Critically injured Metropolitan Police Officer Gary Toms aged 37, has died from his head injuries after trying to arrest robbery suspects in Newham on Saturday.
On the BBC News Website (the most widely read site in the UK) this story gets one page in the ‘England’ section with no photograph of the officer and no ‘trial by media’ of the alleged offenders. It was reported on BBC Radio national morning news at 8.03 am for 1.8 seconds.
Uninjured Nicola Fisher, 35, from Brighton, who was slapped across the face and hit on her leg with a baton by a Police Sergeant during the G20 protests has been talking to journalists. She refused to discuss the fee she has received via Max Clifford.
On the BBC News Website this story gets a full page in the UK and England sections, two videos and more discussion ‘out of Court’ of the officers actions from Ms Fishers perspective. On Saturday, BBC Radio national morning news ran the story twice every hour, from 6.30 am to 9.00 am. It was featured twice at length.
Here is a picture from G20 you may not have seen.
On my Ruralshire Constabulary team of young police officers, many of whom provide Public Order support at National events (without incident by the way) the difference in coverage will be noticed, and may add to the widening gap between police and public. Unfortunately, police officers see the media as representing public opinion.
I can understand that many people are upset by the G20 incidents. But when one of your own workmates is killed and receives less media coverage than someone who is slapped round the face and hit on the leg with a hollow metal stick causing no injury, we start to see the moral battle lines being drawn.
This is a shame because on F Division this week we literally saved lives. Two to be precise. I commanded both incidents and it was a privilege to be there with our teams.
But then, no one wants to hear about that.
Gadget Note: Ken Livingstone defended us magnificently on the radio. Never thought I’d be saying that. Boris released this statement about PC Gary Toms.
Sorry Gadget, used to read your blog every update, just can’t agree with you anymore.
You’re comparing the murder of an officer with the assault of that woman, you should be comparing the murder of Tomlinson.
Been lovely reading your blog, best of luck
You’re not suggesting that Auntie Beeb is biased are you? I know they were once held up as a paragon of fair, factual public service broadcasters, but the world has moved on a bit since then. They are now just as much a part of the rabid pack led by the snarling red tops, but they pretend to be different…. the gruniad in motion methinks. Shame on them.
Suspended my arse ,
Under pressure, with adrenaline running, our senses shut down. We suffer ‘perceptual distortion’. Hearing diminishes; concentration becomes narrowly focused, and your telling me when faced by a screaming , baying mob of protestors you act in a clam and controled manner.
You should try firearms training. The skipper moved up the chain of the officer saftey model, words, commands , warnings , a push , stepped up the game , a clearance swipe to create distance , it connected which was an added bonus of a phyiscal warning , then as been approached again a show of force by drawing a batton , up another setp by extending and holding in low profile , another step towards him despite all the warnings , so a low leg strike to deter and Encourage persons to back off.
If you as a resonable person dont get all those warning signs before been hit , do you really need a packet of nuts telling you ” warning contains nuts “
Don’t you have to prove intent in the case of murder?
Point well made Gadget. These officers have been tried and condemned before the investigation has been completed.
The representation of the woman on the news has been highly manufactured. From the way that she wears her hair to the modulation of her voice, she has been made to look as “soft” and unthreatening as possible.
The fact is she was somebody who, as part of a baying mob, infiltrated a police cordon and as such physically threatened an individual officer because of her presence on the wrong side of that cordon. If she had gotten back, as she had been told to do, she would not have been slappped or struck. The officer should have arrested her instead of hitting her but may have been under orders not to do this because of the public order situation and the fact that such arrests only embolden and encourage the rest of the mob.
I am sickened by the “journalism” of this. It is essential that the fee that she is being paid is revealed simple to expose the media sensationalosm over this.
I wonder what she does for a living? I hope that, in the long run, the undeserved that compensation that she will get does her absolutely no good at all.
“Unfortunately, police officers see the media as representing public opinion.”
They should wise up, then. The media reflects NO-ONE’S opinion, save their own…
A quick look at her income from the tax man might be in order in a few months time…
My heartfelt condolences to the family of Constable Gary Toms.
