Four arrested in Staffordshire on suspicion of drug offences
The four people who were arrested remain in custody as enquiries continue, the force said."This morning's activity sends out a clear message that those involved in child criminal exploitation are not welcome in Staffordshire and we're working 24/7 to stop them," said Det Sgt Jon Tench."We're working with our partner agencies to put the right safeguarding measures in place to shield them from those trying to do them harm, continuing to act against those responsible and support victims."
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The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Anger, fear and a total rejection of politics: the Palestine Action protest was a snapshot of Britain today
In the third month of this tense, parched summer, the British state is under severe strain. Stripped of resources by 14 years of reckless rightwing government, contorting itself to maintain relations with ever more extreme regimes abroad, expanding its security powers at home through ever more tortured logic, regarded by ever more voters with contempt, a once broadly respected institution is increasingly struggling to maintain its authority. You could see the strain on the faces of some of the police officers, reddening with exertion in the sun, as they arrested 521 people in Parliament Square on Saturday for displaying pieces of paper or cardboard with a seven-word message supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action. It was one of the biggest mass arrests in London's history. The many protesters who refused to be led away had to be lifted off the ground, one by one, without the exercise looking too coercive in front of the cameras. Then their floppy, uncooperative forms had to be carried by clusters of officers through the hostile crowd – to chants of 'genocide police!', 'shame on you!' and 'fascist scum!' – to a ring of police vans at the square's perimeter, which were then sometimes obstructed by further protesters, before they eventually drove away. So many officers were needed that some had come from Wales. When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced Welsh devolution 26 years ago, in times of more harmony and less scarcity, cooperation between the nations was probably not envisaged in this form. On Saturday, so that the capital's police custody system was not overwhelmed, those arrested were taken to 'makeshift outdoor processing centres', the Observer reported – as if during a general breakdown of law and order. Some of those released on bail then reportedly went back to the protest. 'Given the numbers of people arrested,' said the Metropolitan police, 'it would have been entirely unrealistic for officers to recognise individuals who returned to [the square].' 'Entirely unrealistic' is not a reassuring phrase for those who believe that the government's approach to Palestine Action is practical and based on sound law. If charged, those arrested will enter the overburdened criminal justice system and then, if found guilty, Britain's bursting jails. It's likely that further supporters of Palestine Action will follow. The organiser of Saturday's protest, Defend Our Juries, has promised a sustained campaign of 'mass, public defiance', to make the proscription of Palestine Action 'unworkable'. This amendment to the 2000 Terrorism Act – a less benign legacy of Blair than devolution – states that anyone who 'wears, carries or displays an article' publicly, 'in such a way… as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of' Palestine Action could be jailed for up to six months; and anyone who 'invites support for' the organisation could be jailed for up to 14 years. Authoritarianism and austerity have risen together in Britain, as the relatively generous public spending of the Blair years has receded and new waves of radical activism have formed over the climate crisis and the destruction of Palestine. Yet the possibility that austerity will make authoritarianism unaffordable, with too much of the government's funds swallowed up by the security state, does not seem prominent in Labour's thinking. The fact that Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has for many years been one of parliament's leading authorities on national security, has given them a lot of faith in law-and-order solutions to political problems. The Parliament Square protesters took a different view. They had been advised by Defend Our Juries not to give quotes to journalists, to avoid distracting from the protest's focus on the Palestine Action proscription and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the dozen protesters I spoke to informally all talked about Britain's police and politicians without the slightest deference, as part of a system that was failing, practically and ethically, to address our era's escalating crises. As the arrests went on and on, through the hot afternoon and into the evening, many of the protesters barely moved, but kept facing the same way, sitting on the ground with their placards carefully displayed and their backs to the Houses of Parliament. Partly, this was to provide a globally resonant image, but it was also to dramatise their rejection of the will of the Commons, where only 26 MPs voted against Palestine Action's proscription last month. Parliament likes to see itself as a historic defender of freedom and liberty, yet when panics about subversive groups are under way, its liberalism often evaporates. While the Commons narrows its views in times of crisis, the electorate sometimes does the opposite. Half of those arrested in the square were aged 60 or older – usually the most politically conservative demographic. Many had had middle-class careers in public service. Chatting among themselves on the grass in the quieter moments between police surges, they could almost have been taking a break between events at a book festival. One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. When I introduced myself, she said: 'I don't like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.' The last time Labour was in office, opposition to its more draconian and militaristic policies also emerged across the political spectrum. The more rightwing members of this opposition can be questioned: are they as outraged when Tory governments support wars or suspend civil liberties? My sense is not. But either way, broad opposition erodes a government's legitimacy. At the 2005 election, after the Terrorism Act and the Iraq war, Blair still won, yet with almost a third fewer votes than when he came to power. With Labour more unpopular now, Starmer can less afford to alienate anti-war voters – much as his most illiberal subordinates might want to. Yet any electoral consequences from the scenes in Parliament Square, and from likely sequels, are hardly the only things at stake in the Palestine Action controversy. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, with the police cordon tightening around us, I got talking to two elderly protesters who had watched people being arrested beside them. 'I'm in two minds about carrying on with this,' one of them said, opening and closing her piece of cardboard with its illegal message. Defiant earlier, she now seemed frightened. The legally safe space for protest in Britain is shrinking again. Meanwhile in Gaza, there's no safe space for anything at all. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
