Spiderman innocent

This is great news.

A man who spent six days up a 150ft crane causing widespread traffic chaos in central London has been cleared of causing a public nuisance.

It was fairly transparent to me when Mr Chick was making his protest that the police were being completely unreasonable when they closed the roads and caused all that traffic chaos.

So, you might ask, why would they close the roads unnecessarily? To punish Mr Chick for his protest of course:

He told Southwark Crown Court the police played a "psychological game" to make him look like a "reckless idiot".

Officers said he could fall on pedestrians or cars and stopped work on a £45m office block while surrounding streets were sealed off.

Large parts of the City and east London were gridlocked with frequent 10-mile traffic jams.

But the jury heard excerpts from police logs making it clear senior officers not only treated the road closures as a "bargaining tool" to get him to come down, but felt the prosecution case could be "weakened" if they were lifted.

They manipulated what they could to ensure that Mr Chick would suffer for his cause and they did so unfairly.

Posted by John at May 14, 2004 05:45 PM | TrackBack