A hand on her shoulder
Sarah Phillimore summarizes a podcast on which Jennifer Swayne talks about her experience in the Newport jail last night.
Yes seriously why IS this? Why can they put a disabled woman in a cell for ten hours because she posted some stickers they don’t like? And then push her out at 3 in the morning to get home on a battery scooter? WHY?
They arrested her for nothing then left her there for five hours, for nothing.
Meanwhile – rape cases? Pfffffffffffff, they don’t matter.
I fucking think so too.
This. Is. Outrageous.
I saw their caution to the public about the stickers — call the police, let them handle it, they’re dangerous. Perhaps they do think she put razor blades or broken glass under them. Or maybe they think they ought to think that. Or maybe they’re trying to get the public to think that.
Wicked.
I just listened to most of it, and recommend it – it turns out she’s very funny, and very not-crushed. Much disdain, much laughter at the many absurdities. The interviewer is Julian Vigo, and she’s good at it. (I’m not a fan of her writing, but she does good radio.) The police told Jennifer she mustn’t do any stickering for a month; fine, she says, she’ll go do it in other places, which she does anyway, it would be boring to do it in only one. Apparently the plods were very dim (big surprise there).
Do you have a link to that interview, Ophelia? I Googled ‘Jennifer Swayne talks to Julian Vigo’, but nothing came up.
They need to arrest the people who made the false broken-glass reports, for one thing.
It could all be a baby fit over her running over a police officer’s foot.
A Russian (Soviet era) joke: Q: Why do policemen always go around in threes?
A: The one on the left can read, the one on the right can count, and the one in the middle likes the company of intellectuals.
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/jenni-swayne/id1535634480?i=1000548854172
Julian Vigo interviewing Jenni Swayne
That bit about “broken glass under the posters” is absolute bullshit. I mean, not that I know for sure, but I’ve been acquainted with Jennifer for some years now, and I am convinced that she would never do something like that. She’s not interested in hurting anyone, just in fighting for the rights of women.
James, you are correct. She even uses easy-peel stickers, because she wouldn’t want anyone so much as to break a nail removing them.
You’ll be pleased to know that women are fighting back. Free stickers!
Cops aren’t generally known for wanting to be “on the right side of history.” (Not that TRActivism is the right side of history. Just that they claim it is.)
Somebody recently said cop abuse of GC women is a case of “bro’s before ho’s.” Maybe. Or maybe they’re like that former NAVY Seal/AGP. Big, tough men who secretly want to be effeminate heterosexuals.
Oops sorry Tim @ 3 and anyone else inconvenienced, I forgot to link to the interview. Thanks Tineke.
I’ve just been doing an early morning fume at the fact that they searched her house and seized all her stickers, hours of work plus the large cost of printing – what the HELL right do they have to do that?
Do listen to the interview if you can.
1. Jenni is brilliant, I really like her, and
2. There is lots of interesting detail. For instance, the police tried to make Jenni tell them who had printed the stickers. Sinister.
When the balance sheet is drawn up, I would say those costs are probably offset well and truly by all the free publicity the cops have organised for her, and by now going well beyond bloody Twitter and into the media generally. TV talking heads will likely pick up the story and run with it: you know, human interest, etc. Could even finish up in a UN resolution.
How offset though? She’s not doing it for money, but printing the stickers cost her a lot of money. She remains out of pocket for the stickers.
It’s bad enough that they arrested her (even an interview would have been over the top). Kicking her out at 3am without a phone to make her own way how is outrageous and deeply unprofessional for obvious safety reasons. Her being a woman and disabled are aggravating factors that to me suggest a depraved indifference for her safety by the Police. I’d say they should be ashamed of their conduct from beginning to end, but I suspect they’re incapable of that.
I do wonder if she was guilty of contempt of cop? Cops love to be adored, failing that grovelled too, and failing that feared. They hate it when someone mocks or challenges them, and tend to respond with violence, maltreatment and general officiousness. The fact pattern would fit.
