Bristol activist jailed for two years for targeting police cars with tyre spikes
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Version 0 of 1. An environmental activist has been jailed for two years for putting the lives of police officers in danger by targeting patrol cars with homemade tyre-deflation spikes to “give them a taste of their own medicine”. Emma Sheppard, with an accomplice, brought three police cars to a juddering halt on New Year’s Eve 2014 in Bristol by puncturing their tyres with the crude device made of plywood and nails. Sheppard’s conviction is the first following an arrest by detectives from Avon and Somerset police’s Operation Rhone, which is investigating more than 100 attacks on establishment targets including police stations, banks and politicians’ cars by suspected anarchists. Jailing Sheppard, the judge Neil Ford QC, the recorder of Bristol, accepted she had not been linked to any of the string of attacks but added that the campaign provided a “backdrop” to his decision on sentencing. Ford said much more serious sentences would be meted out to any offenders convicted of the anarchist attacks, which have caused more than £20m of damage over the past four years. Sheppard, 33, is well known within green activist circles and is one of the campaigners found guilty of trying to shut down the Ratcliffe power station in Nottinghamshire in 2009. Her conviction was quashed following revelations that the group had been infiltrated by the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. Defending Sheppard, Richard Nile told Bristol crown court that she had set up the trap to register her objections at what she saw as police wrongdoing in the US, Greece and at peaceful protests in the UK. “She doesn’t like the police,” he said. “She was seeking to give them a taste of their own medicine. She was seeking to be a nuisance.” Nile said Sheppard had protested with integrity about causes she was passionate about. He said: “She is not a self-styled anarchist. In her protesting and campaigning for good causes she has formed a negative view of the police and on this occasion she strayed beyond what is reasonable and committed a serious criminal offence.” The judge agreed she was a woman with strong values, deeply concerned about the most vulnerable in society. But he said it was “peculiar”, given her intelligence and sophistication, that she had decided to target the police, who were there to protect the most vulnerable including victims of abuse. Mark Hollier, prosecuting, also accepted that the attack was a single, isolated incident but added: “From a police point of view, it forms a pattern of offences that have occurred in the Bristol area over the last four years.” Security was tight around the court before Sheppard’s sentencing with armed officers on standby in case there was another attack. The court was told that on New Year’s Eve Sheppard and her accomplice, who has not been caught, placed a homemade tyre spike device made of nails and plywood across a road close to Concorde House in Emersons Green, a police base to the east of the city centre. Police and armed forces typically use similar spikes to stop suspects’ cars and to defend roadblocks. Three police vehicles had their tyres punctured as they left the police station together. No officers were hurt. Avon and Somerset police regard Sheppard’s conviction as significant because it is the first credited to Operation Rhone. Detectives from Rhone, which has a permanent team of 10, were called in to investigate Sheppard’s attack because it was considered an assault on the establishment. In December police for the first time linked more than 100 arson and vandalism attacks that have been carried out in and around Bristol and Bath over the last four years. The most spectacular arson attack caused £16m of damage to Avon and Somerset’s new firearms centre in August 2013. Other attacks have been carried out on phone masts, railway lines, car dealerships, courts and churches. Often responsibility for the attacks is claimed on an anarchist website. Police believe a very small group is behind the campaign. Members of Bristol’s long-established and thriving anarchist scene claim the police force has unfairly harassed activists because it hates their anti-establishment stance. In 2010, Sheppard, then living in Manchester, was given a conditional discharge over the Ratcliffe protest. The judge Jonathan Teare told her and her co-defendants: “You are all decent men and women with a genuine concern for others, and in particular for the survival of planet Earth in something resembling its present form. I have no doubt that each of you acted with the highest possible motives. And that is an extremely important consideration.” The convictions were quashed at the court of appeal the following year after three court of appeal judges ruled that crucial evidence recorded by the police spy Mark Kennedy had been withheld. The lord chief justice, Lord Judge, said the convictions were “unsafe because of significant non-disclosure” of secret surveillance tapes recorded by Kennedy. Sheppard, from Easton in Bristol, pleaded guilty to criminal damage and being reckless as to whether her actions endangered lives. A £10,000 reward has been offered over one well-known activist, Huw “Badger” Norfolk. Police have said they want to talk to Norfolk about a vandalism attack on the offices of the Bristol Post in August 2011, during the time of widespread rioting across England and an arson attack on a phone mast in January 2013 that cut off television, radio and mobile phone signals to thousands of homes and businesses. Norfolk’s whereabouts have been unknown to the police since 2011. |