Police officers who do things like this need to be sacked

I cannot believe what I have just witnessed in a video taken by police during a pursuit of a disabled pensioner motorist who they suspected of not wearing a seatbelt last September in South Wales. You can watch it below:

Here are some of the details from the Telegraph article in which I read the story:

Footage captured on a police dashboard camera shows one officer striking the driver’s seat window with a baton up to 15 times and another officer jumping on the bonnet of the car and kicking the windscreen in an apparent attempt to crack it.

Police pulled over Robert Whatley, 70, for not wearing a seat belt as he drove through country lanes in South Wales. The 8-mile chase started after officers tried to give Mr Whatley a fixed penalty notice but he drove off.

The retired businessman, who is recovering from a stroke, was covered in glass when officers from Gwent police surrounded his Range Rover on a country lane following a 17-minute chase.

Mr Whatley, who was expecting officers to gently knock on the window of his £60,000 car, said: “I couldn’t believe what was happening. The police went completely over the top – you would have thought I had robbed a bank.

“I was terrified when they started smashing in the window and trying to kick in the windscreen. I tried to shield myself but I was showered with glass which could easily have gone into my eyes. “It’s something you might expect in America but not in the quiet of the British countryside.”

I wouldn't even expect it in America. I would not expect it from law officers in any civilised country.

Mr Whatley, who never broke the speed limit during the chase, said he had become confused during the pursuit.

He said he thought that the blue lights and siren of the pursuing car meant the officer was giving him a police escort home.

But he finally pulled over when he was confronted by a police “stinger” device on the road into Usk.

Mr Whatley, who has a heart condition, was later charged with several motoring offences.

The Police officers involved have been suspended pending an investigation but frankly I am not sure what needs investigating. They terrified a confused pensioner with as far as I can tell no justification, acting like utter thugs. The man has a heart condition. We could easily have been looking at something much more serious here. Next time maybe we will. That's why we need to try and make sure there is not a next time.

The officers involved should not just get a dressing down or get moved to office duties. They should be sacked.

That way their colleagues will appreciate what is and is not acceptable behaviour during the execution of their duties.

Another photographer has their rights abused by police

I am getting tired of having to highlight these cases but they keep on happening, despite the statements from senior police and politicians. This one happened at the weekend and is reported in full on the NUJ website:

Carmen Valino had images deleted from her camera by police and was threatened with arrest whilst photographing the scene of a shooting in Hackney, East London.

The incident happened on Saturday 31 July as Valino photographed a crime scene from outside the police cordon whilst on assignment from the Hackney Gazette.

She had identified herself as a journalist and showed her UK Press Card to the police.

A police Sergeant approached Valino telling her that she was disrupting a police investigation and to hand over her camera. After protesting to the Sergeant that she was in a public place, outside the cordon he had no right to take her camera, he grabbed her wrist and pulled out his handcuffs. Before he could put the cuffs on she handed him her camera. He then left for five minutes before coming back, bringing Valino inside the cordon and asking her to show him the images and deleting them. Valino was told that she could come back in a few hours to photograph the scene.

This incident highlights how police are not following the law or the agreed ACPO Media Guidelines which state:

Members of the media have a duty to take photographs and film incidents and we have no legal power or moral responsibility to prevent or restrict what they record. It is a matter for their editors to control what is published or broadcast, not the police. Once images are recorded, we have no power to delete or confiscate them without a court order, even if we think they contain damaging or useful evidence.

How many more times? This has to stop. See here for some previous examples I have covered recently.

I am starting to think that the only way this will ever stop is if members of the public to whom this happens launch private prosecutions against the police officers involved, perhaps with the support of an organisation like Liberty. The officers who do these things are clearly breaking the law by acting in this way and I suspect they would not have a leg to stand on.

It is clear that all the edicts from on high are having little effect on the actions of officers on the ground.

Ian Tomlinson Fighting Fund

Following on from the news this week that the CPS will not be pursuing any charges against the police with respect to the death of Ian Tomlinson who died after being struck by a policeman during the G20 protests, his family has launched a campaign and are raising funds to help support their fight for justice. I blogged about this utter travesty here.

