Sweeping New Powers of Arrest Proposed

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Sweeping New Powers of Arrest Proposed

The government has outlined proposals to widen police powers of arrest to cover all offences, regardless, in principle, of how minor the offence. At present, police can arrest people only for offences carrying prison sentences of more than five years, though there are exceptions.

The proposals, in the Home Office consultation paper Modernising Police Powers to Meet Community Needs, are likely to form part of new policing laws to be brought in this autumn. The measures can be commented on for the short time up until October 8.

The consultation paper introduces an array of proposed sweeping new police powers alongside the power of arrest for any offence.

One plan in particular is to impose conditions on all demonstrations at Westminster. The paper leaves open the possibility of banning long-term protests in Parliament Square. This would apply to the anti-war protests that have been sustained in the Square for three years now.

The proposals include:

1. Power of arrest for all offences
2. Search warrants focussed on a person and their whereabouts rather than a specific single address
3. Community Support Officers’ powers to be extended
4. Drug tests allowed on arrest rather than on charge
5. Allowing the courts to remand for up to 12 days in police custody anyone suspected of swallowing parcels of drugs
6. Revenue from fixed motoring penalties to be used to fund automatic number plate recognition systems
7. A new offence of "keeping an incorrectly registered vehicle"
8. Police to have a new power to stop, search, seize and confiscate fireworks where they suspect the items to be possessed by under-18s
9. A new offence of harassment, causing alarm or distress, motivated in particular by animal rights protests
10. New powers to take fingerprints, DNA samples and footwear impressions at the roadside
11. Allowing police to take DNA and fingerprint samples covertly
12. No longer any condition for civilian investigators to wear a uniform
13. New legislation on demonstrations outside parliament
14. Allowing police officers to photograph and video people outside of the police station

A striking feature of media reports on the plans is a lack of any serious analysis. What are these sinister sounding proposals for? What problems of the modern society call for such indiscriminate powers?

In the foreword to the document, Home Office Police minister Hazel Blears says, "It is important that we maintain the crucial balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the individual. But we need to address any imbalance that prevents the police doing their job effectively and which restricts the ability to prevent and investigate crime or which helps the criminal to avoid detection and conviction. We need also to make sure that the investigative process promotes more efficient and effective use of officers’ time."

She is quoted as saying that the rules on arrest are "complex and often bewildering". Officials described their document as a "modernising" and "tidying-up exercise" to resolve confusion, which is backed up by the media. For example, the Guardian states, "The shakeup of police powers also includes plans to sweep away the confusing legal patchwork of arrestable and non-arrestable offences."

Arbitrary police powers are being made the norm in the name of "security" and "effectiveness", in effect throwing out the rule of law. Fascism can be said to operate in the name of the law – but law which is rule by exception. Legislation is made subservient to the interests of the state, and minority rights and the right to individual conscience are denied under the guise of safeguarding the interests of the majority and the well-being of local communities. Meanwhile the legislation becomes ever more inimical even to civil liberties.

The disinformation is promoted that there must be a "balance" between rights and security, as though to have more security weighs against having rights guaranteed, and vice versa, and that the state is arbiter, the government setting the fixed reference point. It can be seen that this logic, as in the argument of Hazel Blears, leads the government always to recommend restrictions on rights and liberties and increasing police powers in the name of restoring balance. In fact, as people’s experience confirms, restriction on rights is going hand in hand with increased criminalisation in society, and the government’s actions are the source of heightened insecurity, not the opposite. How can it be said that a certain level of rights of the individual balances a certain level of the powers of the police? It is absurd. Should it not be argued that the powers of the law enforcement agency and the laws and regulations that they enforce should be integral to the defence and guarantee of the rights both of collectives and the individual, and contribute to the calm implementation of the rule of law?

The programme being proposed, in conjunction with other recent legislation such as the Terrorism and Anti-Terrorism Acts, the Asylum Act and the Civil Contingencies Bill, is aimed particularly at criminalising dissent, political protest, and the youth as a whole, as in the regulations against "anti-social behaviour", as well as the workers who take action in defence of their interests and of safeguarding their communities and the general well-being of society. It must be stopped in its tracks.

What is needed is a rule of law based on the guarantee and defence of rights, in which the state authorities cannot act with impunity, and which is directed against arbitrariness, in the context of building a society fit for all human beings, not one based on the defence of the privileges of a few, namely the amassers of capital. WDIE calls on the workers, youth, women and all sections of the people to oppose such arbitrary measures as proposed by the government as well as the disinformation that is used to back them up.

[For the full document, see: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/PolicingConsultation.pdf]