Homeless Man Dies In Custody At Forest Gate Police Station

There are a number of homeless street drinkers, mainly of Lithuanian origin, who congregate around Emmanuel Parish Church in Forest Gate and who have received support in the past from the church congregation. As yet, I don't know whether one of them is the person who collapsed in police custody at Forest Gate police station yesterday and subsequently died - but this is the press release from the Independent Police Complaints Commission:

The IPCC is independently investigating the death of a man, who was found collapsed in police custody on Thursday 2 September 2010.

The man, who is believed to be a 36-year-old Lithuanian man of no fixed abode, was arrested at 12.50pm on Wednesday 1 September 2010 on suspicion of begging. He was taken to Forest Gate Police Station and was booked into custody at 1.15pm.

The man was found collapsed in his cell at approximately 8am the next morning, Thursday 2 September and taken to Newham General Hospital. The case was referred to the IPCC and an independent investigation began. IPCC investigators went to the police station yesterday and began enquiries: gathering accounts from police officers and custody staff, checking custody records and other police logs and obtaining CCTV.

The man was transferred to Royal London Hospital where he sadly died at approximately 8.15pm last night.

IPCC Commissioner Rachel Cerfontyne said: “This investigation will focus on the care this man received while in police custody, to see if anything could have been done differently to prevent his death.”

Formal identification has not yet taken place and enquiries are ongoing to trace the man’s next of kin. A post mortem will take place in due course.

Coalition of Resistance Update

I had a campaign meeting in Forest Gate last night, preparing for this Sunday's Mass Community Picnic on Wanstead Flats - if you're coming along, there is a map of where we are meeting here.

I therefore couldn't make the Coalition of Resistance planning meeting at the University of London Union, but others did and have fed back already. See:

• The Daily (Maybe) - Building a coalition of resistance
  
  
• Liam Mac Uaid -Coalition of Resistance meeting
  
  
• The Sauce - CoR Blimey! Coalition of Resistance declares war on coalition government
  
  
• The Junius Blog - Coalition of Resistance open meeting

Ady Cousins has videos of speeches by

• Alf Filer (Socialist Resistance)
  
• Paul Brandon (Right to Work)
• Chris Nineham (Counterfire)
• Steve Sweeny (Cambridgeshire Against the Cuts)
• Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper)
• Lindsey German (Stop the War Coalition)
• Romayne Phoenix (Green Party)
• Lee Jasper (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts)
• Dot Gibson (National Pensioners Convention)
• and former NATFHE general secretary Paul Mackney

LAZY FRIDAY - 21st Century Enlightenment / Inception Cat

Today's Friday lunchtime distraction comes in two parts. The first is a heavyweight and thoroughly absorbing lecture on the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, which was given last month by Matthew Taylor, the Chief Executive of the RSA, and has been given the RSA's typically brilliant animation treatment:

The second is far less high-brow. It's the Inception Cat, currently very popular on YouTube. Enjoy:

Venture Capitalists Buy Stratford Shopping Centre

Apparently Stratford Shopping centre is worth a lot more money that I would have expected - £91.55 million to be exact, the price paid by investors from the venture capitalist firm Catalyst Capital, who have bought it from its current owners Land Securities as part of a deal that includes the properties at 44 Broadway and Morgan House.

Land Securities are selling up because they need the cash, or as their head of retail investment puts it, "funds from the sale will be channelled into other activities, including more immediate development opportunities". So why buy a shopping centre in the midst of economic uncertainty? The obvious answer is its location, right opposition the new Westfield Stratford City development across the road, which will when it opens be the largest urban shopping centre in Europe. The fact that it is close to the Olympic park may also be a factor, but a secondary one.

It might seem that the last thing anyone would want is a retail centre that is about to become eclipsed by another huge shopping development. But Catalyst Capital has said that as well as a "strong tenant line up", Stratford shopping centre also has "excellent development opportunities which will allow us to utilise our asset management and development expertise". What this means is that it is seen as a prime site, one worthwhile grabbing now from another company that needs money, that has the potential for redevelopment in the future.

Nothing will change that much in the short term, but as Westfield Stratford City overwhelms the unloved and ugly old shopping centre, expect fewer new shops, even more pound shops and more short leases - and, in a few years time, even something more drastic. Capital Catalyst have bought it to make money for its investors and I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't eventually bulldozed, sold on and absorbed as an annex of an expanding Westfield.

What this will mean for low income Stratford residents is unclear - but by then, anyone poor will probably have been forced further east. In other parts of London, they call this process 'gentrification' but in Stratford, it's something different: the area's transformation into a new West Thurrock. Not for the first time, I'm glad I chose to live that liitle bit further away.

And The Choir Sang Creep

Now I know this is seriously random, even for me. There's a film out In October called The Social Network, which is about the staggeringly dull subject of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It's directed by Fight Club's David Fincher and Zuckerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who was the lead in Zombieland.

The trailer, though, has one saving grace: a version of the Radiohead song 'Creep', sung by a Belgian girls' choir conducted by Stijn Kolacny, with his brother Steven Kolacny on the piano. There's another (non-sanitised, 'fucking special' instead of 'very special') choral version here, but by far the best (and saddest) video is this, a different cover by Sweden's Vega Choir.

Apparently choral versions of pop songs are a musical genre in their own right - who knew? But anyway, more proof that even an atheist like me can sometimes recognise that the religious (in this case the Lutherans) can take something great and make it sound amazingly beautiful. Enjoy.

Condemnation of Tomlinson Pathologist Further Undermines DPP's Refusal To Prosecute

Today, the General Medical Council unpicked another thread in the state's case for denying justice to Ian Tomlinson's widow and his children.

It comes as no surprise that the GMC has ruled that the pathologist Dr Mohmed 'Freddy' Patel failed to meet professional standards during post-mortem examinations in three cases between 2002 and 2005. I can still remember clearly how devastated my friends Rupert and Sheila Sylvester were back in 1999, when Patel wrongly announced to reporters that their son Roger, who had died in police custody in Tottenham, had been a crack cocaine user. Patel was reprimanded for that instance of professional misconduct too and in 2003, Roger was found to have been killed unlawfully by the police. Still, it wasn't until July last year that Dr Patel was finally suspended from conducting any further post mortem examinations for the Home Office or the police.

Common sense suggests this leaves in tatters the claim by Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, that there was an "irreconcilable conflict" in medical opinion over the death of Ian Tomlinson that prevented a charge of manslaughter. On the one hand, there's the post mortem opinion of Freddy Patel, a discredited pathologist with a string of reprimands and disciplinary verdicts against him, a doctor who has had no formal working arrangement with any UK police force for five years before Ian's death. On the other hand, there's the opinion of Dr Nat Cary, the former Head of of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy’s Hospital, a member of the Home Office's own Scientific Standards Committee and the author of more than fifty peer-reviewed published articles, mainly in relation to cardiovascular disease. Medical evidence stands and falls on the reputation of expert witnesses and whilst their testimony should never be relied on as the only evidence, I still can't understand why a jury can't weigh Cary's opinion against the value of Patel's credibility, alongside the video evidence available.

Meanwhile, there's still the question of why the coroner Paul Matthews picked Dr Patel over Dr Cary (who is normally called in for suspicious deaths in London), especially as earlier this month, an investigation by BBC Radio 4's The Report found that Patel had failed to meet the criteria for inclusion on the Home Office's Register of Forensic Pathologists. We also need to know what role the City of London Police had in influencing the coroner's decision - they paid Patel's fee at the same time as they were busy telling the Tomlinson family that here was nothing suspicious about Ian's death. And then we need an explanation why two investigators from the Independent Police Complaints Commission were denied access to the original postmortem by Dr Patel.

The accusation of a cover up is one that should always be made with caution - but in this case, the evidence is becoming alarmingly compelling.

Tomlinson Pathologist Guilty Of Misconduct

From the Press Association. More on this later.

A disciplinary panel has ruled that the pathologist who carried out the first autopsy on Ian Tomlinson who died at last year's G20 protest in central London, acted in a way that amounted to misconduct during two earlier post-mortem examinations and his fitness to practise is impaired.

The panel also ruled that Dr Freddy Patel displayed deficient professional performance in a third post-mortem exam.

The panel had already concluded that Dr Patel was "irresponsible" and failed to meet professional standards during his examinations of the bodies of a five-year-old girl in 2002, a four-week-old baby in 2003 and a woman who died in 2005.

Dr Patel, 63, was said by the panel to have behaved irresponsibly, failed to meet standards expected of a Home Office pathologist and acted in a way liable to bring the profession into disrepute when he changed the woman's cause of death in 2005.

He carried out a post-mortem examination on January 5, and decided she had died due to a blood clot in the coronary arteries.

A month later, following a second post-mortem exam by another pathologist, he prepared an addendum to his report, changing the cause of death to a brain haemorrhage in line with the new findings.

During the ruling panel chairman Richard Davies said Dr Patel's "acts and omissions were very serious" and amounted to misconduct and his failure to note the weights of individual organs examined, recommended in Royal College of Pathologists' guidance, also showed deficient professional performance.

