This is the Guardian video footage of a riot officer attacking Ian Tomlinson minutes before his death, without provocation. A clear case of manslaugther, I’d say, though I doubt the officer in question will ever be prosecuted for it.
Policing
Ian Tomlinson attacked by police, eyewitnesses say
Last Wednesday during the G-20 protests a man died while contained in one of the police’s infamous kettles. As I posted last week on Prog Gold, I thought then that his death was accidental, caused by a combination of being cooped up for hours in a police kettle and a bad heart. Back then the police were saying that it was the protestors who had helped cause Ian Tomlinson’s death, as they had allegedly attacked first aid workers coming to help him by throwing bottles at them. This was of course the usual police cant they come up with whenever something bad happens on their watch and was quickly denied by eyewitnesses like the ones in the video below, from Indymedia UK..
However, now it looks like the reason the Met came out with these accusations was more than a bad habit, but rather a deliberate attempt to shift blame for the death, as it seems it was a police assault that caused Tomlinson to collapse:
The man who died during last week’s G20 protests was “assaulted” by riot police shortly before he suffered a heart attack, according to witness statements received by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Investigators are examining a series of corroborative accounts that allege Ian Tomlinson, 47, was a victim of police violence in the moments before he collapsed near the Bank of England in the City of London last Wednesday evening. Three witnesses have told the Observer that Mr Tomlinson was attacked violently as he made his way home from work at a nearby newsagents. One claims he was struck on the head with a baton.
Photographer Anna Branthwaite said: “I can remember seeing Ian Tomlinson. He was rushed from behind by a riot officer with a helmet and shield two or three minutes before he collapsed.” Branthwaite, an experienced press photographer, has made a statement to the IPCC.
Another independent statement supports allegations of police violence. Amiri Howe, 24, recalled seeing Mr Tomlinson being hit “near the head” with a police baton. Howe took one of a sequence of photographs that show a clearly dazed Mr Tomlinson being helped by a bystander.
A female protester, who does not want to be named but has given her testimony to the IPCC, said she saw a man she later recognised as Tomlinson being pushed aggressively from behind by officers. “I saw a man violently propelled forward, as though he’d been flung by the arm, and fall forward on his head.
“He hit the top front area of his head on the pavement. I noticed his fall particularly because it struck me as a horrifically forceful push by a policeman and an especially hard fall; it made me wince.”
It’s typical of the Observer to put “assaulted” in scare quotes here, but never mind. The important thing is that yet again, the police has managed to murder somebody and yet again the Met is busy smearing and covering up.
De Menezes murderers escape justice
By now, even the most naive believer in the basic honesty of the British justice system must be vaguely discomforted by the news that yet again, the murderers of Jean Charles de Menezes will not be prosecuted despite an inquest jury returning an open verdict:
The family of Jean Charles de Menezes is to continue their legal battle by suing the Metropolitan police for damages for killing the Brazilian electrician, the Guardian has learned.
Yesterday the family were told that the two police marksmen who shot dead the innocent Brazilian after mistaking him for a terrorist will not face prosecution, despite a jury disbelieving key parts of their account of the killing.
In December a jury at the inquest into the killing returned an open verdict after hearing damning evidence of police blunders that led to the shooting.
He was killed on 22 July 2005 in a tube carriage by officers hunting for suicide bombers who had attacked London’s transport network the
previous day.
The inquest was never supposed to return an open verdict of course, with the coroner carefully attempting to guide the jury to the prefered conclusion, so it’s no wonder it’s now ignored by the crown prosecution service. The de Menezes killing is an embarassement, to be swept under the carpet as soon as possible and damn these ungrateful Brazilians for bringing it up again and again.
Another de Menezes tragedy could happen again
Because I haven’t been fired or prosecuted yet, says Cressida Dick (not really):
Facing cross-examination about the shooting for the first time, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted: “I am afraid that I do believe that this or something like this could happen again”.
She added: “The nature of these operations is that they are immediately high risk to all concerned and that is because of the nature of the threat we face from suicide terrorists.
“Our job is to reduce the risk to everybody as best as possible. But I do fear that, in the future, a bomber might not be prevented from setting off a bomb. And equally, I pray it doesn’t happen, but it is possible an innocent member of the public might die like this.”
No responsibility taken by Dick than, who was the person in charge when de Menezes was murdered, but instead the Met’s standard Barbie defense “policing is hard”. No recognition either of the simple fact that these police tactics have not prevented any of the London suicide bombings but do have a hundred percent track record of killing innocent bystanders. Even on its own terms the police tactics did not work, yet the Met still insists they were the right tactics for the circumstances.
What’s more, the first response by the Metropolitian Police when their momentous error became know was to smear de Menezes, even though it was clear immediately after his murder he was not a suicide bomber. Who smeared de Menezes? And why did Dick not protest against this? Are we supposed to just accept the idea that the London police every now and again will murder one of us just because they think it’s necessary?
In olden days, senior commanders who screwed up like Dick or her superior, Ian Blair, did would be given a bottle of whisky and a loaded pistol. Instead one denies all wrongdoing, was even promoted afterwards, while the other was finally forced to resign by Boris Johnson, of all people.
Excusing police murders
An old and noble tradition amongst the Law’nOrder set, where the shooting of a Brazilian electrician on the way to work or IRish looking guy on his way back from the pub carrying a tableleg in his bag is excused on the grounds that their murderers though they were a suicide bomber, or were carrying a sawnoff shotgun and besides, don’t you know how hard their job is? Case in point, little Nicky Cohen’s column in The Evening Standard, as excerpted by Aaronovitch Watch:
In the hubbub a simple point is being lost. I don’t want to defend the Met’s mistakes but it is blindingly obvious that when the police think they are confronting suicide bombers they will shoot first and ask questions later.If they didn’t, and a terrorist detonated a bomb on the Tube, they would be denounced by the very people who are shouting loudest about the death of poor Mr de Menezes.
He also mumbles something about how the left was pleased to see De Menezes killed, so they had something to blame the police for, a standard Cohen projection, as witnessed by his own delight at the 7/7 bombings and how that showed up the left. Disgusting as that is, it isn’t new. More interesting is that belief that the police should be allowed to kill people as long as the cops sincerily believe that they’re bad people. Surely that’s just a licence to kill, as the cops can always gin up some story to justify their actions. (Or to smear their victims, as happened to de Menezes, but also to the suspects in the Forest Gate affair.)
Cohen wants to argue that the system works because there’s now an inquest into the de Menezes murder, but as I said earlier, this was explicitely set up not to assign blame, while the Crown Prosecution Services had already decided earlier to not do their job, after being blackmailed with massive police walkouts if they had. Instead there was an absurdistic health and safety prosecution agains the Metroplotian Police as a whole. No real incentive not to murder somebody there: nobody prosecuted, no careers cut short by this mistake, just a court order to one arm of the state to pay a fine to another arm. And Cohen thinks this is evidence that he’s living “in a country that takes breaches of its rules so seriously”? If so, do I have a bridge to sell him…
Disgusting as it is, Cohen’s bilge does accurately state the gut reflex of a lot of voters, “decenthardworkingfamilies” who like to believe they will never be the victim of police brutality themselves, but think that it is necessary to protect them, even if the occasional unfortunate accident happens. And even then the victims must’ve done something wrong to deserve it…