police please note: I don’t own a video camera.)



Blooding operations: Once a policeman has killed he will accept the order a second time more easily. Over 100 police have pulled the trigger on 30 innocent people since 1992, in each case pumping their victim’s bodies with many unnecessary fatal shots. They shoot to kill, not wound, and often use dum dum bullets that blow a man to pieces inside. Police now have legal immunity for killing under the EU’s corpus juris.



As in Eastern block countries, deaths in police custody are common, at over a hundred a year, as are court accounts of police lies to cover their actions up. For example, on the 12th January 2007 Bournemouth Crown court found the police log had been falsified on the death in custody of Tony Davis 51, who died in the cells at Poole from hypothermia.



Frank Ogboru, a fit 43 year old, on holiday here from Nigeria where he had his own business, was beaten to death on the streets, in front of witnesses, on 26th September 2006 by four policemen, as he begged for his life. If it were you and me, we’d be on a murder charge. But under EU corpus juris, the police will not be charged at all. The police commission says they “cannot find the cause of his death”, and has refused to release test results to his wife Christy, whose pursuit of the truth has now left destitute. Since EU corpus juris took over, the government has killed over 1,100 people.



You’re lucky if you get 20% of your taxes, government charges and fees back in the form of services. Government now takes half the economy, £600 billion, and spends most of it on the political class, bloated salaries, their friends in quangos (£124 billion) and themselves. This is “true communism” - Britain now exists largely to fund its government class.



It is now illegal to demonstrate within one kilometre of Parliament, and police may arrest anyone suspected of “terrorism.” This means many of us, and included Walter Wolfgang, the 80 year old arrested for heckling Jack Straw at the Labour Party conference.



All your email, text messages and phone calls are now listened to by computers at GCHQ Cheltenham, who refer your communications to be examined again by their staff if it appears you are anti government or anti EU, as many of us know to our cost.



Spying on citizens is a hallmark of a police state. Since we’ve been in the EU 4.2 million cameras have been installed to watch the public, more than any other nation. Westminster council is now dispatching spy cars with periscope style cameras to convict us. The Oyster card is being expanded to have a monopoly on all London’s transport. If you use it, they know where you are.



Is anyone worried about the things we keep hearing? I know I am. UK is starting to sound worse then the old USSR or China.