Sergeant Delroy Smellie has been charged with assault after a video emerged of a woman being hit with a baton during the G20 summit protests in London.

A police officer who allegedly struck a woman during the G20 protests in London a woman is to be charged with assault, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

A CPS spokeswoman said Sergeant Delroy Smellie would be charged with assault of Nicola Fisher and he will appear at Westminster magistrates court on 16 November. He faces up to six months in prison if found guilty.

A police officer is to be charged with assaulting a protester at the G20 demonstrations in London, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.

Demonstrators posted Youtube footage of a police officer appearing to strike Brighton woman Nicola Fisher.

Ms Fisher, 35, was one of two women to complain about the conduct in April of Sgt Delroy (Tony) Smellie.

Prosecutors say there is insufficient evidence to charge the officer in relation to the second allegation.

Investigators decided there was no evidence of police wrongdoing in the death of Ian Tomlinson just three days after he collapsed at the G20 protests, it has emerged tonight.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) planned to announce that it had completed its assessment into Tomlinson's death on 1 April and discovered nothing suspicious. At 11.30am on 4 April, investigators prepared a document announcing Tomlinson died of a heart attack after being caught up among protesters "dressed entirely in black" who, it said, were charging police.

Four months after Ian Tomlinson died at the G20 protests, on 1 April, his family has accused police of mounting a cover-up. For six days the investigation into his death was run by City of London police, which assigned the family a liaison officer. He was Harry Adams, of the force's counter-terrorism and specialist directorate. Now extracts from his personal logs, which give an hour-by-hour update of his contacts with the family, have been seen by the Guardian. Key passages are published here, along with contextual explanations by Paul Lewis

Chief inspector of constabulary advocates major reforms after controversial handling of G20 protests

There should be a national overhaul of the policing of protests that reasserts the state's obligation to allow lawful demonstrations, a scathing report into how the Metropolitan police handled the G20 protests recommended today.

Advocating major reforms in the way such marches are handled, Denis O'Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, said national tactics for policing protest were "inadequate" and belonged to a "different era".

"What the review [of policing protest] identifies is that the world is changing and the police need to think about changing their approach to protest," O'Connor said.

Police must urgently review their tactic of 'kettling' demonstrators, MPs investigating the G20 protests say today.

In a damning report, the Commons home affairs committee says holding protesters in a small area for hours is unacceptable.

The first major review of the 7million pounds operation also said officers who work with their identity numbers hidden or missing should face the 'strongest possible' disciplinary measures.

LONDON (AP) - Britain's police watchdog is investigating a new allegation that an officer assaulted a woman during protests over the Group of 20 summit in London, the watchdog said Tuesday.
It is the Independent Police Complaints Commission's fifth inquiry into police conduct during the demonstrations in the heart of London's financial district on April 1 and 2.

Complaint to police watchdog relates to alleged use of excessive force at Climate Camp demonstration

A third Metropolitan police officer is under investigation for allegedly assaulting a woman at the G20 protests, the official police watchdog announced today .

The woman claims she was attacked on 1 April by an officer at the Climate Camp protest, a largely peaceful demonstration lines of riot police charged with batons.

Shift Magazine have put all their reports, interviews and analyses of the G20 London protests online.

Editorial: Summer of Rage?

The G20 protests haven’t shut down a summit nor have they been a threat to business-as-usual in the City. What they have done, however, is to kick-start a far-reaching and at times exciting discussion on the role of police during protest events. It is entirely unsurprising nonetheless that this debate is carried out within a liberal framework which does not question the role of the police as an institution or the state’s self-granted ‘monopoly of violence’.
http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=275

Adam Fresco and Richard Ford

Scotland Yard is to review its policing of violent demonstrations after the G20 protests to see if London needs harsher, European-style methods that could include the use of water cannon.

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that they would look at the more robust tactics used by other European police forces.

In an interview with The Times to mark his first 100 days in office, Sir Paul also said that a failure to merge smaller police forces had left many unable to cope with serious and organised crime.

