A passer-by, with his hands in his pockets and walking away from a line of police officers, is suddenly struck on the back of the legs with a baton and then hurled to the ground. He suffers severe internal bleeding as a consequence of the fall and dies some minutes later.
The facts are not in doubt because the whole incident was filmed, but it takes the Crown Prosecution Service fifteen months to come to decision not to charge the offending police officer with any criminal offence.
Perhaps one is not surprised that this psychopathic police officers exists, but that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service do everything they can to prevent his prosecution is more surprising. Also of note is the silence from government and politicians; the message they send out is that the unprovoked police assault on Ian Tomlinson on 1 April 2009 is of little importance.
The meaning of all this is not, as some have suggested, that the police have been given a carte blanche to assault and kill at random, but that when they do, even when there is rock-solid evidence of state misconduct, citizens have no right to remedy. People are subject to the state; the state is not accountable to the people who live within it.
1 comment:
CCTV evidence was "lost". If it was a PC killed by one of ours they would't wait over a year to try and resolve the case. New Scotland Yard delenda est.
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