MET Public Order Unit on Twitter for Climate Camp

The metropolitan police CO11 Public Order Operational Command Unit has opened an account on Twitter in order to relay information regarding the forthcoming Camp for Climate Action protest in London starting on Wednesday 26th August 2009, which many northern activists will be attending and IMC Northern is providing "Be the Media" access for campers.

They say it is designed specifically to relay information to participants of the Climate Camp.

The Twitter channel: http://twitter.com/CO11MetPolice currently has one update, simply saying "This is the official Metropolitan Police Twitter channel for #CO11" The account is only following one other twitter account - the Ministry of Justice http://twitter.com/JusticeUK

CO11 is responsible for public order policing as well as the Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) who overtly monitor, harass and try to disrupt political campaigners and others.

Several campaigners have dismissed the move by the MET CO11 unit as an attempt  to repair their image after widespread condemnation following the policing of the G20 protests in which one man was killed after being attacked by police officers and countless others injured. The criticism of the policing of the G20 protests came after several reports also criticised the policing of previous climate camp protests, where protestors and members of the press were systematically abused by police officers over the duration of the protest.

The MET have also given assurances that they will employ a "community-style" policing operation for the Camp for Climate Action protest that will limit the use of surveillance units and stop-and-searches wherever possible.

Francis Wright, a Climate Camp legal adviser who will brief police officers on Thursday. "We're pleased they have been forthcoming and have been making some of the right noises, but we have to see how they deliver on the day."

Kevin Smith, who is helping plan the camp, said: "Given the enormous loss of public confidence that the police suffered as a result of the draconian tactics they used at Kingsnorth last year and during the G20, it's no surprise that they would want to be seen mounting a charm offensive at the Climate Camp.

"But we need to see if the authorities are going to take a more reasonable approach to the policing of protest in years to come when there might not be the massive public spotlight that there will be at the Climate Camp."

Following the G20 protests earlier in the year the police have been instructed to review aspects of their public order policing including the controversial use of 'kettling' protestors. They have also issued new guidelines on their powers under counter terrorism legislation regarding people taking photographs of police officers after a string of complaints that they were misusing powers to intimidate photographers and illegally force people to delete images from their cameras.

MPS C011 Twitter Policy

http://www.met.police.uk/webinfo/twitter.htm
Content

The CO11 Met Police Event Planning Team Twitter account is managed by the enews team in the Directorate of Public Affairs, on behalf of colleagues across the department.

The account has been set up to specifically to inform the Camp for Climate Action of any operational updates relating to the policing of their event starting on 26 August.

We may occasionally use some automation (such as tools which generate tweets from RSS feeds) but intend that this will not dominate the messages posted.

If you follow us, you can expect tweets covering some or all of the following:

* Operational updates about the policing of the Camp for Climate Action, relevant to participants
* Information from emergency services partners relevant to the safety and well being of participants of the Camp for Climate Action
* Crime prevention advice or local community information relevant to participants of the Camp for Climate Action

Following

If you follow us on Twitter we will not automatically follow you back. This is to discourage the use of direct messaging, avoid resource wasting spam handling and so that you can easily identify other key Twitter users we think are relevant to our work in who we follow. Being followed by us does not imply endorsement of any kind.
Availability

We will update and monitor our Twitter account during periods of operational activity. Twitter may occasionally be unavailable and we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to Twitter downtime.
@Replies and Direct Messages

We welcome feedback and ideas from all our followers. However, we are not able to reply individually to the messages we receive via Twitter.

The CO11 team reads all @replies and Direct Messages and ensures that any emerging themes or helpful suggestions are passed to the relevant people.

The usual ways of contacting us for official correspondence are detailed in the contact us section of our website.

Links:

Guardian: Police Met police turns on charm ahead of climate protest