Cph:Police will use preliminary arrests

During the COP15 activists risk getting arrested even though they haven't done anything yet.
To prevent riots police will use a strategy with far more preliminary arrests.

“By reacting earlier, we can prevent things from escalating. And in reality we also protect people from getting into real trouble by throwing rocks,” says national police chief Jens Henrik Højbjerg.

Along with police chief of Copenhagen, Johan Martini Reimann, Højbjerg has the main responsibility for police being ready for the huge task of the COP15 in December.

The two police chiefs agree on the new strategy and with the police law police can arrest people who've done nothing illegal, but participate in a demonstration which police have tried to dissolve. Hereafter police can contain them for six hours.

“This will mean that we can minimize the actual number of arrests and people taken into custody”, says Johan Reimann.

He stresses that police will not use the Police Law to arrest peaceful activists in peaceful demonstrations.

This last bit is exactly what's troubling Jørn Andersen of the board of Klimabevægelsen (Climate Movement. Centrist NGO) and part organiser of a demonstration.

“It's a democratic problem when you do random preliminary arrests of people protesting. You arrest people who've done nothing illegal, because you fear that they will do so,” he says.

On the contrary, Police's new strategy is well received by lawyer Jakob Arrevad, who was among the harshest critics of police work after the large riots following the eviction of the Ungdomshuset (the Youth House) in Copenhagen in 2007.

“It's very reasonable that police have listened to the critic of them. With the Police Law police can remove the people who're in the center of the riots. Then it doesn't bother me, if a few who shouldn't have been arrested are taken too,” he says.