Defend low paid workers!

No to police tasers!

Over the last few months, Fight Racism! Fight imperialism! supporters have come under harassment and intimidation from Strathclyde police officers in Govanhill, with material seized, supporters charged, attempts to carry out illegal stop and searches and    turning up to people’s flats. The Govanhill Defence Campaign was formed to stand up against this. We argued from the start that police are gearing up to attack any communities and political groups which move to seriously oppose the coming spending cuts— cuts which will hit the working-class and poorest the hardest.

On 22 September, we got a taste of what’s to come. A Chief Inspector known to FRFI was in Lidl supermarket on Victoria Road handing out a ‘public      perception survey’ to local shoppers. It asked: ‘how does knowing that some local officers could carry a Taser on patrol make you feel?’

What the police survey didn’t tell you was that the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT), concluded on November 23, 2007, that: "TASER   electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill." Police taser guns have played a part in the death of more than 270 people between June 2001 and October 2007 in the United States. Strathclyde police now want to put them in the hands of regular police officers across Glasgow.

This has nothing to do with ‘making communities safer.’ Chief Superintendent Derek Barnett recently stated: "In an environment of cuts across the wider public sector, we face a period where disaffection, social and industrial      tensions may well rise...We will require a strong, confident, properly trained and equipped police service..."

Tasers guns will not be used against the real criminals: those corrupt politicians, profiteering bankers and employers, slum landlords. The real threat to the working-class comes exactly from what the police are there to protect: the status quo. We must unite now against these  attacks...white,black, Asian or Roma, everyone is under threat.

No to police tasers!

No to attacks on our communities!