According to an article in De Pers, Dutch police intelligence services attempt to recruit minors to serve as informers. In at least some cases, this was even done without their parents knowing. A lawyer quoted in the article spoke of “stasi-like methods”, which sounds about right to me.
In the Netherlands only the socalled CIE or Criminal Intelligence Unit is allowed to use informers, with information gathered through their use not legal to use in criminal prosecutions, though some lawyers do complain that such information does end up in public prosecutor files and is hard to check up on. Rules about the use of minors are non-existent, so the situation seems rife for abuse. Certainly any such approach of a minor should be done with the permission of their parents. Sneaking around behind their backs is just wrong.
Don’t watch this video because it will only upset you. It shows the deliberate torture of a homeless man by California police officers for “resisting arrest”. Not content with tasering him a half dozen times, they then beat them up so bad he needed to be put on life support in hospital where he died a few days later. From the Gawker report:
Thomas—who suffered from schizophrenia, and was homeless—caught the attention of the police after someone reported that a burglar was breaking into cars parked near a Fullerton bus station. When officers approached Thomas in the depot parking lot and tried to arrest him, he resisted. What happened after that is a topic the Fullerton Police Department doesn’t seem too enthusiastic to discuss—but the sound of Thomas’s voice certainly speaks on their behalf. And as this gruesome photo shows, the six officers involved in the altercation beat Thomas beyond recognition; after several days on life support, Thomas was taken off the machines and died. (To be fair, two cops suffered broken bones.) Update: According to this report, a police sergeant stated on July 20 that, contrary to several news reports, no officers suffered from broken bones as a result of the Thomas incident—only “soft tissue damage.”
Did Thomas actually resist arrest? Mark Turgeon, who witnessed the beating, says no:
“They kept beating him and Tasering him. I could hear zapping, and he wasn’t even moving,” said Turgeon. “He had one arm in front of him like this, he wasn’t resisting. And they kept telling him, ‘He’s resisting, quit resisting,’ and he wasn’t resisting.”
The picture they refer too is gruesome and like the video should not be viewed because it will only upset you. But perhaps we need upsetting, to see the reality of what “the thin blue line” is up to. What hit me about this story is that the poor guy was beaten up while he cried for his dad, an ex-cop himself, and was only thirtyseven when he died, the same age as I’ll be next week. That could’ve been me, if I had been less lucky.
Dutch cops aren’t always squeeky clean either and I’m smart enough to know they don’t always have to be my friend, but I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable approaching them in public, or have them approach me, then I would be in the United States. Dutch cops aren’t convinced of their own superiority and obsessed by respect and authority the way American coppers are.
On the morning of the incident, Latson, who received an Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis in the eighth grade, slipped out of the house early to go to the library but found it closed. What followed was a call to police about a suspicious black male seen outside the library, wearing a hoodie and possibly carrying a gun.
Deputy Thomas Calverley, 56, spotted Latson, searched him for a gun, found none and repeatedly asked him his name. When Latson refused to give it, Calverley grabbed him in an attempt to put him under arrest. A scuffle ensued, leaving Calverley with injuries that forced him to retire early.
In court Tuesday, Latson turned to Calverley and, in a barely audible voice, apologized.
He shouldn’t have had to apologise, to it speaks well for him that he did. This poor bloke has gotten his life ruined because some busybody flipped out seeing a Black man in a hoodie near a library, some dick with a gun decided to harass him and pushed him around just that little bit too much. Had the officer used some common sense and not wanted to assert his authoritah nobody would’ve gotten hurt. But of course that’s too much to ask.
As wearingly familiar as this sad tale of changing stories, incompetence and abuses of power is, the real outrage is that the overall cause remains the same. Just as the officers on the morning of the 22nd of July 2005 were briefed that those they were after were “up for it” and ready to commit acts of mass murder, giving the impression that lethal force was permissible even when it hadn’t been authorised, so the police prior to the G20 had made clear just how determined they were to crack down hard on those who were out to smash up the City. We duly saw police medics brandishing batons, those without the first idea how to “safely” use a truncheon flinging it around, and of course, the storming of the entirely peaceful Climate Camp, since found to have been illegal. Ian Tomlinson died both as he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and because he was vulnerable to just such an injury as he received; dozens of others got cracked heads or worse just for daring to take part in a demonstration. It would be nice to think that following such regrettable incidents that future policing would have been rethought, but no, as the example of Alfie Meadows so pungently demonstrates.
I agree. The deaths of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes before him were the result of a deliberate policy to make the Metropolitian Police more ‘ard and confrontational. In de Menezes case it was the whole anti-terrorism mentality that was to blame, wherein any terrorism suspect is incredibly dangerous and needs to be “taken out” or London would disappear in a mushroom cloud; combine that with the fuckups that happened while de Menezes was under suspicion and you get why he was shot in the head in the metro. From that point of view the fact that he was innocent doesn’t matter; what does is that his exxecution send the message that the Met is serious about terrorism.
With Tomlinson’s death a similar sort of attitude is to blame, one that’s perhaps even more pernicious as this time it wasn’t about keeping London safe from terrorism, but about showing who’s boss in the city: the police or the demonstrators. The Met was and is incredibly aggressive in its policing of political demonstrations because it and its political masters want to discourage them; Tomlinson’s death is a side effect of this.
Without a change in attitude, de Menezes and Tomlinson won’t be the last victims of the Metropolitian Police, but the likelyhood of this change is small.
The police officer who attacked Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London in 2009 could be prosecuted for manslaughter after an inquest jury ruled that the newspaper seller was unlawfully killed.
Returning their verdict after three hours of deliberation, jurors said Tomlinson died of internal bleeding in the abdomen after being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer.
For legal reasons, the verdict did not name the officer, Metropolitan police constable Simon Harwood.
However, the jury said that “excessive and unreasonable” force was used when he struck the newspaper vendor who “posed no threat”.
The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, immediately said he would “review” his decision last July not year not to prosecute Harwood.
There were shouts of “yes” from Tomlinson’s family when the jury confirmed their belief that the 47-year-old father of nine was unlawfully killed.
The family’s lawyer, Jules Carey, said : “Today’s decision is a huge relief to Mr Tomlinson’s family. To many, today’s verdict will seem like a statement of the blindingly obvious. However, this fails to take account of the significant and many obstacles faced by the family over the last two years to get to this decision.”
If Simon Harwood is prosecuted and convicted of manslaughter, it will be a welcome but rare outcome. Too often, as we’ve seen with Jean Charles de Menezes, the police authorities, including the Crown Prosecution Service, prefer protecting their own over allowing justice to be done.