Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
London Man Who Died at G20 Protest Attacked by Police, Video Shows
Watchdog removes City of London force, whose officers helped police G20 protests, from inquiry
Earlier this week the Independent Police Complaints Commission appointed the City of London force to investigate the incident, despite its officers having been involved in policing the protest, instead of using its own investigators.
Video obtained by the Guardian of the minutes before Tomlinson's death clearly shows City of London officers standing near the officer who attacked the newspaper seller. That officer is believed to be from the Metropolitan force.
A fresh announcement on the investigation is expected shortly. The IPCC will announce that it will use its own investigators to determine whether Tomlinson was assaulted by police and whether that contributed to his death.
The video footage shows Tomlinson walking past police with his hands in his pockets, then being knocked to the ground by a police officer in riot gear as officers from the City of London force look on, minutes before he suffered a fatal heart attack.
In a statement last Friday, the head of the City of London force declared the policing operation a success, further calling into doubt the force's suitability to conduct the investigation.
Mike Bowron, the City of London police commissioner, said: "The success of the operation is shown in the excellent feedback we have received from across the Square Mile."
There had been intense pressure on the IPCC to use its powers to conduct an independent investigation. Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, demanded that police be removed from the case and said any officer who struck the innocent passerby could face a manslaughter charge.
He said the officers from the City of London force would be key witnesses in the investigation.
Paddick told the Guardian: "How can the City of London do the investigation independently? I'm sorry but there are three City of London officers in that video, how can they do the investigation? It certainly needs to be a full-blown criminal investigation ... [into] whether there is a provable link between the death and assault, because an assault is a criminal offence. Police are allowed to use force, provided it is justified."
Paddick refused to comment on whether the police actions in the video were justified, but said the officer seen striking Tomlinson could potentially face a charge of manslaughter, for which the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. "If it is held that there is a link between the violence he [the officer] was inflicting and the heart attack [suffered by Tomlinson], that then is an assault, resulting in death, albeit unintended. If a court held it is an assault, it is an unlawful action resulting in manslaughter," he said.
Reaction to the publication of the video came from the police and from across the political spectrum. The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said today the video images "raise obvious concerns" and should be investigated fully.
Stephenson said the Met would co-operate with the investigation. "It is absolutely right and proper that there is a full investigation into this matter, which the Met will fully support," he said.
The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, defended the IPPC's role in the inquiry, saying there would be a criminal case if necessary: "What's extremely important from the events last week, from the sad death of Ian Tomlinson, is that there is an inquiry through the IPCC," she said. "If it identifies the need for a criminal investigation then that also needs to be pursued."
Boris Johnson, the London mayor, is pressing for a "speedy and thorough" inquiry by the police complaints body, his chief spokesman said. He said the mayor had watched the footage today and had been seriously concerned by what he saw.
Many opposition and backbench Labour MPs had called for a fully independent inquiry into the attack.
The Labour MP David Winnick, a member of the home affairs select committee, said City of London should not be running the investigation. "One thing is quite clear," he said, "the inquiry taking place by City of London police is hardly satisfactory, even if that inquiry is being managed or monitored by the Independent Police Complaints Commission."
The shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, said the video footage was "extremely alarming and leave[s] big questions to be answered by the police. It's right that there should be an independent investigation. The inquiry must be completed quickly so that any further appropriate action can be taken."
The Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, David Howarth, said: "This video clearly shows an unprovoked attack by a police officer on a passerby. It is sickening. There must be a full-scale criminal investigation. The officer concerned and the other officers shown in the video must immediately come forward."
- Posted in
32 Comments so far
Show AllRotten bastards. They consider themselves to be above the very laws they were hired to enforce? Someone needs to show them they are not. Someone needs to show them they are not above the law. No one is! The sooner that lesson gets learned, the better it will be for all of us!
But they will get off. They always do. What do you want to bet?
The police are not the ones who we should be blaming, it's the people who gave them the orders to terrorise and beat protesters so that people will think twice before ever going out to make their views be heard again. Those are the real murderous culprits here... that is Gold Command, the top cops and the Home Office.They are the people who would have ordered the police to act like this. Hating the police is just useless. It could end in a policeman being killed in a protest in the future and the fact is, that will not only be a tragedy but it will obfuscate the real evil here which is very, very clear:
The police were ordered to batter the shit out of people. The police did everything they could to make sure that the general public will think twice before coming on to the streets in legitimate protest. It is a blatant set up.
Get the marrionette not the puppets!
Not marrionette, I mean puppeteer!
