Public Meetings......Not Open to the Public???

Interesting news item this morning regarding a British DPP meeting in Derry.

A protest was organised by local people opposed to British policing. Yet when they arrived for the PUBLIC DPP meeting they found themselves locked out of it.


They were told that there was "no room"


Now that could either be lies or else it means that anti-republicans through fear of being embarrassed put a call out for their people to flock to the meeting to take up all the seats. Thus ensuring the peaceful protesters would then be prevented by armed gunmen (PSNI) from entering the venue.


Now i would find it very hard to believe that these meetings are normally packed to capacity. I have posted a few times regarding the farcical goings on at some of these meetings. Here in Newry for example there were more PSNI members at one particular DPP meeting than members of the general public. At another in a different area only one person turned up and that the local priest.


I also recall a DPP meeting in Derry last year where former Republicans called for stop and search powers to be merely "suspended".

The motion was carried after a private vote in which Provisional Sinn Fein were in favour, the SDLP abstained, Unionists opposed and independents were split.

The RUC/PSNI have so far ignored this motion from the body that is supposedly there to hold them to account, so what does that tell us?

We are often told that these type of meetings give the public an opportunity to scrutinise and hold the PSNI to account by putting questions etc to the PSNI, yet in South Down a senior PSNI member refused to answer questions asked by a constitutional nationalist at the meeting.

It’s obvious that this locally recruited militia remains unchanged and also proves that bodies such as the DPP are useless, toothless talk shops, and the PSNI cheerleaders who participate in them are powerless to do anything about it.

But preventing citizens from peacefully protesting is the lowest of the low. It's a basic human right to protest against something you disagree with, particularly when it's protesting against human rights and child abusers in the British forces.

Why would those who participate in DPP meetings prevent members of the public from protesting against human rights abusers and child abusers?