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The mystery van part 2

November 26, 2010 By 17 Comments

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Following the completely unexpected popularity of my blog post about the van at the 24/11/2010 London protests, I need to clear up a few points.

I think these things are clear. I saw the sequence of events on live TV and it could be verified if anyone can get hold of a recording.

  • The police started blocking the route several minutes before the van arrived.
  • The van was driven in to the back of the crowd, (relatively thin at this point) pushing protesters out of the way. Some got angry at being driven in to or made to jump away, and pushed or hit, or sprayed graffiti on the van.
  • The police abandoned the van.
  • The bulk of the protesters arrived to find their route blocked and an already slightly graffitied van in the middle of the crowd.
  • Some (very few) people started smashing the van in spite of attempts to stop them.
  • The police justified their use of containment (kettling) by citing the attacks on the van, which happened after they started kettling.
  • The police claim that the van was following protesters to gather information on where they were going. They knew full well where they were going, since they had already blocked the route! There is a possibility that the van was in use by FIT (Forward Intelligence Team, explanation here) to take photographs of protesters.
  • The police claim that the officers in the van abandoned it because they “felt vulnerable and decided the best course of action was to leave the van” (Source: The Guardian)

I have received information from a few people that have changed my mind on some of my original points.

  • It has no number plates
    • Actually the van did have number plates on arrival, although there are no clear photographs or videos of it. The best I have seen is this one from ITN.
  • It is painted in the OLD livery of the Metropolitan police.
    • I am told that the police routinely use vans of this age.
  • It has been out of service long enough to get rusty.
    • Several of their vans are rusty, and in fact you can see on this picture that it was rusty even in 2008. We should probably be concerned at the lack of preventative maintenance there.
  • It has a POLICE AWARE sticker on it, that has been there a while.
    • This one was true. Some people have suggested that the sticker was placed there as a joke by a police officer, or that it was placed there to mark the van for attention by a mechanic. I’m not sure I buy that.

I still believe that this van was planted as bait to incite vandalism and provide an excuse for kettling. The only alternative theory I can think of is that the police are really, really stupid. It could be that I suppose.

Via @a6ruled
Sky news video shows van accessible, police standing near it and crowd all calm. Busted!

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  • kalachakraa

    You should be aware that the very same tactic was used at the G20 protests last June in Toronto. An older but still serviceable police car was driven to the back of the crowd on Queen Street, all the standard police equipment (radio, computer) was removed and the windows were left rolled down. This is the police car you see burning in almost all of the media coverage of the protest, although it is totally non-representative of the week-long protest up to that point. As well it became the de-facto justification for all the kettling, arrests and police brutality that followed. Given the $1 billion cost of this summit it’s doubtless that the sacrifice of an old police car was probably the most cost-effective media strategy that anyone came up with: It outraged the millions of people who saw the photos and video but who were not there. I’m sad to see police forces around the world copying this tactic - exploiting the anger of people whose right to protest is denied combined with the laziness of most media, who just want a good image.

  • kalachakraa
  • a6ruled

    i am finding myself, old as i am, fascinated at having a whole new world of stuff to find out about, like this.

    so this is some form of entrapment, right. or the intentional abandoning of public property for political ends.

    so some form of enquiry based on the officers and commanders testifying under oath (or whatever) combined with the no doubt exhaustive video evidence to see if things like radios or whatever were present in the van should be fairly easy to do right?

    • http://www.sumpter.org.uk Latentexistence

      I hadn’t thought to check if it had radio equipment. I need to find out if I can get recordings from the BBC of what they transmitted live, that would provide excellent evidence. Next Tuesday I am going to set my computer to record all day. (I plan to be out protesting this time, assuming I have no customers to visit.)

      • a6ruled

        i have meetings in town in the middle of the day but i’ll be somewhere afterwards.

    • http://twitter.com/piombo piombo

      For entrapment there needs to be an element of persuasion, not even a hint of that here.

  • a6ruled

    see below from Sky News

    http://blogs.news.sky.com/frontlineblog/Post:25a1d1f5-a371-4130-abab-bbeb70b3cb98

    • http://www.sumpter.org.uk Latentexistence

      Excellent stuff. Let’s hope the other media catch on and people find out the truth.

      On the down side, I am going to need a bigger web server when people follow their advice and search for bait van!

  • ninja maggot

    The sky video also confirms the presence of a number plate attached to the rear of the vehicle. Left lower side you can see the yellow plate about 9secs in.

    • http://twitter.com/piombo piombo

      The front plate is clear(ish) in this: http://bit.ly/fX272M screengrab: http://imgur.com/H5Cjc.jpg

      • http://twitter.com/apricotmuffins Maria

        oh nice spotting!

        however, i think that the age and status of the van is now much less important than the evidence of how and where it was abandoned.

        • http://twitter.com/piombo piombo

          What’s the evidence that it was ‘abandoned’ rather than merely parked?

          • ninja maggot

            Well if nothing else the police have stated abandonment due to imminent threat.

          • http://twitter.com/piombo piombo

            They didn’t state imminent threat, read their statement again.

  • http://twitter.com/_SHODAN SHODAN

    Join the RIP Baitvan facebook page and let’s gather more evidence. http://www.facebook.com/pages/RIP-Baitvan/134955976557836?v=wall

    Police reactions when told to move the van (10-20 mins before vandalised): silence; grinning; pointing at police cameramen; refusing to comment; refusing to give their names; claiming ignorance.

    The police lied about the horse charge, they lied about the baitvan, what’s next to come out?

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