Dr Patel, whose full name is Mohmed Saeed Sulema Patel, has already been suspended from the Home Office register of forensic pathologists amid questions about his post-mortem examination of Mr Tomlinson.

The 47-year-old newspaper seller died during London's G20 riots in April last year after being pushed to the ground by a police officer.

Dr Patel's competency was called into question after two other pathologists agreed that Mr Tomlinson, who was an alcoholic, died as a result of internal bleeding, probably from his diseased liver, after falling on his elbow.

Naval Gazing in Greenwich

Down at Greenwich Park with the parents today, visiting the Royal Observatory and the Royal Naval College. A couple of snaps in lieu of proper blogging, which will hopefully return this week. There are more pictures here.

The Rooftop Of The Thames

Well, it's been a typical August Bank Holiday, no? Wind, driving rain, only the occasional break in the cloud... but at least most of the Undergound was running for once. Plans to head over to the annual solidarity cricket match in Victoria Park were abandoned with the unexpected arrival in London of my mum and dad, which was lovely though.

And I was able to tick off another entry on my list of Things That Tourists Do But Londoners Miss™ by going up on the walkway over Tower Bridge. Here's a couple of pictures - there are more here.

Who Are The "Principal Environmental Extremists"?

The Scotsman's crime reporter has been regurgitating more police propaganda today about last week's Climate Camp, with a piece that includes the following:

Police chiefs feared that a hardcore group of climate camp activists planned to launch a bid to shut down Edinburgh Airport during the protests.

Officers had gathered intelligence that the ringleaders of protests which previously targeted Heathrow Airport were descending on the Capital.

Intelligence also suggested that the M8 and M9 motorways, Princes Street, and the Tattoo may have come under attack in a effort to cause "maximum economic disruption".

UK police forces have identified around 100 "principal environmental extremists" operating across Britain, and Lothian and Borders Police believe up to 50 were in Edinburgh for last week's protests.

Instead, hundreds of protesters camped outside the Royal Bank of Scotland's global headquarters at Gogarburn, with sporadic attacks on other city bank branches.

Assistant Chief Constable Iain Livingstone today said: "We knew that RBS would be a potential target and the bank has premises across the city.

"But we built up intelligence that suggested Edinburgh Airport, the M8 and M9, the city's banking system, Princes Street and the city centre, and the Tattoo, were major targets".

"We had spoken to RBS and they were happy to allow the camp to go ahead there. It allowed us to contain and control the protest away from where they could have tried to cause maximum disruption.

"The impact if Princes Street had been forced to close during the middle of the Festival would have been great. It was one of a number of genuine targets. Instead, the group was largely confined to an area on the west side of the city."

So who exactly are these 100 or so "principal environmental extremists"? The Scotsman identifies "extremists linked to the Plane Stupid campaign, which saw 1000 eco-warriors bidding to close down Heathrow three years ago". So that's definitely Greenpeace's Joss Garman on the list then.

What this refers to of course is the database held by the shadowy National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit, which is part of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). It justifies the holding of information about protesters, including completely lawful ones, because they are potentially "witnesses to acts of criminality or anti-social behaviour" or have "attended several events where violent disorder has occurred". NETCU says that this "helps the police to do their job effectively", because "collecting the right information helps the police to protect democracy and lawful protest". Anton Setchel, ACPO's National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism, has gone even further, with this telling comment the Guardian:

"Just because you have no criminal record does not mean that you are not of interest to the police," he said. "Everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once."

NETCU 's purported definition of 'extremist' is allegedly very specific: it says it means those who "try to mask their activities by associating closely with legitimate campaigners", who use tactics such as "malicious letters and e-mails, blackmail, product contamination, damage to property and occasionally the use of improvised explosive devices" and whose "aim is to create a climate of fear". But the trouble is, most of those who end up on its secret lists are entirely legitimate campaigners who support and even celebrate non-violence. NETCU is just an excuse for widespread surveillance of anyone who participates in protest - on the basis that everyone taking part is, in Assistant Chief Constable Setchell's eyes, potentially guilty until proven otherwise.

The claim that "principal environmental extremists" were descending on Edinburgh looks like another example of the Scotsman repeating whatever they are told by their police minders - about as convincing as the lies circulated by Lothian and Borders Police claiming that "a substance similar to diesel or vegetable oil" had been spilled onto two major roads by climate activists. Could it be that having sufficient numbers to successfully target the Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters - which has "attracted criticism from some senior politicians for 'failing to clamp down sooner' on the Gogarburn protest after activists sneaked on to grounds" - has strained a few coppers' nerves north of the border?