Rest in peace mate .
“I wonder what she does for a living?”
She sponges off taxpayers, of course.
From ‘the Express’: ” Ms Fisher, unemployed and living in a basement flat in Brighton… “
Sad news, very sad news indeed. Our thoughts are with his family and his colleagues at this time.
It certainly seems as though the BBC is pursuing something of an anti-police campaign. I cannot say if the two officers who were suspended following the G20 acted lawfully of proportionately – nobody can based on the few snippets of available footage, despite what a few armchair cops may think. The matter is under investigation and, although it will take some time, the evidence (or lack of) will come out in due course. I wonder how keen the BBC will be to report if the officers are found to have acted properly? A couple of lines in between the latest tacky celebrity news and the football.
I didn’t know this officer – i never met him, never worked with him, never worked in the same force. But he was one of us nonetheless. We feel the pain of his loss and take a deep breath before starting our next shift, knowing that next time it might be one of us.
The least he and his family deserves is some meaningful public recognition of his sacrifice.
Rest in peace
Sam,
With respect are you not falling for the same media coverage Gadget is complaining about?
Tomlinson may have died of Internal bleeding but as far as I know the cause of that bleeding is yet to be determined. Tomlinson was alledgedly an alchoholic and as I understand this is also a cause of internal bleeding in the abdominal area.
This isn’t that clear cut yet.
IG,
I share your frustration that the woman has been offered a platform by the media to air her complaints. I had the displeasure of watching it on the BBC just now.
I would recommend having a look as there are some things that contradict your post namely that the woman shows some bruises on the legs that were alledgedly left by the baton – if you count bruising as an injury of course.
However despite this I think the coverage will actually help the public perception of the police. The report makes the woman and protesters look bad on several counts.
1. A longer clip of the footage is shown in which the protesters appear more violent and the police obviously outnumbered and surrounded (not least by a horde of photographers).
2. The woman claims she would have moved back ‘if she was asked politely’. Hypocrite! Why do some members of the public expect politeness and respect from members of the public services when they themselves and being rude and aggressive. She was in the officers face during an increasingly ugly ‘demonstration’ – what does she want. The suggestion that the police officer ‘carry her’ was also equally ludicrous.
3. That she has a publicist in Max Clifford means that she is now open to accusations of money grabbing. If she has made the mistake of doing an ‘exclusive’ then we can probably expect the shit to really fly at her from the papers she turned down.
Cheers and great blog
Mr C.
@ Sam
But, the big story is the woman being slapped, that’s what all over the news. Not the death of the copper. Yes, the copper’s death is more comparable to Tomlinson, but that’s the whole point.
[...] April, 2009 by landedunderclass I should like to point out to Inspector Gadget that not everybody believes the stories about the G20 protests and their consequences, particularly [...]
I too am surprised by Livingstone’s response, I still don’t trust him, but compared to Boris Johnson’s response – any idea what that was anyone?
Boris is a buffoon and a disappointing one for many Londoners, not just the police, as we can all see what a future conservative administration will mean. More of the same from the political class.
I am also disappointed by the response of the ‘new’ commissioner, Stephenson. I am not surprised though. Sir Ian looks like a police officers champion compared to this weasle.
Where is the robust defence of police tactics and an attempt to get someone to understand ACPO/CPS and Home Office approved Officer Safety tactics? Only blame and accusation have been heard.
In fact there was more hysteria yesterday when a PC (a medic) was spotted not wearing any ID epaulettes. A contact told me that a QPM in the public order branch at NSY was running around shouting ‘get me that officer’s name – the commissioner is livid’. So you see – no defence there, only blame and a circling of SMT/ACPO wagons.
I have no idea why the Federation hasn’t been more in your face – I can only hope they have a plan.
The police service has been led by the donkeys for so long there is nor real alternative. Never will be. Like most if not all public sector institutions they have been politicised and taken over by the very loonies we mocked back in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
There is no way back into the hearts and minds of the general public – the middle class fear you as much as the underclass detest you. It’s all tied in with the growing feeling of intrusivemess and surveillance – really it is.
The big loss is police discretion, probably the root cause of much of this antagonism. The failure to be able to exercise discretion, let alone even consider it is something I have had some experience of since retiring from the MET – and I just couldn’t get my head around why!
I am sorry for Tomlinson – but it can’t be murder and it won’t be manslaughter – it is simply unfortunate all round, but that officer will face so much hell on earth I really feel for him.
He has already been abandoned by officialdom. Whatever happens to him he will never be the same man that stepped out into the City of London on 1 April 2009.
I’m sure that there are some members of Tomlinson’s family that did genuinely care about him and I am sorry for them too.
As for the ‘Max Clifford’ woman – it has all been said.
I think it is disgusting that the death of PC Toms is not front page news – but who does the police service blame and what does it do?
You’ve all got to hand in your level 2 tickets ASAP and maybe your AFO ones as well, maybe some Ghandi like non compliance with targets is the also the answer locally.
“The fact is she was somebody who, as part of a baying mob, infiltrated a police cordon and as such physically threatened an individual officer because of her presence on the wrong side of that cordon. ”
This kind of balls is why everyone turning against the Police.
There was no baying mob. If you actually watched the video everything was calm until Officer Scabby McSlappalot hit the guy wanting to leave the kettle without any justification. (he was manhandled once without any reason and then hit when he tried to pick up the stuff he dropped)
The moment that happened the crowd reacted. A situation that would not have happend if the police had detained the aggressive officer and apologised to the man he struck and then used that to calm everyone down.
If the crowd was a baying mob that police line would have been torn apart in seconds.
“This kind of balls is why everyone turning against the Police.”
Except….they’re not.
Oh, sure, there’s been a gradual lack of respect amongst the middle class taxpayers who would once have been the natural backers of the police, but it (usually) isn’t the police themselves that they are angry with. Rather, it’s what has been done to the police force.
After all, if you are burgled today, who are you going to call?
A benefit-scrounging layabout fishwife with a mouth on her like the Blackwall Tunnel and Max Clifford on speed-dial?
No. You’ll call the police.
I completely agree with Ranter’s points about the politicisation of the police and that being a significant factor in the public attitude toward them.
It’s not just the police that have been changed.
On a side note, on the video of the copper getting hit on the head with a pole. There are some people in the crowd attempting to hold others back – reminds me of the 7th Peel principle.
You can’t compare the two incidents.
It stands to reason that the incident with the young woman demands an inquiry.
The death of the officer during an arrest will no doubt have been witnessed by other police officers, and, as far as the courts, and everyone else for that matter, are concerned, there will be no doubt as to the guilt of the perpetrator. Justice will be done and the officer’s murderer will receive a long prison sentence.
The incident with the young woman is not clear. It has to be investigated. If it was not, and brushed under the carpet, as it were, the public’s trust in our police force would be eroded.
Also, remember, it is not the job of the press to publish the truth. They are there to sell newspapers and webspace. The truth is often the last thing they are interested in.
After all, if you are burgled today, who are you going to call?
Yep, the insurance company has to have a crime number. The police won’t be bothered to turn up and actually do anything like investigate the crime, though.
No. You’ll call the police.
Indeed. For some reason, the insurance company insists on it. It’s touching, really, it’s almost like they believe the police will do even the most elementary check to make sure that it’s not just a made-up crime.
I wonder what will happen when they realise that’s no longer the case? Perhaps we will see a surge in business for private detectives or something.
Stanislav – I’m not comparing the INCIDENTS I’m comparing the press COVERAGE of the incidents and the relative value of our lives in the media.
JuliaM and Ranter – spot on as usual
Sam @7.35 – bye then.
Good point about Ken Livingstone. Like you my perception throughout my adult life has always been that he is no friend of the police. However in this instance he has really been in many ways the voice of reason giving a very balanced view of both incidents and frankly being supportive of the many difficulties the police face.
