Police must show respect for peaceful demonstrators - Dee Doocey

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 29th Jun 2009

Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly policing spokesperson, commenting on today's Home Affairs Select Report on policing of the G20 protests said:

"This report underlines the point I made to the Metropolitan Police Authority back in April, that the new approach to demonstrations being adopted by the police is fundamentally wrong.

"The lack of suitably trained officers is unacceptable. However, it is little use having better trained officers if the strategic assumptions underlying their training are flawed.

"The basic problem is that the police are reluctant to accept that peaceful demonstrations are a democratic right and tend to view all demonstrators as potential criminals. The presumption of violent intent has a nasty habit of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy."