MY friends and I couldn't believe what we saw on our way home on Friday night in Lancaster. The Warehouse night club on North Road was being raided and the whole street was blocked off, filled with a dozen riot vans, dog vans, cars, motorbikes and heavily armoured police. You'd think there had been a murder or riot going on. We thought it best to stick around as it was so heavy handed. People need to know what goes on and also to act as observers of police actions. Not only was everyone prevented from walking down North Road, anyone complaining was threatened with arrest. Women were forced to take alternative, unsafe routes home. Thirty to forty police were bussed in to raid a club full of people who weren't harming anyone. How many extras are brought in to catch the rapist?

I had to wonder if Don Corleone or a Colombian drug baron was inside, therefore explaining the need for police helmets, video cameras, balaclavas, body armour and long truncheons being used to bust up a small two-roomed club full of revellers. People take drugs recreationally and go clubbing, that's an individuals choice. Like it or not it will always go on and the police know this. If the dealers were the real targets, they weren't likely to be armed or going to take hostages, so why the overkill? It didn't stop there either, people on the streets waiting for friends and passersby were filmed and threatened with arrest when they protested any injustice or demanded information on how much longer they had to wait. Others had been put through intimate searches, handcuffed and detained for hours only to be released without charges and were understandably upset. The police continued intimidating and provoking people and trying to clear anybody out of the way. What have they got to hide? Is it their policy to harass and intimidate ordinary people?

Anna -- address withheld