“The police won’t be bothered to turn up and actually do anything like investigate the crime, though.”
Except, of course, in the case Gadget’s referring to, the officer lost his life precisely because they did turn up.
OK, it was unusual in that it was a report of an armed burglary, but still..
“Yep, the insurance company has to have a crime number. The police won’t be bothered to turn up and actually do anything like investigate the crime, though.”
Dont know where you live but I attended 3 “run of the mill ” burglary calls yesterday.
I am a plain clothes DC, I attended with a crime scene officer who examined the venues while I took a statement and noted property lists, conducted local enquires , evaluated cctv coverage , delivered leaflets to neighbours and spoke to people out and about in the area
I have a lead on one of those crimes( forensic ) and one of those calls when I challanged a householder of the events uncovered that he was liying inorder to get a crime number to get the council to repair a door that was broken for over a year..
Stop reading the daily mail and make up your own mind.
Oh look the police actualy do something.!
I took another look at the footage as shown by the BBC. What you see is that the woman approaches once and is pushed back by an officer who is giving verbal instruction to the crowd to move back. She approaches again and is slapped. She approaches again and is hit across the legs. The BBC narrator says ‘first she is slapped…’ creating the impression that this is the very first thing that happens. No reference is made to her actions. This indicates a strong bias. The BBC site has now reported the story supplied by the woman after consultation with her publicist. The material prepared with the aid of her publicist is reproduced uncritically, but there are questions to be asked and context to be given. More bias. The occasion of the incident was carefully staged. Those present were protesting about police actions regarding Ian Tomlinson who had died. There are many cameras present,as the event has been advised to the media, and the demonstrators have their own cameras. The woman even mentions that she said to the officer ‘don’t you know how many cameras there are?’ The tactic of animal rights activists and others is to provoke violence and film it. So her repeated approaches to the police line can easily be construed as a tactic for the cameras. I’m nothing to do with police and I’m a lefty, but I am sick of living in a fog of inflated media ‘outrage’.
I dont know what all the hullaboo is about.The answer is simple Give the public what they want. DO NOTHING Save your selves When you see members of the ipcc come on tv with obvious preconcieved ideas– all police are “GUILTY”. You can see the venom dripping from every word they speak, Why are such persons allowed on tv simply to pander to the public THE BRITISH POLICE ARE THE FINEST, MOST TOLERANT , MOST PATIENT IN THE WORLD. I an proud to have been a meber for nearly 30 years, as was my father and my son.Thank God most of the public are not fools and wont be taken in by the press or the bbc
Stanislav
“the officer’s murderer will receive a long prison sentence”
We would all like to think that you are correct on this point, but part of the reason the Police Officers who contribute to this blog are frustrated is that we already suspect that there will be no long prison sentence for anyone connected to this incident. Time will tell of course.
(I am referring to the death of the Officer not the two Officers who are currently suspended)
For too long now the courts do not take attacks on Police seriously, expecting Officers to accept it as part of the job. Part of this is that the suspects know that they can drive their vehicles at Officers and there will be no negative outcome should they end up in court.
If the Police shows that we see come out of the USA are anything to go by they appear to have the correct approach, drive a car at an American Officer or Civilian, and it is treated as attempted murder and you get life. Life meaning life, as it should be.
for police politicisation look no further than here:
Officers from Scotland Yard’s antiterror squad searched the computer seized from his parliamentary office using the key words “Shami Chakrabarti” – even though the Liberty director had nothing to do with the leaking of Home Office documents that prompted the investigation.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6116023.ece
I don`t know much about Livingstone and what his reaction has been. But if he is suddenly being very even-handed, if not actual supporting the police, when in the past he has not there could be a couple of explanations.
1) The usual thing when someone in a senior position in a large organisation leaves/retires, suddenly they start publicly saying all the thing that the public have been shouting about for years. And we are screaming at the telly “Why didn`t you say all this when you were in a position to do something about it, when you had the authority to change things for the better”.
Happened with top Army chap a few months ago, politicians, NHS execs, top cops (not so much).