I’ve been manic busy all, but not too busy to listen to the interview, or too busy to fume about this (early morning fume, mid-day fume, pre-bedtime fume, I’ve had them all). I have a number of thoughts, in no particular order:
Pill has a lot of problems, and stickering / fly posting doesn’t make the top 10.
Jenni describes how she passed a group of druggies on her left, seemingly waiting for their dealer. Unless things have changed, this is the old Kwiksave car park – the drug dealers ran their operation from there before Kwiksave went bust, so it’s fair to assume they still do so now. She was then stopped by a hand on her shoulder when she got to the mosque. So if the police came up behind her, there’s a good chance they had also just walked past that spot. Easier to take on a middle-aged woman on a mobility scooter, I guess?
The distance from the mosque to the police station is… too small to express in fractions of a mile. I doubt it’s even 200 yards. Just so everyone can fully appreciate the hilarity of making the coppers go and get a van to put her in.
If they stopped her after seeing her put up the “3 women killed by men” stickers, and went straight to searching her, locking her up, and getting a warrant to search her home, that looks to me like they were already on the lookout for her. They knew of a woman on a mobility scooter putting up Terfy stickers and posters – I know there’s no mention of trans on the ones mentioned but the gender people know that the “men” in “no men in women’s prisons” includes trans women. Plus, Jenni pretty much outed herself by explaining that she is educating people about gender ideology.
The Gwent Police tweet about the dangerous stickers is from Friday – they had a full 48 hours to go and check if the claims of broken glass under the stickers were true (not to mention, remove those stickers, and the glass, as evidence). Did they?
Anyone kicking a disabled woman out in Pill in the early hours of the morning, without her phone, to make her own way home across Newport town centre on a mobility scooter, in January, is a psychopath.
Thank you catwhisperer. Pill is a nickname for…Newport? The area where she was stickering?
Ophelia, Pill would be Pillgwenlly, the district in Newport where the police station is situated.
Thanks Tigger! My knowledge of city neighborhood place names in Wales isn’t what it might be.
Tineke & Ophelia, thank you very much indeed for putting the link in. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview: what a splendid, brave, and funny person Jennifer Swayne is!
You are welcome, Tim! And yes isn’t she.
Ah sorry Ophelia, it’s that thing where you know what someone is talking about, but you’re the only one who does. Jennifer does say at the beginning of the interview that she was in the Pillgwenlly area, which may be the first time I have ever heard it called by it’s full name. It’s the area nearest the docks. I think that’s probably all you need to know to understand what it’s like. It says a lot about Jenni as a person when she say she loves Pill because it’s so diverse and everyone is really friendly – most people will tell you it’s terrifying. Poverty, drugs, violence, prostitution, middle-of-the-day arson (really breaks up the tedium of a shift on the Kwik-e-mart checkout!), Pill has it all.
The nickname for Newport, if you care to know, is Zooport.
No sorrow required! Thank you for the background, which is interesting. Makes it all the more remarkable that The Law was out looking for Jennifer.
The comparable area in Seattle – nearest the docks – doubles as a major tourist attraction, so it’s an odd mix. Bordered on one side by the King County Courthouse, where one has to turn up for jury duty. Across the street is where the bail bond shops are.
Oh that’s interesting! I suppose I’ve assumed a general pattern of “port town has its heyday at the height of the industrial revolution and then goes downhill with the decline of steel and coal” but that doesn’t necessarily apply everywhere. Shipping in South Wales would have been all about coal and steel, and once those were gone, there would have been nothing to export. But then waterfront regeneration is a thing too, and it’s not like there hasn’t been any of that in Newport. Pill’s misfortune may be due to the geography – while it’s next to the docks and the river, it’s also at the “bottom end” of town. The river curves, so the “top end” of the town centre, and the side of it, are right next to the river too. So that’s where they put the fancy walkways and pedestrian bridges and the theatre and the new shopping centre and the residential buildings with river views. The only thing approaching a tourist attraction near the docks is the Transporter Bridge, which is pretty cool if you like old-timey engineering type stuff. (People call it the Tranny, which must be a hate crime by now)