Changes
This campaign site has had gaps in updates, and in the meantime the civil liberties activity has moved offline. Close cooperation with other protest groups and political parties has increased (particularly those in Bristol and Swindon), and all the main activism has merged into them.
During the last five years, apparent misconduct has disappeared, although we believe this to be an illusion as we age. Just because you're not getting attacked, doesn't mean someone else isn't, just as it is with povery, misfortune, racism, sexism, and other inequality.
This main page has had a big rewrite, and most of the information you need is within this new "essay". We've been around the block a few times and as online access has become more flexible and democratic, we believe it's time for other people to take up the brickbat.
Implications
Please do not send us detailed reports of specific cases. It is the job of the IOPC to process those. We do not seek to replace the police, if anything we'd rather abolish them. Some say that society cannot function without some kind of effective policing, but we seem to have managed well enough so far.
We seek to change government policy, and surprisingly this appears to have occured, and for such a concept of crime within the police to be readily acknowledged, and that's happened too. We also raise awareness of it among those who are routinely abused or give glowing & inaccurate praise because they think mister nice policeman that they encounter is like that all the time and can do no wrong.
Due to changes in the law, bail abuse is now illegal and there have been many procedural changes, as well as the introduction of body cams, which we support. This doesn't make things fixed or perfect, but it is a welcome improvement. Life doesn't stay still though, so improvements must continue for future developments.
Those of us involved, would like to say that the behaviour of any public organisation is more a result of human nature rather than how they are structured, and human behavour never changes. Organisations are a contradiction in themselves, pretending to behave like a single person, a level of coordination which is impossible. Therefore, talking directly to key/competant people within the structure, instead of relying on the structure to help anything, is the way forward. Public structures will always be less determined than indivduals, and they do not last as long. A determined indivudual will always win against an inflexible system, and I hope this principle will bring hope to anyone currently finding themselves oppressed.
This campaign used to start with a less well-written intro, which is still mostly there until anyone can be bothered to summarise and integrate it. Previous projects listing prisons and specific cases will continue to be scaled down, when anyone has a spare moment (I'm thinking, in another five years...) Now we are/were switching to primarily a database of articles about news and progress, which much of this summary document will doubtless end up being stuffed into.
email us@freedom.NOSPAM.is.
News Articles
- Updates up to 2015 (July 2015)
- "Life on Mars" drama, and how much things haven't changed. (January 2006)
- Previous campaign introduction (Nov 2005)
- illegal buzzwords (Oct 2005)
- Older announcements
Tedious Links
Here are all the usual social media and relevant organisations:
About this website
Please note, this website runs many subsites and redirects, many of which are not associated with one another. This campaign is technically just another subsite, except it's on the root because it's a humanitarian charity, and that matters more than most things, so it gets special treatment.
There is central control and approval for quality, and there will never be any popups or banner ads, unless they're temporary experiments. Any promotional activity that has to be done, will be included within the page content.