‘You spit, we hit': Trump just took over DC with vow to stop ‘thugs' from abusing cops. He already pardoned hundreds of them
Monday marked the beginning of a Trump takeover of Washington D.C.'s law enforcement capabilities and what many Democrats fear could be step one of full federal control over the District of Columbia. At the White House, Donald Trump was flanked by top officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi as he announced that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the city's main police force, would be brought under federal control. From behind the podium, the president recalled images of police officers facing abuse by protesters he'd watched on TV screens over the years, clearly evoking anger in him and leaving a city braced for Trump to fulfill a long-awaited desire to 'send in the troops.' He then passed around images of individuals arrested over the weekend, and promised that, going forward, police officers would be unhinged in their treatment of criminals and, likely, dissenters: They'll be able to do 'whatever they want', Trump vowed. 'You spit, and we hit.' It was about as explicit a lean into the 'strongman' image as one could ask for. But the president's fixation on clashes between protesters and law enforcement has one glaring exception: January 6. The violent siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters in 2021 lasted for several hours. In the end, protesters left the building after police officers from neighboring counties in Maryland and Virginia arrived to quell the chaos. A deployment of more than 6,000 National Guard troops was finally authorized at 6 p.m., hours after the chaos began and hours after the worst of it ended. Dozens of officers were injured, several died after the attack including one who sustained injuries during it, Brian Sicknick. Survivors recounted vicious abuse from protesters, especially Black officers who recounted racial slurs and threats of violence. But the Capitol is not where the January 6 story ends. As Trump supporters left the Capitol that day, they fanned out across the entire District of Columbia, some returning to homes and hotels in the region and others spreading mayhem across the city. Businesses were boarded up as far as southeast D.C. and scattered evidence of vandalism was seen around residential areas and various neighborhoods the next day. It was the city's most violent day in decades. But on the campaign trail last summer, Trump vowed his first act would be to pardon all of them. True to his word, and despite the pleas of even some Republican supporters, on the day Trump was sworn in he pardoned some 1,500 people who participated in the siege on the U.S. Capitol and were either convicted or facing charges. MPD officers were part of the initial response as well. Some of the officers who responded that day are now under the command of the same administration that pardoned hundreds of Jan. 6 offenders, including some charged with violence against MPD and Capitol Police officers. One of those rioters, Julian Khater, was charged with spraying officer Sicknick with a chemical repellant during the attack; a colleague later testified that Sicknick looked 'ghostly pale' afterwards. Even so, the MPD's union chief told Fox News on Monday that his outfit 'completely agree[s]' with Trump that crime in D.C. is 'out of control.' He and union officials pointed to an MPD commander under investigation for allegedly falsifying crime data, and claimed that it was a lie that crime in the District of Columbia was decreasing. The Justice Department touted that data as recently as January, days before Trump took office. For Trump, Monday was 'Liberation' day. "Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!" he wrote on Truth Social ahead of the press conference he'd teased all weekend. But city officials are adamant that the trends mapped by the data are real, and that all types of crimes including some of the most stubborn categories such as carjackings were dropping in frequency across the board. 'Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false,' D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told MSNBC on Sunday. 'There are very specific things in our law that would allow the president to have more control over our police department. None of those conditions exist in our city right now. 'We had one of the lowest crime levels and shootings that we've had in a July in recent history. So, not only are we going down year to year, we're seeing the trends go in the right way in every crime category.' There's no question: Trump has been looking for an excuse to do this. A Rolling Stone investigation published earlier this year cited two sources with knowledge of the president's conversations as saying that Trump was speaking to aides just after taking office in January about identifying the earliest possible moment when it would be appropriate to send in federal troops for crime suppression efforts. Anger felt by some city residents (among whom Trump supporters are still a slim minority) on Monday was embodied by restauranteur José Andrés, who tweeted at the president: '[Y]ou didn't have the power to call the National Guard on January 6 but now you do? Washington DC is not only our nation's capital…it's a beautiful city that 700,000 people call home. I'm proud to run a business and raise a family here. DC doesn't need federalized troops…it needs leaders who respect our fundamental founding principles of democracy, dignity, and respect.' Trump finally got his opportunity with the July attack on a man whose online nickname — 'Big Balls' — propelled him to both mockery and notoriety. The former DOGE staffer, who is still a federal employee, named Edward Coristine, was attacked while allegedly intervening during a carjacking attempt. According to police reports, Coristine was mobbed by a large group of teens during the attack and had his iPhone stolen in addition to being viciously assaulted. Groups of teenagers have become a major problem for city officials in recent weeks, with residents reporting large numbers of young adults and school-aged children attacking people on city streets, neighborhoods