Maybe it`s part of the anti-whistle-blower culture we have of late, another example of why this period in our ‘civilised’ history will be studied by bemused students in years to come.
2) Kenny wants a job and has to get on side with as many people as possible so he doesn`t appear ‘extreme’.
n.b. Having ‘extreme’ views nowadays means simply having an opinion not precisely aligned with popular opinion, and being prepared to express that opinion. It just confuses people.
Sorry Gadget, this won’t wash.
Firstly, you don’t know how the officer died. It’s unlikely he had any contact with the suspects – or they would have been arrested on suspicion of GBH, now upgraded to murder. He tripped and hit his head – tragic but no different to a builder dying at work.
Secondly, that’s the point – arrests have been made. The Contempt of Court Act restricts reporting, as you well know, and what’s TO report? The girl’s a tosser, agreed. Tomlinson – looks like the push DID kill him.
Surely, the reason for the mass of coverage of the incident with the woman is, “Large, armour-protected and armed man biffs small, slight lady in the fizzer for, essentially, being a bit sweary.” Why not just ignore the woman?
Todays news is yesterdays fish wrappers. I wonder how the coverage would be if the protester were trying to smash up broadcasting house or one of the printing houses.
If it was a football mob kicking off no one would care, but as a portion of the mob were middle class it is wrong for officers to use any level of force. Whatever the actions of the crowd.
You can see the hate in the womans face as she shouts at police in some stills, yet she wanted to be spoken to with manners and respect.
She has also had some excellent coaching on what to say from a legal adviser, as her statements to the press have changed in subtle ways. Let her spout of as much as possible, any hearing that follows all her evidence will be tainted. I dont think there will be a hearing tho, From what I have seen, which is not the whole incident I know, the officer is 100% justified in his use of force.
This will pass, the press hate the banks and the police this week so are coming for us guns blazing. Screw em I will go in tonight and do my job to the best of my ability, and when the call comes for the man in the house with the knife, the injury rtc, the 30 man fight, the rape, the burglary, the fear for welfare, the criminal damage, the car theft, the domestic or the asssitance shout myself and my team will go and will keep going. Some people like some dont, all depends what side of the story they are on.
Its been explained to you before. Surgeon saves lives – not a story. Surgeon kills people – story.
Get over yourselves.
“From what I have seen, which is not the whole incident I know, the officer is 100% justified in his use of force.”
In what way is bashing the woman in the face justified? Was she, in any way whatsoever, a threat to that Sergeant?
I’m PSU trained. Hopefully, given the short length of service I’ve got left, and the job I now do, I’ll never get asked to do PSU duty again.
However, if, God forbid, the bosses do asked if I’d like to police the latest ‘demonstration’ I shall politely tell them to shove my PSU authorisation up their collective ACPO backsides.
Obnoxio The Clown (and Hibbo who usually makes similar comments) I’m not sure what goes on in t’ south but up north (in my force anyway) police officers WILL attend if your house, garden shed, car is broken into or stolen, SOCO WILL attend, investigating officers have to show what enquiries they have carried out including details on houses they attended during house to house problems. If you have a more minor complaint and want to speak to an officer personally you will be given an hour slot and an officer allocated specifically to these appointments WILL attend during this period. If for some unknown reason (rarely) this does occur you WILL be contacted and another appointment made. I’m not a promotion seeking kiss arse but a long serving disillusioned SGT who despairs at how we are perceived despite our best efforts.
Sam: Murder is an intention to kill or an intention to cause serious harm resulting in death in no way can Tomlinson’s death however tragic can be called murder. It looks like a pissing contest between two pathologists as to cause of death. Just because the IPCC pathologist says the cause is internal bleeding doesn’t mean it was the cause it is only his opinion. The original pathologist (or so we are informed) said it was a heart attack. This is why all the evidence has to be looked at before our justice system determines guilt.
My sympathies to Gary TOMS family, friend and colleagues. Another cop just doing his job and getting killed as a result, a few years ago a cop getting killed on duty was front page news in all newspapers (including the Mail). Now it might get a few column inches on page 5. Sad times.
sorry – I’m posting about the coverage NOT the incident.
