Sergeant Smellie, known to some activists at Tombstone Face for his uncanny resemblance to graveyard furniture, walked out of Westminster Magistrates Court with a smile last seen on OJ Simpson. Nicola Fisher, for reasons of her own, chose not to give evidence at the four-day trial.

“That’s him walking free then,” said an activist when Twitter announced that Ms Fisher was staying at her Brighton home instead of giving evidence at the trial. Having sold her story to a national newspaper for £26,000, she must’ve bought a fair dose of cowardice for that sum.

There’s no guarantee Smellie wouldn’t have walked free if the animal rights activist took the stand. But it might have helped. Instead, the trial was heavily laden with testimonies from Smellie’s police colleagues saying that Fisher was acting aggressively brandishing a juice box. The towering TSG officer was obviously defending himself against vegan rage.

Peter Smyth of the Metropolitan Police Federation said that “a ten second clip on You Tube doesn’t tell the whole story”. It tells enough. Delroy Smellie assaulted Nicola Fisher. And she had the bruises to prove it. The Met Police recruitment website says that the position of police officer is one of “responsibility and trust, given only to law-abiding people with proven character and integrity”.

Nicola Fisher has said that she balked at giving evidence because she did not want to be subjected to a defence cross-examination. That she was suffering from depression and lacked confidence in the abilities of the prosecution. So a lawyer hired to defend an ultraviolent thug in uniform may have to ask some difficult questions of a woman who was exercising her democratic right to protest. Diddums. If you’re not ready to defend your actions in a court of law when you’ve obviously been assaulted and wronged, don’t run off to the newspapers and sell your story. Don’t bring it to court to allow the police to make a mockery of the justice system by showing that intimidation does work. Don’t insult everyone else who backed you when you were crying injustice.

Since my own arrest, my healthy mistrust of the police has been strengthened by the ridiculous farce played out in the courts involving ordinary citizens. One year on from the G20 protests and the death of Ian Tomlinson, we are still no closer to a decision from the Crown Prosecution Service as to whether they’ll prosecute anyone for that death. Over a year on from the demonstrations that saw thousands of young Muslims vent their anger at Israel’s wanton murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, we hear of police actions against teenagers that parallel military raids.

The anger over Sergeant Delroy Smellie’s acquittal is two-pronged. The first prong goes to Smellie, the police and the courts that are opening the door for future assaults. Smellie, after a suspension from service following his charge, is now on back the streets protecting the people of London. The second goes to Nicola Fisher who should have given evidence against the man who assaulted her. Her spinelessness makes her the Clare Short of activists.

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This article was originally published in the The Guardian, 01 April 2010.

Elated. Over the moon. Downing a stiff gin to celebrate. But shaking with anger at the drama I and my friends have had to endure over the past ten months. Many of us have suffered throughout this ordeal, a farcical attempt by the CPS and the City of London and Metropolitan Police to slap our wrists for exercising the right to protest.

There are many friends, family and colleagues (sometimes former colleagues…hint hint) who supported us. Thank you all. Really.

So it seems we have the option to continue with proceedings should we choose. Hmmn…. Would we like to continue with a vexatious prosecution that’s already cost the taxpayer thousands in legal and administration fees, and cost us a lot of undue upset in our lives? We were arrested in April, charged in July. We had our first appearance in court in autumn. We had pre-trial hearings, and even secured a Queen’s Counsel (there were a few in the queue tripping over their silks). Despite the police offering us cautions (and thereby admitting guilt) upon arrest, we refused. We took it to the line.

The CPS were playing a very expensive and annoying game of chicken with us. It’s a lot of effort to go through. The City of London and Metropolitan Police screwed up at the G20 – crowd kettles, baton charges and the matter of killing an erstwhile newspaper vendor who had no connection to the demonstrations other than it happened to be near where his mate works. They fucked up and were trying to make up for it. Our prosecution smacks of spreadsheet-led number crunching – there were 37 people charged over the G20 protests. 11 of them were us.

