Thread by @petermbenglish

People have been commenting that the protest shouldn't have happened on Saturday, it risked being a superspreader event and was therefore properly banned due to Coronavirus, and therefore the police had no option to ban it.

This is a non-sequitur.
1/

I would have preferred there not to be a large gathering on Clapham Common right now. The number of new cases of Covid-19 is still too high, and opening schools is likely to push this up considerably.
2/

Vaccination is going well, but the groups most likely to spread Covid-19 have largely not been vaccinated so far. (OTOH, there is increasing evidence that vaccination will decrease transmission, when enough people are fully vaccinated.)
3/

So, in an ideal world, I would not have wished there to be a gathering… HOWEVER…

a) The gathering took place out of doors. It was not Cheltenham. (Cheltenham may have featured outdoor horse-racing; but it also featured a LOT of crowded restaurants, bars, etc.)
4/

Bars, cafes and restaurants are closed, so people attending the event on Saturday are unlikely to have congregated indoors to a great extent.

Transmission outdoors appears to be extremely low - especially when people can stay more than a few feet from other people.
5/

It's probably still wiser not to stand close to and facing somebody who is shouting or singing a few feet away unless you are both wearing a mask. (If you are not the one shouting/singing, wear a higher spec mask like an FFP2 one.)
6/

But still, the risk outdoors is small… And…
b) The event was going to happen. No matter how much would have preferred that it didn't, it couldn't feasibly have been stopped.

So the issue should have been about how to ensure it happened as safely as possible.
7/

The police could have cooperated with Reclaim the Streets - by all accounts they are a responsible group. They could have had stewards - who could have influenced people attending with less antagonism than police officers could.
8/

They could have had a PR system so that speakers could address the crowd without people having to squeeze together close to the podium. And prevent contempt of court speeches - and indeed discourage anything more than quiet vigil-keeping.
9/16

By "banning" something that was inevitably going to happen, the police ensured it could not be prepared in a way that reduced the risks associated.
10/16

And, once it was going ahead, the duty of the police was to minimise the risk of harm.

The Covid risk of congregating outdoors - especially with many people wearing masks - is very low.
11/16

By moving in, forcing people to squeeze together, and the use of violence, the police turned a relatively low-risk situation into a much higher risk situation (even just on the topic of Covid risk).
12/16

And that's not starting on the other harms done and opportunities missed.

Wouldn't it have been great if there had been a group of police officers, heads bare and bowed, standing silently in respect, not threatening other vigil-keepers?
13/16

Instead, they've dramatically reduced public trust in the police.

And by insisting that they had to do what they did to reduce risks (when it's obvious that the risks were low before they waded in, and became much higher as a consequence), they are further damaging trust.
14/16

Of course, it is possible that they were explicitly ordered to do this by the Home Secretary or others in her circle.

And I'm sure the orders to the officers on the ground came from higher up (which is why Cressida Dick is rightly in the spotlight).
15/16

The police, of course, are supposed to make their own assessment and act on it, not follow orders from the executive. So they failed.

But it's possible there was undue pressure put on them by the executive, and that would be highly reprehensible, too.
16/16

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