I fail to see how this woman, who was allegedly assaulted needs to have the involvement of a publicist unless it’s a means of maximising a future payout from the Met.
It’s a worrying development if you can swear at a police officer, not be arrested for public order, and then use the incident for your own ends.
I suggest that Max Clifford would be better employed using his considerable influence to publicise the courageous, selfless actions of the late PC Gary Toms .
I have complained to the BBC about the balance of coverage – via website.
Heres the link for anyone else..Takes 2 mins (not 1.8 secs)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
Help help, I’m being assaulted, Quick, someone get me……..a publicist.
Dont know where you live but I attended 3 “run of the mill ” burglary calls yesterday.
I’ve lived in three different counties and had to call on the police in all three. In all three counties, all I got out of my calls was a crime number.
Perhaps I am unduly jaundiced and in my next move I will wind up in Ruralshire, or somewhere where someone still gives a shit. But I think you’ll agree it’s a bit much to have to move somewhere else to get anything approaching behaviour you’d expect from the police.
… police officers WILL attend if your house, garden shed, car is broken into or stolen, SOCO WILL attend, investigating officers have to show what enquiries they have carried out including details on houses they attended during house to house problems.
So I do have to move again. Oh well …
Yes, Gadget, and the reasons for the difference in coverage have beem amply explained to you.
Your shameless lies in respect of the ‘assaulted’ officer several threads ago expose you for what you are – a shameless liar.
Gadget, you’re right. It’s the coverage of the incidents, not the incidents, that is out of all proportion.
Here’s a slant that the media won’t publish: Number of police officers taking up loads of news space because they are accused of assaulting somebody = 2
Number of police who are trying to do the job they were hired for in spite of adverse media coverage = about 150,000
There is not enough newsprint in the country that will get anywhere near the amount needed to report the positive stuff done by the police. The media say they have a duty – nay, a right – to inform the public. They don’t. The only right they have is to make a profit, and that’s questionable. And their duty is to their shareholders.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
By the way, sometimes I do disagree with you, but I ain’t about to leave. Number of readers who have said they’ll leave = 1
No of readers who haven’t = see top of page
Guvnor,
Spot on as usual. My colleagues and I have been angered, but not surprised, by the lack of coverage of PC Toms death. Instead we are subjected to a constant diet of criticism and blame for doing what we were tasked to do at the G20 by Sky and BBC.
As for Miss Nicola Fisher, in my view, should be thankful she got away with a slap and £50k. Probably the best thing that ever happened to her. Had she done the same thing in Strasbourg, I imagine the CRS response might have been a tad more harsh, and she wouldn’t have had Max Clifford at her disposal…..sickening.
Ranter – couldn’t agree more when you say: “I am also disappointed by the response of the ‘new’ commissioner, Stephenson. I am not surprised though. Sir Ian looks like a police officers champion compared to this weasle”. Maybe he should hire Max Clifford?
I won’t be doing any more Level 2 stuff after this and would encourage colleagues to hand back tickets. Poke it.
Thoughts are with the family and friends of PC Gary Toms.
Amy – will head straight over to the BBC Complaints page after I’ve finished typing this.
Utterly unacceptable – even soliders dying in Afganistan and Iraq don’t receive as much media coverage as this foul-mouthed little harpy.
The thing is, the British Bobby is ‘expected’ to put his/her life on the line on a daily basis, facing criminals with baseball bats, machetes, samurai swords, re-activated revolvers, AK-47s etc etc with nothing more than a stick and a raised voice – meh – what do you expect when you join the police???? Cups of tea with little old ladies??? Are you daft or something???
Years ago, only the most hardcore of proper career villians would consider resisting/swearing at/hitting/shooting at/running over a policeman, these days, it seems to be virtually expected to put up a fight, due to a almost total loss & lack of respect, which is hardly surprising when everyone is out for themselves, everything is somebody elses fault/problem and no-one is responsible for anything.
Rant over!
