No eviction at the Spray this morning

The JB Spray squat in Radford were expecting eviction this morning. Two County Court employees and two police turned up at around 10am along with around 20 supporters of the squatters. They were also accompanied by 2 employees of Portable Buildings Limited, the company which is employed to manage the building. After some initial inspection and drawing a map of entrances they gave up. A call to the bailiffs revealed that another eviction attempt is imminent in the next few days.

Apparently one of the County Court employees was being very unprofessional, making jokes about dole scrounging squatters, but the remarks were made before people with recording devices were on the scene.

However, I did manage to catch a very funny exchange between one of the coppers and a manager(?) from the Kexgill student accommodation next door [recording and transcript below]. The hapless policeman tried to claim that the squatters were "the bane of our lives" and that noise complaints had been received from tenants of the student flats. The Kexgill guy, pointed out that the flats were almost completely empty at the moment, that he hadn't heard about any problems with noise and that the squatters had been "nothing but nice neighbours to us". He actually said his own tenants were more likely to have loud music on! By this time the policeman was looking very red in the face. He complained that he didn't want to do this kind of work but he had to, and he got paid whatever he did. Another person from the flats offered him a job doing painting instead!

Later on I tried to go and record some of the interactions between a guy from Portable Property and the other police officer and the manager flipped completely, pushing me away and making various threats. The police officer, realising that I knew my rights, calmed him down and led him away to her vehicle to carry on the conversation. Once again, 'their side' weren't behaving very well.

After a lot of craning up at windows and sketching a very rough map of the building's exterior the crack eviction team called it a day and drove off. It seemed from what we could pick up from overhearing conversations and phoning the bailiffs that they are going to have to wait until there are enough police available to oversee the eviction. The person we called said they probably wouldn't be back today but it would be very soon.

It was good to see a lot of supporters but we need more people to turn up next time. Make sure you get your number on the list.

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Transcript of police officer (P) talking with Kexgill people (K and K2).

K: Phoned the police?  
P: And the fire brigade.
K: But there's no one in there. It's empty. We've got one tenant in there. I know, I'm just saying. We've just got one tenant in there at the moment.
P: [Inaudible]
K: No, no, no. Not at all, not at all.  
P: ...trouble from the locals you see.
K: It's only freedom of speech mate. I'm not trying to cause a problem between any of us. I promise you that.
P: Yeah.
K: I was only saying that because they've always been nothing but nice neighbours to us.  
P: They're not. There were complaints to the Council yesterday about noise, all the time and it's... well it's the bane of our lives because we can't go out and do police work. I've been taken off an exercise this morning, trying to get motorists without insurance, purely because I know the building.
K: Aha, right. Well you're only doing your job I understand that.
P: No I'm not doing my job, that's the thing.
K: You're not doing your job?
P: I should be going doing other things.
K: Oh, but it's still part of your job.
P: ...you have to.
K: It's a shame, but heh... Um, OK. [To K2] They're getting evicted apparently.
P: No.
K: No? They're not getting evicted. I don't know. So they're not getting evicted? Oh, OK. [Laughs] Does anyone know?
P: Yeah.
K: OK. The big boys in their offices.
P: No, the heavy mob.  
K: Oh right, OK. You see from our point of view it would be great if they could do something with it like convert it into flats or summat but apparently there's an order on it or something so why don't the council just like...
P: Ask them.
K: It's ridiculous man. They're making your life hard, they're messing about with us here, cos I don't think they... They've got a drumkit but they're not a nuisance. The students have their drum 'n' bass on really loud and you know...
P: There are complaints, yeah.
K: Really? Fair enough, I mean, you know more than me. They haven't said to me, but, hey... I don't want to give you a hard time, you're a police officer.  
P: I get paid for it whatever I do.
K: Yeah.
K2: There's some painting. [Everyone laughs] It's quite therapeutic.

Attached Files

Police officer speaks to student flats manager about the squatters