So if this isn’t a police priority, what is? Less than a month after my housemate was mugged, almost 900 people were arrested at protests in support of Palestine Action, and a further 532 were arrested on August 10. Amongst the latter group, half of those detained were over the age of 60, including 15 over 80s and one man who was both blind and uses a wheelchair. Most were arrested for holding placards that read ‘I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action’, with one woman filming her arrest at September’s protest over an incomplete sign that didn’t even have the proscribed group’s name written on it. These protests were a large-scale policing exercise; videos from the protests often show multiple officers removing individual protestors and the number of arrests eclipse even the 1990 Poll Tax riots.
