[Gary L]

Take a look at the video below. These shots were captured at the student demonstration in Whitehall on Wednesday.

It shows the police van, which would become the target of vandals, shortly after it had parked up. The shots were filmed by a Sky News cameraman at 12:48pm - 12 minutes before the decision to contain thousands of protesters.

Does it portray a tense, volatile situation, in which police officers are in a vulnerable position?

This is an important question. On the day of the protests, the Met released a statement saying the carrier had been left because "officers felt vulnerable and decided the best course of action was to leave the van", yet the first obvious acts of vandalism towards the van did not occur until just after 1:05pm.

The pictures seem to show that the scene at 12:48pm was not obviously threatening. Indeed a group of Territorial Support Group officers can be seen first looking at the carrier and then walking past it. They are attracting little attention from the crowds.

So why did they leave it there? From 12:58pm protesters are picked up on the microphones of Sky News cameras asking 'why has that van been left there?'.

As the day progressed, and the vehicle was vandalised, there were some in the crowd claiming it had been left intentionally as 'bait' to provoke criminal damage and justify the use of containment tactics.

http://blogs.news.sky.com/frontlineb...b-bbeb70b3cb98