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HomeUK NewsPolice cautioned against 'taking the knee' at protests in a new report

Police cautioned against ‘taking the knee’ at protests in a new report

This warning to officers about taking a knee is one of the conclusions contained within a review of the way in which protests can be policed

Police officers in the UK are now being urged to “think very carefully” before “taking the knee” during protests, in a report that has been released by the independent police inspectorate.

This warning is just one of the conclusions contained in a wide ranging review of the way in which protests are policed within both England and Wales.

The home secretary had commissioned Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to carry out this wide ranging review last September, following a year of multiple high profile protests having been organised by groups supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as far right protesters and climate change activists.

This comes after Nine Met Police officers have been fined for breaching lockdown rules to meet at a café while on duty. Pictures emerged online showing the officers, from the South East Basic Command Unit, eating at The Chef House Kitchen Café, Greenwich, on 9 January.

The report had also recommended that police officers reassess the disruptive impact that certain protests can have within the wider community, as part of their new policing plans in order to deal with such disruptive demonstrations.

In both May and June of last year, many thousands of protesters in support of the Black Lives Matter movement mounted weeks of demonstrations within multiple British cities to protest racial injustice.

The protests were in response to the death of an African-American man named George Floyd, who died at the hands of the police in the city of Minneapolis in the US, after a police officer who was arresting him held his knee to Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes.

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Although the vast majority of these follow-on protests across Great Britain were peaceful, a small minority of the protesters had caused disruption and violence at several of the demonstrations.

The inspectorate had said that the job of policing those protests was a difficult one, with the officers often feeling pressured into taking a knee.

National guidance had been issued, saying that officers should make the decision on whether or not to kneel based on the individual circumstances, as well as security considerations.

This comes after Police have reportedly handed out nearly 70,000 fines to those people in the country who were breaching COVID-19 lockdown rules since they came into force, with over 6,000 issued in a single week, new data has now shown.

The report found that: “Most forces followed this guidance, but others issued instructions that taking the knee at protests would not be appropriate.

“We heard of officers making different decisions even within the same protest.. with one case in which some officers chose to take the knee at a protest while another chose not to.

“This officer was then subjected to sustained abuse by the protesters until he followed suit.”

Emphasising the need for impartial policing practices, the inspectorate said: “On balance, we believe that police leaders should think very carefully before they take any actions which may be interpreted as showing support for, or aversion towards, any protest or its stated aims; it will rarely be appropriate.”

However, the inspectorate added that “It would be unfair to criticise officers who take actions on the spur of the moment with the aim of, for instance, diffusing tension at a protest.”

Eve Cooper
Eve Cooper
I've been writing articles and stories for as long as I can remember and in the past few years I've had the fortune of turning that love & passion for writing into my job :)

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