The blogpost from the Tomlinson family site is here.

Here are the details:

Many have asked if there is anything more they can do and today, we are launching a Campaign Fighting Fund. There is still long road ahead in the fight for justice and the Fund will help the Tomlinson family to make decisions about the direction of the campaign without always having to worry about the financial costs, especially when the emotional ones are tough enough already.

Donations by PayPal won't be up and running until next week, so check back then. But if you personally or your organisation (union branch, community or campaign group, for instance) can help by making a donation, please make cheques payable to 'Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign' and send to:

Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign

c/o Newham Monitoring Project

170 Harold Rd

London E13 0SE

I hope the family can raise enough money to help them get justice. I will certainly be donating something myself.

The Ian Tomlinson decision is a travesty of justice

The CPS have announced today that there will be no prosecution of the police officer caught on film striking Ian Tomlinson in connection with his death during the G20 protests last April. Mr Tomlinson was walking away from the police with his hands in his pockets when the assault took place. I blogged about this incident at the time.

There are various reasons given for there not being any prosecution. Firstly, they claim that because there were two post-mortems performed on Mr Tomlinson that prosecutors would not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was a connection between the assault and his death. The first post-mortem found it was a heart attack, the second one found internal bleeding was a cause. The CPS also ruled out a prosecution for assault because too much time has elapsed. Charges need to be brought within six months. They also ruled out charges of ABH and misconduct in public office.

So the result of a 15 month long investigation into the death of a man who was just moments before caught on camera being assaulted by a police officer, where until the filmed evidence was produced the police appeared to close ranks and deny even that had happened is that nobody will be prosecuted.

To say that this is outrageous it an understatement. The pathologist used in the first post-mortem has been removed from the Home Office register of accredited pathologists and is under two separate investigations regarding his conduct. Surely given this, the CPS could have a reasonable chance of discrediting the initial post-mortem and hence enhancing the credibility of the second one and therefore a chance at least of establishing in law if there is a link between the assault and the death?

Also, the reason it is more than 6 months regarding the assault charge is because the CPS have taken 15 months. This is an utter travesty for Mr Tomlinson's family. They have been denied justice by a system that is surely now utterly discredited when it comes to investigating suspicious deaths where police are suspected of being involved.

We cannot go on like this. The public have to have faith in the police and faith that if those wearing the uniforms transgress, that they will face the same consequences as everybody else would.

If you think that I am being unfair, ask yourself this. If this had been the other way round and on that day Mr Tomlinson had assaulted a police officer from behind who had died a few minutes later, do you honestly think that 15 months later he would have discovered there would be no charges at all against him?

No, neither do I.

Police still harassing photographers

I have just read this post by Jules Mattsson, a student who is a freelance photographer in his spare time. In it he describes how he was detained and questioned by police officers when he was trying to take photographs of an Armed Forces Day parade in Romford on Saturday.

There is a YouTube here which contains some of the pictures taken and an audio recording of much of the incident:

The officers appear to try a number of different tacks to argue that he should not be taking photographs. They begin by insisting that he needs parental permission to take photographs of minors. Jules repeatedy rebuts this claim by explaining that it is a public place and no such restrictions in law apply. They then insist that he needs to give them his details although when repeatedly pressed as to which law he is required to do this under, at first there is no response and eventually an officer says they do not need a law. Finally the tack shifts to claims of "breach of the peace" which again is vigorously denied by Jules.

Particularly disturbing are the claims from Jules which can be heard on the recording that he was taken away from the parade and then thrown down some stairs (he claims he is still suffering from back pain caused by this) at virtually the same time that an officer is claiming he is being taken away "for his own safety". It should be pointed out though that on the recording an officer denies that this is what has happened.

What is striking throughout is the police officers' apparent lack of understanding of the law and how they appear to be thrashing around for a reason to stop him. They also appear to get more and more irritated and annoyed as it becomes apparent that Jules is very well versed in the law and what he can and cannot legally do.

