Anyone who has been on protest marches over the years will be aware that some members of the riot police – officially the Territorial Support Group (TSG) these days – have a tendency towards losing their identification numbers accompanied by a proclivity to non-accountable violence. It wasn't really news to me when video footage showed that the TSG member who pushed Ian Tomlinson over during last year's G20 protests wasn't wearing his badge number. Nor to learn that Sergeant Delroy Smellie, who has denied assaulting Nicola Foster on the same occasion, was similarly deshabille.

A survey in the Police Review at the end of April 2009 showed that "45% of police officers admit to not wearing their shoulder identification numbers on frontline duty." Later that month, Met top dog Sir Paul Stephenson declared that police officers who deliberately failed to wear ID numbers would face the sack.

Apparently it's not always deliberate. At a local ward (Kensal Green) meeting in December, a TSG member talked to us about the public's misconceptions with regards to policing at G20. Identification numbers, he maintained, fell off very easily or were covered by mistake.

Thankfully the Met has now come up with a way of ensuring identification numbers can no longer "fall off" – embroidered epaulettes. "Over 8,000 public order trained officers have been issued with embroidered epaulettes, which replace the traditional metal letters and numbers," confirmed a Met spokesman.

"This does sound like a climbdown, which is good," says Chris Nineham who was Stop The War's chief steward at G20. "But in many ways, it's a fake discourse. Their attitude in general has become more antagonistic towards us since 2007." A small triumph in a turbulent sea, it seems.