The Hackney Siege was a £1 million pound project for the spatial sterilisation of the area adjacent to the Town Hall Square. Lasting 15 days, it deployed squads of paramilitary police round the clock and shut down several streets and a major road. 43 Hackney residents were trapped inside their homes, some without television, from Boxing Day 2002 until well after twelfth night. A further 200 residents were compulsorily displaced on the order of the authorities during the course of the project.

More than just a conventional siege, this was a pioneering partnership between police and residents which transformed a state of emergency into a new model for everyday life in the city. The Hackney Zone of Exception (HZoE) was also a good example of what regeneration professionals call ‘people-lead regeneration’. At its heart lay the police’s preemptive ambush of a local man, the so-called ‘yardie gangster’, Eli Hall (29). Suspected of possessing illegal firearms, Hall was pursued by an Armed Response Unit whose response efficiently anticipated any action on the suspect’s part. After taking shelter in his bedsit on Marvin Street, Mr Hall and his hostage were successfully contained within the house while the police rationalised his services. After a few days without heating, electricity or light, the hostage fled and the tenant set fire to his own home in a desperate effort to warm the place up.
Drenched by police water jets and worn out by the protracted process of consultation, Mr Hall was wounded in the mouth by a police bullet and later, it is alleged, shot himself in the head. Having declined the munificence of the state and obstructed attempts at dialogue, his lifeless body was removed from his home.