Notting Hall Carnival Not Happy With Police Tweets
.
Meanwhile in
England
Tweet Dump on Police After Cops Send Out A Controversial Drug Post
About This Week’s Notting Hall Carnival
Britain’s Notting Hill Carnival is a year older and twice as large as
Toronto’s Caribbean Carnival (and maybe much larger this year). The annual event t has taken place in London
since 1966 on the streets of Notting Hill, for two days every August.
With an expected two million or so attendees, Notting Hill Carnival is
Europe’s biggest street festival. The Carnival
always takes place on the August Bank Holiday weekend, which this year is
on August 27-28.
The police always have a large presence at the annual
parade which is self-described as the second largest parade in the world (next
to Rio). This year the police announced
that there were being proactive when over 100 officers conducted a series of
raids earlier this week.
According the British media “More than 300 people have been arrested as part of
an operation to prevent crime at the Notting Hill Carnival.”
“Since 11 August some 290 people have been arrested for various offences and 190 knives and 18 firearms have been recovered, the Met Police revealed. Another 31 people were held earlier following a number of dawn raids carried out across five boroughs. (some 12 miles away from the parade site.”
“The force said it was
"committed to ensuring that Carnival remains a safe, vibrant and enjoyable
event".
Last
year over 14,000 police were deployed at the hill event. According to the London Guardian “They
made 450 arrests and recorded 396 crimes over the course of the weekend. … The
number of violent crimes is rising. In 2016 there were 90 arrests for
possession of weapons offences – compared with 57 in 2015
Last year six people were stabbed at carnival events. According to the Metropolitan police among those arrested was a 14-year-old boy held on suspicion of grievous bodily harm after a 15-year-old was stabbed.
What has raised
the ire of social media friends of the carnival have been the tweets that
police have sent out following the raid.
The police tweet linked the seizure of heroin and weapons with the
coming parade, even though, no linkage has been found.
 |
| Grimes Artist Stormzy questions police motives for tweet |
Grime
artist Stormzy was among those to question the police online statement.
"How many drugs did you lot seize in the run up to Glastonbury (5-day festival of contemporary performing arts)
or are we only
doing tweets like this for black events?" he wrote in a widely shared post
on Twitter
Many of the tweets
have turned the police words “In
the run up to #NottingHillCarnival
“ into a dunning meme. Seen this
morning:
- · It's like saying "in the run up to a festival about oranges, here is some news about dolphins." Irrelevant. Your racism is showing.
- · In the run up to #NottingHillCarnival @metpoliceuk remind us that they're still instituationally racist.
- · In the run up to #NottingHillCarnival, I've covered my dog with a blanket because it's too cold in #HemelHempstead.
- · @Shan_kelly96 In the build up to #NottingHillCarnival I've made myself some toast, I'm in Liverpool
- · In the run up to #NottingHillCarnival @metpoliceuk remind us that they're still instituationally racist.
- · In the run up to #NottingHillCarnival, my grandmother in Nigeria has fixed her roof.
- · In the run up to #NottingHillCarnival @metpoliceuk officers find a ton of pure uncut instutional racism found in Commissioners office.
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