Gillian Slovo - Ten Days

Camera still 0578/19421

time stamp: 16:51:10

Five adults, three IC3 males, one IC1 female and one IC3 female, stand on the verge by the northern roadblock. They appear to be locked in conversation.

4.51 p.m.

‘All this time?’ Despite her effort to appear calm, Cathy couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice.

‘For most of it,’ Pius said. ‘At first they asked us to wait outside, but when we pointed out that this would enrage the crowd they told us we could take a seat.’

‘“Pull up a pew, Reverend,” is what the policeman said’ — this from Ruben’s father — ‘As if this was some kind of a joke.’

‘We sat for gone an hour,’ Pius continued, ‘until at last a sergeant came out — not one any of us have met before. He said there was nothing more they could do because the matter was now in the hands of the IPCC. We asked them how we could contact the IPCC on a Saturday, and they said it was not their business.’

‘They were rude.’ Again from Ruben’s father. ‘They kill our son and then they are rude.’

‘We told them that wasn’t good enough,’ Pius said. ‘We asked to speak to Chief Superintendent Wright. They said she wasn’t there. So we asked for her second-in-command.’

‘He also wasn’t there.’

‘They told us they would request a visit to the family home by a senior officer, after consultation with the IPCC. We said we needed one now and here. We waited some more, and then a moment ago they came to tell us that they had just sent a car for a superintendent who is acting up as a chief superintendent. They reckoned it will take an hour to fetch him.’

‘But we’ve been here since three and it’s nearly five,’ Marcus said. ‘The crowd from the football will soon be coming down the High Street. Are they trying to provoke us?’

‘Truth is,’ Pius said, ‘and it pains me to say this — I don’t think they know what they’re doing. We told them we needed to be gone by dusk — that we had children with us — and that we didn’t want anything to go awry. All they would say was that they’d do their best.’

‘Rude. And they the ones killed our son.’ Ruben’s father’s raised voice attracted the attention of several members of the crowd.

Ruben’s mother went to stand in front of her husband. ‘Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.’ Although her voice was soft, she held him with a hard gaze. ‘Our son was never violent. We don’t want trouble.’

‘And we won’t have it.’ Stepping in between them, Pius put one arm around each of Ruben’s parents. ‘Come. Let us go and tell the others, and then we will wait, calmly and patiently, for an officer to be brought to us.’

Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock

Submission 573/A/2: photographic evidence gathered by ASU 27AWZ, India 95, at 17:03 hours on

Camera still 0578/194139

time stamp: 17:03:07

location: 200 yards south of Rockham police station

subject: demonstration

A man, IC3, stands in front of the crowd, speaking into a bullhorn. Several members of the crowd have their hands up, perhaps remonstrating against what is being said.

Camera stills 0578/194140–19507 appended in annex/4 show build-up of numbers in the demonstration.

Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock

Submission 573/A/3: photographic evidence gathered by ASU 27AWZ, call sign India 95, pertaining to the incident involving police vehicle IRV 02 PFD

location: Rockham High Street south of Rockham police station

subject: demonstration

Camera still 0578/19508

time stamp: 17:44:59

Incident Response Vehicle number 02 PFD, travels down Rockham High Street, heading north.

(Note to Inquiry. At 17:52:00 Air Support Unit 27AWZ radioed base to warn that the IRV appears to be heading straight towards the demonstration. Subsequent inquiry ascertained that IRV 02 PFD was responding to a report of a TWOC incident.)

Camera still 0578/19509

time stamp: 17:45:16

location: Rockham High Street south of Rockham police station

subject: demonstration

IRV number 02 PFD mounts the pavement to pass the roadblock.

5.45 p.m.

They heard the siren long before they saw the car. It was background noise that everybody assumed would fade. But instead the noise increased in intensity and duration until:

‘What the fuck?’

Someone on the southern edge of the crowd pointed to the police car that, unable to press forward because of the roadblock, had mounted the pavement and was heading straight for the demonstrators.

‘Stop.’

The car kept coming.

‘Stop.’

The car blasted out a series of warning siren bursts as if expecting that the people in its path could somehow disappear. A child’s buggy, complete with screaming infant, was carried overhead to safety as others scrambled out of the way.

The pressure of people still around the car had forced it to slow down, but it did not stop even when one of the policemen from the northern end of the roadblock starting running towards it. A demonstrator, who had been standing outside the fruit and veg shop, picked up a tomato and threw it at the patrol car. ‘Stop. You’re going to hurt somebody.’

The tomato struck the windscreen and burst, as the cry ‘Stop!’ was taken up by many voices. And still the car kept going.

‘Stop!’ People closest to the shop reached into boxes that lined the pavement, grabbing anything to hand, so that tomatoes and carrots and purple plums and avocados went flying through the air, some of them landing on the car and others splattering in the road. And then at last, the car, its driver possibly having spotted his fellow officer running towards him, applied his brakes so that by the time the policeman had arrived and banged on a side window, the car had come to a complete halt. The driver’s side window slid down allowing the out-of-breath policeman to speak, briefly, to his fellows inside.

The window closed. The policeman stepped away. The car got moving again, backing up the way it had come, and although it clipped the side of the ice-cream van as it went, it did not stop but instead, siren wailing, reversed down the pavement until it could turn and speed away.

Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock

Submission 573/A/4: further photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, pertaining to the incident involving IRV 02 PFD

Camera stills 0578/19510

time stamp: 17:48:31

location: perimeter of southern roadblock

subject: collision

IRV 02 PFD clips the front side driver’s bumper of a parked van.

Camera stills 0578/19511

time stamp: 17:49:56

location: perimeter of southern roadblock

subject: collision

IRV 02 PFD reversing away as the van driver steps out.

Submission 573/A/5: photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, between 18:29 and 18:46 hours on , pertaining to the appearance of Chief Inspector Raj Privadi

Camera still 0578/19536

time stamp: 18:29:33

location: 200 yards south of Rockham police station

subject: arrival of senior officer

Newly arrived police vehicle IRV 01 HDR is stopped by northern roadblock. A uniformed police officer who has come out of the car is walking through the block towards the demonstration. The crowd is now estimated at approximately one hundred and fifty persons.