Police and protesters clashed in Bristol, southwest England, on Sunday night, following a demonstration against proposed new police powers.
Police and protesters clashed in Bristol, southwest England, on Sunday night, following a demonstration against proposed new police powers.
Twenty police officers were assaulted or injured, with two officers taken to hospital after suffering broken bones. One of them also suffered a punctured lung.
Two police vehicles – including an unattended riot van – were set alight and a police station was daubed with graffiti. Riot police hit protesters with batons and protesters threw missiles including fireworks at the police. Protesters kicked in the windows of Bridewell police station as onlookers cheered.
The “#KilltheBill” demonstration was a protest against the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Commons last week. The bill would give police powers to ban protests than have an “impact” and would make it an offence to cause “serious annoyance”, with a potential ten-year jail sentence. 
Bristol is the city where a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled and dumped in the harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest in June last year, in scenes which Home Secretary Priti Patel described as “utterly disgraceful”.
The bill increases the maximum penalty for damaging a memorial from three months to ten years, and has been criticised for making “protecting statues more important than punishing rape.”
The BBC reported that riot police stood by and “didn't engage with the protesters at all” until “the atmosphere took a marked turn when the first police vehicle was set on fire. Huge plumes of black smoke rose up from Bridewell Street.”
However Alon Aviram, editor of local newspaper the Bristol Cable tweeted, “Scenes tonight escalated when riot police, horses and dogs came out. Definitely didn’t do anything for ‘crowd control’.”
📷 Alamy
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