Video of police assault on Ian Tomlinson, who died at G20 protest

omg

omg 😮

i haven't heard of this. poor guy :006:

I am so pleased all of this was captured on camera....it is very clear that the police are to blame for this.

Ian was doing nothing more than just walking along.

Funny how it WAS the protesters who acted appropriately in this situation whilst the police took the 'bully' approach.
Well, the police are NOT above the law just because they wear a uniform.

I am truly sickened and ashamed of them!

Rest in peace Ian, my heart and strength goes out to his family and blessed are those guys and girls who did all they could to assist Ian and to try and get those ambulances through..

Just been watching this on the news BBC and ITV.
It is obvious that the press have only released a limited amount of the film which indeed shows an unprovoked attack.
It will be interesting to see the wider picture and the events which led to this inicident.
I suspect there is more to this incident than is being reported.

Funny how it WAS the protesters who acted appropriately in this situation whilst the police took the 'bully' approach.

Not to dispute that this is evidence of very wrong police action. But the protesters were not exactly saints. Having read that the police 'blocked' the ambulance from arriving, I was expecting to see an ambulance that just couldn't get through for ages. In fact it wasn't stopped for long at all, and the police cordon will have been perhaps just awaiting orders. Meanwhile some protesters (who came from as far as Latvia, some being full-time anarchists) are heard calling, "Run them over!" Nice.

V

Not to dispute that this is evidence of very wrong police action. But the protesters were not exactly saints.

Ian Tomlinson wasn't a protester. He was on his way home from work.

It is fast becoming obvious that to maintain order in the developed world the innocent are expendable. We see it everyday on the news.

Myarka.

The assault on Ian which was captured on the video clip was the work of one individual. As far as I can see, the solution which should be arrived at (but won't, you wait and see) is for that one individual to be named and shamed (although that would leave him open to reprisals from the kind of individuals that Venetian tells us about above) - well, then maybe not named but to be put on TV in disguise (pixelled out or something) and for him to apologise and bear witness to the horror of what resulted from his actions. He should also be brought face to face with Ian Tomlinson's family so that they too could obtain closure. This is the healing way to deal with such awful happenings. Will the above scenario take place? Not a hope! All the above IMVHO of course.
x

Ian Tomlinson wasn't a protester. He was on his way home from work.

Yep. Read my post again.

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It's "Run them over!" [calls for ambulances to ram into the police] and the fact that some present were full-time anarchists from other nations I wished to point out. This is not yer typical 1960s "Give Peace A Chance" kind of event. They are dressed in protective and tough clothing and ready to give and receive violence in many instances, and travel as a free rent-a-mob. An infiltrating journalist was told weeks before that if he wasn't genuinely one of them, he'd get "done in".

But the thread topic is on the police action, so not to go too off-topic....

V

The assault on Ian which was captured on the video clip was the work of one individual.

TBH I've not had time to follow the story. From the clips in this thread, Ian was, as you say, assaulted by one individual policeman in the clip. But it's unclear to me whether some injury took place then which only kicked in later (which seems doubtful as he appears pretty-much OK afterwards), or whether x-number of police got him again later, off-video? i.e. not necessarily only one officer, and harder to track down who he/they were.

V

I found this quoted in one of the comments from readers on this story in the Independent (you can find more here) and thought you might be interested to read it.

Dr Justin Meggitt, 40, senior lecturer in religious studies, Cambridge University was there..his account is as follows..

"I was with the crowd at Cornhill. But when police started coming up I went down the pedestrianised zone, Royal Exchange Buildings, on the Threadneedle Street end.

I saw a couple of occasions when police with batons hit individuals. It wasn't a big row of officers. They seemed to be spread out. There were dogs along the street.

I was pretty disturbed. I didn't expect that kind of violence. So at the time I took pictures and on at least one occasion I went up to the policeman to complain that he appeared to have hit someone, right in front of me, for no apparent reason.

The dog attacks occurred at about 7.10pm, when a police dog, as far as I could see, bit the handler and then bit a man. The man who was bitten was showing people his injuries. I have a photograph. They were very deep gashes in the top of his arm.

Then, as the crowd surged out of Cornhill at around 7.12pm and some people ran down Royal Exchange Buildings, I saw a policeman clubbing somebody. This was a young man - I saw him throw a plastic bottle. The policeman ran at him and clubbed him. He did fall over and then ran away. Then there was another dog attack at 7.16pm. The person was a tall, younger man and the policeman set the dog on him.

And then, soon after that, about 10 seconds afterwards, something happened in front of me where someone was clubbed again. That person was on the ground and they were being hit, at least once. They were on the floor and hit. That struck me as another unprovoked assault. I was really shocked. I know it's difficult policing these things. But these incidents took me by real surprise. It seemed as though individual police officers were taking it out on bystanders for no reason. They seemed extremely pumped up. After that I thought it was unwise to stay in that area because it was extremely violent"

From Venetian's post:

It's "Run them over!" [calls for ambulances to ram into the police] and the fact that some present were full-time anarchists from other nations I wished to point out. This is not yer typical 1960s "Give Peace A Chance" kind of event. They are dressed in protective and tough clothing and ready to give and receive violence in many instances, and travel as a free rent-a-mob. An infiltrating journalist was told weeks before that if he wasn't genuinely one of them, he'd get "done in".