I have covered various other cases like this on this blog previously (e.g. here and here). In more recent times, new guidelines have been issued which were supposed to make sure that innocent photographers were not harassed and prevented from taking pictures on spurious grounds. Clearly that guidance is not getting all the way through to the front line if this case is anything to go by.

This story has now been picked up by the national media so hopefully it will get much wider coverage.

UPDATE: Young Mr Brown on the Libertarian Party Members' Blog has transcribed the exchanges in the audio track of the encounter here.

Val Swain and Emily Apple - Shocking police footage

The Guardian has shocking footage here of two protesters being manhandled for what appears to be no good reason during the Kingsnorth protests last year. Here is the footage from Youtube:

Val Swain and Emily Apple were apparently arrested for trying to identify the officers involved. What seems to spark it off is when they try to photograph an officer who has refused to identify himself. They are grabbed and bundled to the floor. Pressure is applied to their necks and Emily has her foot stood on, is bound and thrown into the back of a van.

They were then held for 4 days after which they were released without charge. By then the protests were over.

Now I have written about this sort of thing before. The Ian Tomlinson case where a man died some time after being pushed by a police officer during the G20 protests sparked a great deal of public concern and anger. I said not long after that that the use of new technology would eventually force the police to change.

Now the events shown here took place last year before the repercussions of the Ian Tomlinson case had been felt but I think it is a prime example of what the public is concerned about. It certainly shows that the sort of things we saw at the G20 were not isolated incidents or indeed confined to the capital (Kingsnorth is in Kent and the police officer who refused to identify himself was apparently from West Yorkshire according to the footage). There are distinct parallels with the sort of things we saw at the G20 protests, refusal of officers to identify themselves, disproportionate force seeming to be used when it seems unwarranted etc. I hope this footage gets wider coverage and other abuses like this come out into the open.

Emily and Val are members of Fit Watch, an organisation which aims to film and record police officers as they record the public at things like demonstrations. This is exactly the sort of thing the public should be doing and as long as the police are acting correctly then there should be no problem with people doing this.

As I said before, the technology will eventually force the police culture to change. This is another example that will hopefully contribute to this.

UPDATE1: Updated to include the Youtube footage. Hattip to Fausty for this.

UPDATE2: Emily Apple has written a piece for Comment is Free about this incident.

UPDATE3: The original Youtube footage I embedded has been removed so I have replaced it with another version which is the same footage (I think, from memory).

Technology will force the Police to change

The news that Ian Tomlinson now most likely died of internal bleeding has once again thrown the spotlight on the Police and their tactics during the G20 protests. Indeed the Metropolitan Police Comissioner has now launched a review of police tactics which I welcome. I particularly welcome the public statement that officers should always wear their identification. It seemed a bit sinister to me that some officers involved in the G20 protests had either not worn them, or they were covered up or otherwise obscured.

I am a big supporter of the Police. I know they do a very difficult job often in very difficult circumstances. On the few occasions I have had dealings with them (as a victim of various crimes over the years) they have always been very courteous and professional and I have felt like they have done their best for me and that they were very much on my side.

However, I know that not everybody's experience of the Police is as positive as mine. There have been numerous examples recently of Police officers forcing people to delete photographs that they have taken in public areas. This story reported in The Guardian last week is typical of the sort of thing I mean where a tourist taking photos of modern architecture inclusing bus and tube stations was forced to delete his photographs. I saw on our local news in the South here a few months ago that a man who collected photographs of the insignias of different police forces took pictures of the one outside a police station locally and before he knew what was happening, several officers came out from the station, surrounded him and forced him to delete the pictures. Once it became a news story, a senior officer apologised and confirmed that what the man had been doing was not a crime, in spite of what the officers had implied. I apologise that I cannot currently find a link to this story.

A few months ago, someone on another blog pointed me towards a couple of youtube clips that had been filmed by members of the public.

The first one is somebody filming officers from his own garden questioning a cyclist. When one of the officers clocks that they are being filmed they come over to the cameraman on his own property and try to get him to stop filming. the cameraman stands up for himself and insists he is doing nothing wrong. The officers insist he is breaking the law but he refuses to stop filming and after calling back to base, the officers eventually seem to realise that they are in the wrong and walk away. He calls after them requesting to know their identities but they do not respond to him.

