Considering what the police have been doing here and abroad I think these protesters were extremely restrained.
Usually, it is the police who kettle protesters. The tables were
turned, though, when demonstrators unmasked and surrounded a
plain-clothes officer who had infiltrated their midst during this week's
public sector protests.
The hoodie-wearing interloper was discovered by protesters from the
Occupy movement from St Paul's while they were attempting to take over a
building near Piccadilly Circus in central London on Wednesday.
The incident, which occurred outside the offices of the mining company Xstrata, was captured on video by The Independent (above,
left). Protesters asked the man whether he worked for the Metropolitan
Police. He can be seen in the film nodding and answering: "Yeah, I'm a
Met Police officer, yeah."
At that, one of the group said: "Right,
let's circle him so he can't go anywhere." Protesters duly surrounded
the officer, chanting "shame on you". Within moments the chants turned
to "scum, scum, scum". One protester was heard to say: "He has no
uniform and no [badge] number... we have no way of identifying him, so
how are we supposed to complain about him."
The officer was
allowed to reach the line of uniformed police who were kettling the
protest, and they let him through. Protesters have complained recently
about a perceived increase in the number of plain-clothes or undercover
police officers at protest marches. Videos of people suspected of such a
role have surfaced online, and cards with images of those thought to be
police officers have reportedly been distributed among demonstrators.
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