I was wondering what your source was for this, V?

xxx

I'm sorry to keep doing this, I'm not even sure that it's entirely ethical but I have to print another comment here, in fact I would very much like to have written it myself because it says what I believe to be the case with regard to the ethos of many police officers in this country. (And, like the writer, I KNOW that not all police are like this!):

I have socialised with two off-duty coppers at different points in my life. I most certainly don't socialise with them now. Both of them used the language of the football terraces to boast about beating up suspects - the attitude was that "they" got what they deserved. And the two coppers (who serve in different forces and are very unlikely to know each other) obviously relished the opportunity to dish out some "punishment". The impression I was left with was that both the coppers (one a university graduate) were pumped up and loved the adrenalin rush - and actively sought it.

Of course, two individual police officers are not all the boys in blue. I accept that they may be thoroughly unrepresentative. But what are the chances? Two coppers separated by 100 miles and 10 years - my fear is that their attitudes actually REFLECT their training and/or the police ethic they absorb during their training.

As for the better training you call for... Not a bad idea. However, that training needs to emphasise the duty to protect the citizen as they exercise their rights rather than view the citizen as an enemy until proven otherwise, not just more "friendly" tactics for diffusing public anger/protest. Investigations into police training are urgently required. But don't hold your breath - the old boy network will stiffle any meaningful reform.

xxx

II was wondering what your source was for this, V?

LOL, oh, yeah, right. Don't we have a history of your responses to me giving my sources? :p I'll avoid that. Suffice it to say that it wasn't The Sun or The Star. It was an informed and in-depth infiltration, IMHO, by a journalist who got into the core organising group some weeks before G20, meeting at houses in London. Now, I know for sure that there will have been many ordinary citizens there who wanted to protest at this or that which G20 seemed to symbolise. But at core there was a lot of anarchist planning. Essentially different anarchist groups joined forces and were in communication for this. In fact, the report of at least two full pages I read indicated that anarchist groups which had lost interest and virtually disbanded got re-interested and reformed.

There was one man, an academic whose name I don't recall but whom I could possibly easily track down again on Google given time, who was said to be at the heart of all these groups. This academic has no record of violence and keeps apart from it; but at their meetings it was clear to the journalist that he was telling the groups what to do: "Xxxx has said we should....." or "Xxxxx wants us to....."

Photos of the core anarchists show protective leg-wear almost like black Star Wars space-suits, in some cases protective head-wear, masked faces of course, and what look like steel toe-capped boots, again in some cases. Their threats to any potential infiltrators didn't sound idle. The journalist was with them and at the build-up to G20 over a period of several weeks.

V

Suffice it to say that it wasn't The Sun or The Star.

So that would make it the Mail then? Am I right?

😎

xxx(;))

So that would make it the Mail then? Am I right?:cool:

Actually I am privy to top-level MI5 investigations which go into extreme detail, hence my unwillingness to give confidential sources. However 😉 - it's also true, as it happens, that a relative gets the two weekend Mails, and they get passed onto me within the day.

I was only having some friendly banter with you, BTW. All the same, I do spot a trap when I see one. 😎

Now, I happen to have easily found this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1166549/Undercover-anarchist-mob-How-Mail-infiltrated-group-heart-violence.html

So Professor Chris Knight was the name I didn't recall. The piece ends:

[COLOR="Red"]Although there were generally only about 15 to 20 people at each WAG meeting I attended, they had strong links to other anarchist groups across the country. Indeed, as plans for yesterday's full-scale protest took shape, groups which had hitherto disbanded because of apathy and the numbing effect of smoking drugs were suddenly reforming.

With days to go, the anarchists at WAG became excited at the news that the Wombles, who were blamed for the violence at previous demonstrations, had regrouped.

The types of anarchist appear to be split into two distinct categories. Some have a genuine - albeit offbeat - desire to challenge the political structure in the UK.

Others are simply drawn by their willingness to use violence. Their priority, they say, is to leave a calling card - a smashed window, an injured police officer.

'If a copper has to die to get our point across then so be it,' an
anarchist known as Seth said. 'I'm happy if the filth get sent crashing to the floor and don't get up - then we've had a good day out.'

Needless to say, none of this means there can't be quite valid reasons for peacefully demonstrating at G20 meetings. In fact the right to do so is a must, or should be. And it's even less acceptable for the police to dole out violence in this way.

But just a thought ... the police will have been fore-warned that violent anarchists were going to be present. Without the violent anarchists, and given a truly peaceful demonstration by normal people, would the police have then reacted this way ...?

V xxxx