It's NOT OK

Yesterday the police harmed me and others - not gravely but they did it and they intended to do it. They've done this before but my first-hand knowledge did not exist before yesterday.

............................. Today I find myself looking in the mirror at the bruises on the underside of my upper arms and trying to decide if these are ‘reasonable’ and whether I should make a fuss – after-all, if I was an activist in a less ‘democratic’ country, I could be facing imprisonment, serious injury, shooting or death… then I wonder at what it is to bring me to measure my life against this vile benchmark of inhumanity. I’m trying to be ‘fair’ and yet I realise it’s only me in this one-sided relationship with our police that is doing this. They weren’t fair yesterday when they made the bruises on me – an under 5ft woman aged 55 and without body building abs or any self-defence or fighting skills. I just tried to stand still – like we all do when we peacefully act to slow or stop industry progress. Of course I would be pushed from where I was by a wall of police – I know this but what I don’t expect is the addition of very painful arm pinching, tight body-hugging and strangulation... again I’m trying to weigh up if this word is ‘unfair’ or disproportionate – one of the 3-4 police officers that were on my body,., deliberately wrapped his thick arm around my neck and pulled back tight enough for me to fear for my next breath... yes then I'll go with 'strangulation'. It was dark all around me within moments of the first bit of shoving by the police line behind me – I expected to be marched across the now-closed bit of road and that would be that… but the dark was the genuinely shocking draping of three large male bodies on top of my small female one… the weight, the pushing and the sense of suffocation was confusing and the size of them blacked out light and all I recall is a small glimmer of road through the cracks in body mass. NO I was not seriously harmed… I’ll be ok but IT’S NOT OK. It’s not OK that an adult who got up and went to his professional job, in a uniform as a police officer, thought pinching and strangulation were ‘appropriate force’ – these were not accidental manoeuvres or things I can write off as simply a matter of the clash of bodies in a tense situation – they were deliberate acts. But what for? What was the intent? What went through the minds of these officers when they did these things? It wasn’t ‘dear god I’m at risk of harm, quickly stop this huge opponent’ that’s for sure… so what was it? They either panicked with fear (doubt this) or they CHOSE to inflict unnecessary pain because it either brought them perverse pleasure to do so .. or? Can’t think of an ‘or’. They behaved as sick, twisted abusers and there is NO PLACE FOR THIS IN OUR POLICE FORCE OR ANYWHERE. I raged after the incident and continue to now... yet tomorrow, I will try to find some bloody way to put this horrid reality down, take a 15 minute silence amongst the soothing wave of women in white and onward to another week of this absurd reality of protecting ourselves from a clearly corrupt and sick government and the industries that work hand-in-hand with it.

Women's Call 16