Michael Wolkind QC, who was briefed on behalf of all the defendants, commented “it was a great surprise when Keir Starmer, the DPP, took time off from the investigation of the death of Ian Tomlinson, personally to confirm the absurd decision to pursue this prosecution. His judgement has been exposed by the late decision to discontinue the case”.

It’s taking all my self-control not to dance in the streets, park an armoured personnel carrier outside Keir Starmer’s front door and sing “nyah nyah nyah”.

Corinthians. “When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things”. Shame the CPS, the DPP and the City of London and Metropolitan police didn’t learn this at Sunday school.

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Here’s an extract from the letter from our lawyers informing us that we can get on with life:

“The Crown Prosecution Service has finally come to their senses and made the long overdue decision to discontinue your case. This means that the case is over, you are no longer on bail and no longer required to attend Court.

To quote directly from their letter faxed this evening at 17.41hrs: “The decision to discontinue these charges has been taken because there is not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. I have considered the statements that you have submitted and your Defence Case Statement and as part of our continuous duty of review I am not satisfied that a bench of magistrates’ or judge hearing the case alone, properly directed in accordance with the law is more likely than not to convict the defendants of the charges alleged.”

You have the option to revive the proceedings if you want the Trial to take the place although I’m sure that none of you will want this to occur….

Regards,

Hodge Jones & Allen LLP”

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Despite the fact that photographs from the first day of the G20 protests in April 2009 show me astride an armoured personnel carrier in black bra and blue boiler suit with another woman straddling me in red stockings and lipstick heels, the Crown Prosecution Service has charged me and 10 others with impersonating police officers. We’ve been charged with two counts under Section 90 of the Police Act 1996 – the greater of which carries with it six months in prison.

Spot the Policeman

The vehicle, owned by anarchist pranksters the Space Hijackers, bore a number of fake CCTV cameras bolted onto its turret, a plastic pipe with holes in it for a gun and a bumper sticker that read “How Do You Like My Driving? 0800 F**K YOU”. It blared Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries from a sound system. If you can show me a police force that does all that, I can show you a police force on acid.

“This is ridiculous, they’ll never press charges,” lawyers who attended to the arrested said on the day. Nearly six months and one court appearance later, the CPS is showing no signs of dropping what will be a four-day trial at the City of Westminster magistrates court in February. Eleven people, witnesses for the defence, witnesses for the prosecution, at least half a dozen legal representatives, the paperwork, the man hours, the expense – to what end? There were 27 prosecutions arising from the G20 protests. The rest include violent disorder, affray and setting fire to things at the Bank of England. The Space Hijackers and their tank sought to satirise the aggression stirred up by police ahead of the protests. Police said they expected violence and were “up for it”. It was April Fools’ day. And it was apparently the start of the “Summer of Rage“.

The case of the rather large Sergeant Delroy Smellie (quiet at the back please), charged with assaulting a rather small protester, Nicola Fisher, by smacking her across the face and whacking her with a baton, is representative of the 250 complaints received by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over police violence at the G20. Sure she was short and shouty, but you swat flies. Not women.

Events surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson show police to be drunk with the illusion of their own powers. Even members of the Metropolitan Police Authority despair over how things are run. They have criticised police over not taking the issue of wearing ID numbers seriously enough. Apparently disciplining those caught without ID badges was unnecessary because they could fall off or officers could forget to put them on. Smellie was not wearing his numbers when he vented his rage at Fisher. That fuelled public anger over the overt disregard for the accountability that wearing ID badges would give. So since the G20, the Met has spent over £40,000 on force identification numbers for public order officers. A very expensive way of paying lipservice if police chiefs don’t consider wearing identification important.

There is a feeling that police chiefs and the CPS – run by director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer (formerly a defence lawyer with a long history of human rights cases) – have lost a sense of perspective. The Space Hijackers have a 10-year history of using comedy and theatre to highlight the hypocrisies and failing of the system. I was accepted as their embedded journalist to get a flavour of their version of protest.

Impersonating a police officer is a criminal offence. Murder is a criminal offence. Would you rather see your tax money go towards prosecuting 11 people up for poking fun at the police, or 11 murderers?

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This article originally appeared in the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section, 01 October 2009.