This interview appeared in the Italian newspaper ‘Liberazione’ on 05/04/09
This version is translated into English from the German translation

Mario Tronti, historical representative of Operaism and former member of the leadership of the PCI
Tonini Bucci

Even if it is ritualistic, even if it is yet again the hope that there will be movement within social conflicts, there is no circumventing the question, what kind of movement it was that we experienced against the G20 summit in London and against NATO in Strasbourg. Much has already been written and said. Newspapers and televisions have described it as a protest that emerged in response to the effects of the global economic crisis. Its composition is not that of the classical organised subject of the workers’ movement. The question is thus: Is a movement that acts outside of the traditional representational spheres (without any ties to trade unions or parties), automatically a movement outside of politics, or does it just conduct a different kind of politics? In short: Is the criticism against those who accuse this movement of not being able to transcend the symbolic gesture of anger and frustration too narrow-minded? We asked Mario Tronti.

Lawyers acting for protesters caught up in last months G20 summit have served the Metropolitan Police with a pre-action notice over their tactics.

G20 protesters subjected to “ketteling” and aggressive police tactics have been told they could receive “hundreds of thousands of pounds” for the way they were treated.

The legal letter landed on the desk of Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson at the weekend from Bindmans solicitors.

Police tactics at the G20 demonstrations reflect an Europe–wide trend to conflate terrorism and protest as equal threats to security

Tony Bunyan

The death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest adds another name to the sad list of those who have died as a result of police tactics at protests. In 1974, Kevin Gateley died in Red Lion Square, during a protest at a National Front meeting. Blair Peach was killed in April 1979, by members of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Patrol Group (SPG). Peach was protesting the National Front’s decision to march through Southall. One SPG officer told a judicial inquiry led by Lord Scarman that his unit had cut through the demonstrators “like knife through butter”. In Italy, Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by police at the G8 protest in Genoa on 20 July 2001. Fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot in Athens in December 2008. The deaths of protestors at the hands of the police are still rare but worryingly they are occuring more frequently and the number of injuries protestors suffer is also on the rise.

By Robert Mackey

Last month we wrote that a photographer in London had written to The Lede to say that he thought he had witnessed undercover police officers trying to incite protesters to violence during the Group of 20 summit in London. This week, The Guardian reports that Tom Brake, a Liberal Democrat M.P. who observed the protests has come forward to say that “he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their I.D. cards.”

Kiran Randhawa

Officers from the Scotland Yard squad at the centre of controversy over policing of the G20 protests are being investigated over scores of claims of assaulting the public.

Figures obtained by the Standard show the Territorial Support Group was accused of 159 assaults, four of them serious and three of them sexual, in the past year. No officers have been disciplined. Scotland Yard said none of the cases had yet been “substantiated”.

An MP who was involved in last month's G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Hidden away on the Thames Estuary in Kent is a small town. Mobs of men and women, their faces hidden with balaclavas, roam the streets and fight pitched battles with police.

Drawing them into alleyways, they pelt officers with bricks and petrol bombs which explode with an orange 'crump' and blacken the sky with smoke.

But these battles aren't real and nor is the town.

This is the Met Police Public Order training facility, where street riots are simulated to provide training to Territorial Support Group (TSG) officers.

Kiran Randhawa

A London law firm has received more than 200 complaints alleging police brutality at the G20 protests, it emerged today.

Bindmans is preparing a dossier of evidence against the Metropolitan Police after being inundated with claims by people directly wounded by officers or who witnessed extreme violence.

Of these, more than 20 relate to people who suffered head injuries at the hands of the police at the demonstrations.

Riot police are taught to treat the public as their “enemy” and regard every situation as a “threat”, former police chiefs will tell a top-level inquiry into the G20 protests.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent

David Gilbertson, a retired Scotland Yard commander and assistant inspector of constabulary, said that the “defensive” approach once central to British policing has “morphed into a faux US-style operation” where officers wear military-looking uniforms and used batons and Taser stun guns to clamp down on perceived dissent.

by: Richard Moriarty

RIOT police were left red-faced after it emerged that thousands of pounds’ worth of equipment was stolen during the G20 protests.

The officers left their van unlocked in the City, allowing demonstrators to swipe 10 £1,200 bags containing batons, CS spray, helmets, shields and body armour.

The incident occurred when City of London officers jumped out of their vehicle near the Bank of England on 1 April.