[flumpcakes]

Damage to property is a form of violence. If someone broke into your home and destroyed medical equipment needed to care for your dying relative, I'm sure you would 100% call it an act of violence.

Also, the group has directly harmed people too:

> A police officer was taken to hospital after being hit with a sledgehammer while responding to reports of criminal damage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mnnje4wlro

[Fluorescence]

> hit with a sledgehammer

It smells like a jumped up "assaulted a police officer" charge because you shield your face from their punches. Hitting someone with a sledge hammer is a suitably scary tabloid headline but physically unlikely and entirely out of character for the accused group.

Note that Avon Police have form as lying pieces of shit.

They attacked protestors and claimed 21 injured officers specifically: "officers got broken bones, had punctured lungs, were very seriously injured" in the national media.

Journalists contacted local hospitals and found no police were treated that night. They had to retract those claims and their list of the claimed injuries included staff who never attended the scene, a bee sting and a twisted ankle getting out of a car.

I expect similar will happen here but only after this claim has been used for years to demonise protestors.

[hermitcrab]

Also there is a huge gulf between being hit with the business end of a sledgehammer and poked with the shaft. I would expect a serious assault with a sledgehammer to result in serious injury or death.

[hermitcrab]

>Damage to property is a form of violence.

That seems a stretch.

>A police officer was taken to hospital after being hit with a sledgehammer

I wasn't aware of that incident.