The second clip is more shocking to me. A filmmaker has put together a 6 minute piece which interperses him being harassed by two police officers (I think they may be special constables rather than full police officers) when he is filming in London with commentary on what is and isn't legal (filming in a lublic place is legal). The attitude of one of the officers is very aggressive. Straight away he starts shouting, putting his hand up over the lens and demanding to know why he is filming and also he wants to the filmmaker's ID and barks at him to "Give me your ID" as if we are in some sort of facist state. When the filmmaker stands his ground and insists he is not breaking the law he is told to "Shut up" by the aggressive officer before they finally walk off.

A cursory glance on youtube will find many more examples of this sort of thing. I highlight them here not to make a particular point about the incidents, there are bound to be overzealous police officers occasionally as you get in any other profession and doubtless they often have to deal with much less reasonable people than shown in these clips, and maybe they were just having a bad day - it can happen to all of us. I show them because it is an example of how it is much more difficult for people including the police to get away with this sort of behaviour given the state of technology. The first clip has been seen by nearly 300,000 people and the second by nearly 70,000.

It is now possible for ordinary people to carry round the means to take pictures and high quality filmed footage all the time. Indeed these features of often built into modern mobile phones which people almost always have with them. Given this, the Police can have their activities filmed at any time. They can be uploaded in minutes and viewed by thousands or in some cases millions of people within a few hours or days. The Police should not be afraid of this as if they are acting correctly then there is nothing to worry about. After all, the Police are big supporters of CCTV and use precisely that rationale to justify it.

The power of technology in the hands of the masses has been amply demonstrated in the aftermath of the G20 protests. The death of Ian Tomlinson that I blogged about last week and the alleged assault on Nicola Fisher are only now being fully pursued because in each case there is irrefutable evidence filmed by members of the public. This technology is only going to get smaller (hence easier to use covertly), better quality and cheaper as time goes on. Therefore it will be harder and harder for officials to conceal mistakes and wrongdoing.

In many ways I think this could be a very good thing as it will force everybody involved to ensure that their actions are above board. Public support for the Police has been slipping in recent years but if this decline can be arrested and turned around, and I think the inevitability of what I have written about here could be the catalyst for this, then it will be a win win for both public and Police.

UPDATE: And as I predicted, more video footage has come out today. There is no stopping this sort of thing now and every protest will bring more footage like this until the Police change their tactics.

Ian Tomlinson

The blogosphere has exploded today following the recent release of video footage by The Guardian which shows that during the G20 protests, a police officer hit a man across the legs and pushed him onto the floor, from behind. The man appears to have had nothing to do with the protests and was walking away from the police. There is no indication that there was any sort of provocation. The man died a few minutes later of a heart attack. His name was Ian Tomlinson.

At first the police made no mention of the assault on Mr Tomlinson and indeed their statement suggested that the police were trying to help him and protesters were throwing missiles at them as they tried to do so. Although I am sure that later on police did try to help him (the footage is only for a couple of minutes prior to Mr Tomlinson's death) it is seems that the police (or at least one officer in particular) acted in a disproportionate manner towards an innocent bystander and this could have been a contributing factor to his death a few minutes later.

I fear that were it not for this footage having been taken and thus providing incontrovertable evidence of what happened that the police would not have volunteered the information, despite the fact that there were at least 5 of them who could clearly see what happened. There has been no indication in the last few days that they were intending to make this public themselves. I am sad to say that this seems to be par for the course. The jury in the De Menezes case in their verdict thought that the police had not been honest about their claims that an officer had shouted a warning before the fatal shots were fired. Independent witnesses had contradicted the police record and they were believed by the jury over the police. I was and still am very uncomfortable about the idea that the police would tailor their stories to all match with each other like this.

It is precisely for this reason that the recent stories about it being made unlawful to take photographs or film the police cannot be allowed to happen. It is only because footage is available that what happened to Mr Tomlinson can be fully investigated.

UPDATE: Following the revelation that Ian may well have died from internal bleeding, not a heart attack as was first thought, I have some further thoughts on how the Police will have to change.