Sharpe's Opinion
Tuesday, 7th Apr, 2009
Video of Ian Tomlinson Before He Died at the G20 Protests
This changes things.
The Guardian have video footage of Ian Tomlinson, the man who died during the G20 Protests, being shoved to the ground by a police officer. It seems Ian Tomlinson had this altercation with police officers, then got up and walked away, seemingly perfectly fine. A short while later he had a heart attack, collapsed and died.
The video certainly appears to show police officers in an unprovoked attack – or at least an attack while he was walking away. He’s already being followed by several police officers at the beginning of the video, though, so it isn’t clear exactly why they’re all following him.
It will be interesting to see this pan out.
Comments
Agreed, it’s no Jean Charles de Menezes, that’s for sure. The guy got up and walked away and it wouldn’t be surprising if the police officer in question didn’t know he had died until much later. The Met are about to get taken to the cleaners by the papers, though.
I don’t know what the guidelines are, but at the time the guy was walking away with his hands in his pockets – as I said before we don’t know what may or may not have happened before that, of course, but we know that they had no problem with him walking away afterwards.
I wouldn’t call that unprovoked.
He is clearly winding the officers up and refusing to move on, while trying to look like he is being unprovocative. And surprise, surprise, one of the riot officers deals with him.
It is terrible that he died, but I am not (yet) willing to blame the officers involved.
Have you seen Letters’ comments? I have to say I agree…
“Agreed, it’s no Jean Charles de Menezes, that’s for sure.”
Or even Rodney King…
I’ve read Letters, but I’ve also read Charlotte who I think is almost spot on as well.
What we’ll see soon is body language experts being wheeled out to show alternately that he was being provocative or just trying to get the police to walk past him and leave him alone.
I agree with the commenters who say that either way the police action seemed disproportionate, that was a very hard shove. However, as I said, it’s still not certain whether the events of this video did directly contribute to his death, and the video that it was ‘murder’ is just purely ridiculous.
It’s easy to view this as just the media playing Divide and Conquer with their audience again (vide the “oh noes! there are not enough male teachers!” / “how many evil paedophiles are lurking behind that bush?” scenario). On the one hand we have a person portrayed as going about their lawful business, on the other hand we have the same person portrayed as obviously up to no good; and now we’ll never know which.
This sort of speculation only serves to divert attention from the real issues, though. Such as the fact that a person has died at the hands of the police. And, of course, the fact that the banks have been playing fast and loose with our money all this time, and those supposedly in positions of power didn’t notice a trillion pounds appearing out of nowhere till it turned out to have been fake all along.
“a person has died at the hands of the police”
But even that’s not clear cut. At the very worst, it would be manslaughter – and that’s only if a connection can genuinely be proven between police action and Tomlinson’s death. Otherwise it would be assault, and even then we’re not sure what happened before the video – there could be other factors we don’t know about.
I’ve seen the footage and it would appear the police officer used his stick, according to their guidelines, given the entire situation.
That is not to say they were not instrumental in his death. My best guess is that Mr Tomlinson’s lawyers will argue for manslaughter, but accidental death will be the defense.
It will be up to the prosecution to prove their case, as always. There may well be other audio evidence. Hope I’ve made myself clear without influencing the outcome.
ladytizzy
April 7, 2009 at 8:21 pm