"The police were ordered to batter the shit out of people."
And the police are generally not big on thinking for themselves. The just follow protocol.
In the U.S. they knock a man down, and then two or three cops hold the victim down until another cop shoots the man in the back of the head. I wonder which is worse, the bullet to the back of the head or the heart attack following police brutality.
Someone who was there came online at CD and expressed outrage at the death of this guy while, at the same time, the networks, including Olbermann, were pooh-poohing and downplaying the protests and claiming the death, if mentioned at all, was unrelated. You know, the guy was just walking down the street--not even near the demonstration.
David Howarth understands that conservatives kill.
Jacqui Smith is the Home Secretary from the ruling Labour Party.
Chris Grayling is the shadow Home Secretary of the opposition Conservative party.
Also, I suggest doing an internet search, on David Davis, who until recently was shadow Home Secretary of the opposition Conservative party and his views on civil liberties, .
Since most conservatives in the US are fearful liars, one has to go by what they do, not by what they say. It may be different in England, but I seriously doubt it. Bush increased global warming with his "Clear Skies Initiative", gave our forests to the lumber companies with his "Healthy Forests Initiative", destroyed education with his "No Child Left Behind", invaded Iraq by lying about WMD's, lied about the yellow cake, outed a CIA agent, lied about torture and need I go on?
*sigh*
Read this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/
news/uk/politics/
revealed-the-full-extent-of-labours-curbs-on-civil-liberties-1627054.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commentisfree/henryporter/
2009/jan/14/statutory-instruments-parliament
I've broken the link up into 3 different lines so it will show in CD.
Jean Charles de Menezes all over again?
I was there and have been up here on CD talking about this event at length. So this time I will be brief:
The police are not to be the target of our calling for justice, the people who gave them the orders should be. That is gold command and the home secretary.
As far as we can tell, a command went through to the police around seven PM to kick the shit out of people. After the main media have left to file their reports. The strategy is clearly to terrify people from ever protesting again. But this has backfired on them as they went so far as to cause the death of someone. And again at midnight, the police were ordered to violently smash up a peaceful climate camp on Bishopsgate that had been given permission to exist until noon the next day.
It is a profound tragedy and my condolences are with Mister Tomlinson's family. None of us want to be using his death for our political/civil rights/climate justice aims. But his death does compel many of us to call for a serious change in the way protest is policed. Specially as up to 1 million will have lost their jobs by the end of this year and hundreds of thousands more people will be hitting the streets.
We watched plenty of examples of complete brutality at the hands of the police. Too many for me to go in to detail here but suffice to say that I have never seen anything like it in 20 years of being an activist. The new low that we have come across is that police were not attending to people who had been seriously harmed by them. One couple were refused medical help by three different police even though this young man had blood pouring from his head.
Every millimetre of that area had been under CCTV supervision and yet it was not until an activist's footage comes forward that the police have changed their story about what happened.
The bank that was smashed was the only building that had its windows completely unboarded, even though it was in the centre of where the protest was going to be held. It was also unguraded by the police. This looks like a set up to many of us. As if, once the windows had been smashed, then the media had the shots that would turn the general public against us and the proceeding brutality later from the police, would be accepted and legitimated.
There were grannies and grand children along with 4,000 other people kettled for five and a half hours without toilets, food or water. How is that seen as being fair policing? They were continually charged by police.
The fact is, the UK and USA government are hiding in plain view the fact that they and the heads of the vaste financial empires that dominate the world, hold us all in utter contempt and don't want us to even whisper dissent to the fact that they are putting profit before everything, everything else. Before, even, the future of their own children who will grow up in a hell that will make 1984 look like a free love hippy colony.
If you want to get connected to the way to run the new struggles for justice and freedom, consider the techinques of the Climate Camp. www.climatecamp.org.uk As with Reclaim the Streets in the 90's, they have developed a model for actions that need to be replicated in America yesterday. We need to be making bonds of dissent across the ocean, yesterday.
I have no politics whatsoever but, like everyone reading this, I innately know what is wrong and what is right. It is obviously wrong to treat people like this, wrong to assault an innocent man and cause his death, wrong to lie about what happened and try and squirm away, wrong to use a police force against the people it's meant to be protecting and wrong to ignore the real culprits here and that's the people who told the police to be so brutal in order to frighten people away from dissent.
Basic truth, basic compassion and morals dwell in all of our hearts. You don't need a reliugion a creed or a particular politic or path. Set aside our differences for a year and recognise our similarities and we will find a solidarity that can make these evil, greedy, joyless individuals crumble and slither away.
