No Wonder The Met Are Masking Up; Palestine Action Arrest Blows Up As Golders Green Backfires Too

Masked officers at dawn for Qesser Zuhrah, paperwork and suspension for a Met officer after Golders Green abuse: same city, same force, different rules. Right, so the Met police are really lapping up the self inflicted damage it would seem as not only have they been shamed over the conduct of one of their special officers – and he really was something quite special – in amongst scenes of abuse aimed at an Al Jazeera news crew attempting to report on the arson attack on Jewish ambulances in Golders Green, but now they are back to arresting Palestine Action hunger strikers just a month after they were released and the tape from Watford concerning the arrest of Qesser Zuhrah has already done the damage. Qesser Zuhrah there, put in a car, masked officers are around her, and one of the first sensible questions in the whole affair is the one she asks herself, aimed at the police and others there asked the same thing too - why are the police masked? That is not some tiny aesthetic detail is it? The Metropolitan Police, along with Counter Terrorism Policing South East have helped turn the arrest of a 21-year-old woman over an alleged call for “direct action” - not illegal in itself of course - into a public argument about fear and accountability before most people have even got to the legal wording. Nothing says calm, proportionate confidence like covering your face to arrest a young activist at dawn is there? The Met has then managed to do this while still carrying the fallout from the recent incident at Golders Green, where a serving Special Constable, David Soffer, was filmed abusing and helping intimidate an Al Jazeera crew wishing to cover the arson of those Hatzola ambulances the night before and not wishing them to do so. Well, he has now been suspended. Perhaps that is why the masks matter now. They arrived after the force had already made itself part of another Palestine story and after Declassified UK, through their investigative journalism, had already put one of its own officers on the public record.