Acccording to a report in Ekklesia:
The City of London Police Commissioner has revealed that St Paul’s Cathedral gave the police permission to forcibly remove Occupy protesters from the cathedral steps. This contradicts claims made by the cathedral authorities.
The news comes as the new Dean of St Paul’s, David Ison, prepares to be formally installed in his post in a ceremony at the cathedral today (25 May).The cathedral have denied that they gave the police permission to remove Christians who were dragged from the steps as they knelt in prayer during the eviction of the Occupy camp on 28 February. The court’s eviction order applied only to land belonging to the City of London Corporation, not to the cathedral.
But in a dramatic new development, Adrian Leppard,the City of London Police Commissioner, has stated in a letter to London Assembly member Jenny Jones: “Permission was given by St Paul’s to clear the steps”.
He added: “Any persons remaining on the steps were not there with the permission of St Paul’s and in doing so they became trespassers”.
The Commissioner’s letter contradicts the claims of the Canon Pastor of St Paul’s Cathedral, Michael Colclough, who said that it was the Corporation of London, rather than the cathedral, which had given permission to remove people from the steps.