Somebody who works in a district attorney's office once told me that 10% of policemen were honest and took the 'serve and protect' mentality seriously.
Another 10% he said would have been criminals, and indeed except for the uniform were criminals.
He said that 80% would do whatever the officers around them were doing.
If you have never been in a situation where your co-workers---all of them---were doing something that went against everything you believed in, you don't know how hard it is to do what you believe is right.
The first time it happened to me I went along. The difficulty I had living with myself for doing that made it the last time.
Do you join in persecuting the outcast? The scapegoat? Do nothing? Try to help?
If you are my age or older you know what the opinion of other people is worth. They know I know.
I have no close friends and I like it that way.
Nietzsche, I salute your honesty. Yes, the real culprit is not the individual police it is the command that cultivated this behaviour.
I am grateful for your contribution to this crucial debate.
It is better to be without friends than to be surrounded with people who you have had to become a lie to yourself in order for you to be with.
And let's face it, there must be hundreds if not thousands on this CD who have read your comment and thought that you are a decent and true soul on this planet, someone who I would call a friend immediately if I ever got the chance to meet.
www.climatecamp.org.uk
He has no close friends and likes it that way.
I wonder why the video is no longer available.
It is. I just played it again.
And there is new footage and photography coming forward now as well.
And lets not forget something very important, the police will have had every, every millimetre of those streets covered by CCTV but it wasn't until a protester came forward with his film that the police had to change their story about definitely having had no contact with the deceased.
Jarhead
Lately ther has been a number of cops killed in this country.Does anyone wonder why? We dont have police officers any more. Since the killers Bush and Cheney we have only gestapos. Their continued behavior as such is going to get the killed. Civilians dont like having to live in fear. Fear and smear is a repug thing.
Anyone who has taken part in a public protest knows the hostile anti-public nature of our "policing" forces. They are the enemy in these situations. The video shows the true nature of their desire to incite violence.
The boys in blue are wearing yellow, and it suits them. Cowards all.
I guess the lesson is clear once again, get your cameras and try to bring them with you every time you can so that police officers get caught like this over and over and over until the public realizes the slippery slope we are on right now regarding democratic rights in western nations.
Yep. Marx said that capitalism produced its own gravediggers, the working class; well I think it produced its own gravedigger, the camera phone. :)
I realize he wasn't a protester, but nonetheless: protesters need to start bringing their own helmets, pepper spray canisters and batons to protests, and meeting the police with equal force. Why not?
The ideal thing would be a peaceful protest that wins over some moderates with its message; but if these fascist police (literally: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7506609.stm) insist on forcing a confrontation, then the men and women with right on their side should be prepared and willing to do it right.
Some pics from the G20 protest:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/protests_at_the_g20_summit.html
The sad irony in all this is that the police ought to realize that the message of the protesters favors them as well. This is a fight against wealthy elites making decisions that only enhance their positions at the expense of the working poor and middle class, which includes the police. Maybe someday they will realize that, put down the batons, and join the demonstrators.
I think maybe they get too caught up in their cop role to do that.
Hmmm. Outside the box. Maybe we could offer "police re-education seminars" or some such. We need some way to draw them in to a benign environment where we could all speak freely without fear of retribution, an environment where we could all peacefully express our concerns. After all, they are still people, human beings, with all the same feelings, needs, desires of all of the rest of us. Most of them are working stiffs, making $40K or $50K a year. They "close ranks" and see the general population as their enemy. We are not their enemy. Perhaps we could "liberate" their thoughts.
Probably not.
-- ekaton
How about explicit, ongoing community control over the police? That was the call in the 60's, and it still makes f***loads of sense.
That too!
With what we know about the British surveillance state, there ought to be multiple videos of this event. They should be secured immediately. My home town, Spokane, Washington, is rife with police abuses. Google "Spokane Police Abuses" for a sampling. As to this particular case in Britian, all I can say is "V for Vendetta".
Shouldn't the cops have been wearing RCMP uniforms if they wanted to beat someone to death? A flippant question, for a story that just keeps on getting repeated in many countries a few times too often.
oldcreditiste asks; Why do they hold these 'meetings' in the centre of cities? Why do they not go to deserted islands, far away from the crowds? Is it because they want to show us who controls the world? Is there really anything done at these 'meetings' that could not be done by videoconference? Are not the press releases written beforehand? Is it more than a 3 day cocktail party? Why do they not have them in Riyhad, so that they will be all sober and there will be no troublemakers?