such as Navy Yard (where many congressional staffers live) and the Metropolitan Branch Trail, a paved route across the northeastern part of the city used by pedestrians and cyclists. In some cases, groups have numbered as high as hundreds of people and have required massive police responses. The only questions for Trump now are how far he takes this, and how much punishment he'll dole out on D.C. elected officials. Even as Bowser continues to avoid a public confrontation, Trump aimed harsh rhetoric at the city council on Monday. And it remains to be seen whether he'll try and take this effort national once again, after being largely stymied in his efforts to impose a sustained presence on the city of Los Angeles over ICE protests. A compliant Congress will likely make any Trump takeover of D.C., no matter how broad, a smooth process. But that same dynamic won't be found if the president tries to reimpose his will on America's blue states, where governors are raring for the chance to show that they have the backbones which their voters are demanding they show.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Red meat to throw to his base': DC residents on Trump's police takeover
As Donald Trump convened reporters at the White House on Monday morning to announce his plans for sending the national guard on to Washington DC streets and taking over the police department, protesters gathered a block away to denounce what they saw as his plans to put the federal district under his thumb. 'Nothing Trump is doing right now is about our safety,' Keya Chatterjee, executive director of Free DC, a group advocating for the city's autonomy, told the 200 or so people gathered on a block of 16th Street Northwest that had once been called Black Lives Matter Plaza, before the city government ordered the name stripped shortly after Trump's inauguration this year. 'What we know from history is that authoritarians always want to control the capital and the people in the capital city. It's because it's the fastest way to silence dissent and to accelerate their agenda. And I want to be clear, this is not about crime. This is about what Trump is trying to do to DC in order to take over DC and silence us.' Lamont Mitchell was not so sure. A lifelong Washingtonian who resides among the poorer and more crime-stricken neighborhoods east of the Anacostia river, he regarded Trump's plans for the homeless as 'inhumane', but was open to his ideas for making the city's streets safer. Mitchell described how he avoids certain areas on drive way home for fear of being struck by a stray bullet, no longer walks down certain blocks, had his RV stolen and plans to buy a gun. 'As a senior in Washington, I need to feel safe,' said 69-year-old Mitchell, who chairs the Anacostia Coordinating Council community organization. 'We gotta take drastic action when drastic action is called for.' The overwhelmingly Democratic federal district is the latest American city to which Trump has deployed troops since taking office, after sending active-duty marines and national guard into Los Angeles in June to quell protests over immigration enforcement. This time, the foe is crime that the president argues is 'out of control', and the catalyst is the attack of a staffer from the 'department of government efficiency' in a relatively safe neighborhood earlier this month. Mayor Muriel Bowser has called Trump's intervention 'unsettling and unprecedented', as well as unwarranted. City leaders have pointed to statistics that show crimes such as robbery, homicide and assault with a deadly weapon are down, and violent crime hit a 30-year low in 2024. Yet Washington continues to struggle with rates of violent crime that are higher than cities with similar populations, according to the Real-Time Crime Index from AH Datalytics. Residents are used to hearing reports of violence, though much of it occurs in the city's poorer, majority Black eastern third, far from the museums and monuments of the National Mall. They are also used to seeing a lot of police – about 50 law enforcement agencies are already in Washington DC, ranging from the citywide Metropolitan police department (MPD) to the obscure zoo police, FBI police and Federal Reserve police, which provide security around specific agencies. National guard troops and agents from the FBI and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) are now expected to be on the streets along those officers, but residents are unsure whether they will make much difference. 'I tend to be pretty cynical about what the Trump administration is doing right now. This seems pretty clearly just like red meat to throw to his base, this announcement on a Monday,' said Brian Strege, a neighborhood commissioner in Navy Yard, where mobs of juveniles have appeared repeatedly over the summer, shooting off fireworks and harassing bystanders. 'I get the sense it's just going to be a lot of bored national guard troops wandering around the city.' Trump made mention of the disturbances in Navy Yard during his White House press conference, but Strege said the city had already taken steps to stop the disorder, including by instituting a nighttime curfew this summer for people under 18. Trump plans to take over the police department for 30 days – right around the time schools resume, and Strege said the teenagers typically stop showing up. 'Thirty days from now is going to be September. Our juvenile crime is likely to decrease, because it always does. So, it sounds like they're going to pretend that it went down because they did this big deployment,' he said. 'I don't see it helping really at all. I think our police force has actually been doing a pretty good job over the past few years.' Last Saturday night saw more teenagers flood Navy Yard, as well as a shooting. The following day, Edward Daniels, another neighborhood commissioner in the area, saw Ice agents patrolling the street, and at one point stopping some teenagers from riding bikes, which others had used in the past to harass people. Their presence, he said, didn't make him feel safe, but rather concerned – did these agents know how to patrol a city? Were they coordinating with the police department? 'It's going to make things even more chaotic here and cause what I believe to be even more dangerous situations than what we've seen here on the ground,' he said. Across the Anacostia river, Sandra Seegars, a longtime anti-crime activist, welcomed Trump's announcement. Her Congress Heights neighborhood has one of the highest homicide rates in the city, according to police data, and she was pleased to hear from a friend that federal agents had been spotted in a nearby park. 'He's going to make me feel safer,' Seegars said of Trump's deployment. 'I think he's doing the right thing. He should have done it before now.'