Anyway, as for the copper who hit the woman at the rally, didn’t anyone else think his attention was initially elsewhere – looks like something was going on to the left of the viewer, and this woman was being obstructive/distracting when something else potentially serious was developing off camera?
What I think is worst about the incident with the slap is this
After footage of the incident came to light the Metropolitan Police issued a statement saying the actions of the officer raised “immediate concerns”.
The sergeant has used the minimum force necessary and acted within guidelines in a very stressful circumstance. He should be commended.
I wouldn’t object to them saying they were looking into the matter but outright shafting their officer like that is completely inappropriate in this case. The message they’re sending the public is if they complain about the police the authorities will instantly suspend the officer you complain about and will make their life difficult. That is NOT the message to send.
ChrisC if you see the whole 4minutes of footage on youtube there’s a scuffle to the side which turns the mood of the crowd. It nearly gets ugly.
Reading coverage of the ‘Slapgate’ on Sky it’s reassuring to see the vast majority who comment are very supportive of those involved in G20.
I think we have all had our eyes opened to the BBC and the media in general following the McBride affair.
The BBC et al should hang thier heads in shame at this disproportionate and biased coverage.
It will be near impossible for anyone officer involved in these investigations to be treated with fairness. Other agendas and old scores are being settled with police officers, their families and the wider service being caught up in the middle.
My thoughts are with Gary Toms his family, friends and colleagues who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Their lives will never be the same again.
Feel I ought to be kitted out in riot gear before sticking my head above the parapet, but here goes..just a few thoughts on the coverage.
I’m a newspaper reporter and I despise people who demand payment for their stories. If she really thinks this issue is so important why does she need a bribe to talk?
It also appears to me that this woman’s appearance on TV is carefully stage managed, as others have suggested. And frankly, I think her protestations that she felt her life was in danger are ridiculous. That’s unashamed top spin if ever I heard it.
But TV and whichever nationals she’s signed a contract with are simply making the most of what they have bought.
However the case of Mr Tomlinson is different and I think the coverage there is right.
One thing to bear in mind when it comes to questioning news values is that nationals have the whole country to cover. They pick what they think is the best. TV news picks a few stories and runs them ad nauseum.
It is ironic that local newspapers, the original source of most TV news stories, are dying out. What you read there is probably closer to the truth.
PC Toms’s death will be big news in his area and hopefully his local newspaper will have done him and his family justice with its coverage, at least within the confines of the Contempt of Court Act.
Stanislav – It is the job of the press to publish the truth and most reporters worth their salt try to do that. We also have a duty to give both sides a chance to have their say. But don’t think that we don’t get just as frustrated as the public when we know that one or both sides is feeding us a load of cobblers.
Ducking back down behind the parapet now.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard Ken Livingstone say something that makes a lot of sense.
Maybe our preconcieved opinions of “Red Ken” are the ones that the media have given us. The same media that ignores your colleague’s death and exaggerates the Public’s grievances.
.
Every death is to be lamented, be it that of a Policeman, a Fireman, a Serviceman on Active Duty or, come to that, anyone else.
For some the risk of death goes with the job and that risk is (or should be) accepted.
In many cases that risk can be diminished by thorough training, good working practices and discipline. Much of which was noticeably lacking during the G20 demonstrations
With regard to the Public’s perception of the Police it is too simplistic to blame the Media alone.
Knowing the Media’s insatiable appetite for sensationlism the Met’s handling of the entire G20 episode was a Public Relations
disaster and did little to instil confidence the Police as a whole.
To permit Officers to conceal their faces and Identity Numbers when confronting the Public was, to say the least, worrying
and indicative of things to come, such as the excessive zeal of some baton wielding uniformed thugs against some non-agressive demonstrators.
Consequently when violence did erupt, sympathy for the Police had long since evaporated, through no fault of the Media.
As for that Police Sergeant, presumably an experienced and well trained officer, to allow himself to lose control when taunted, and strike a slip of a woman, shows an alarming lack of self discipline and certainly brings his fitness to continue as a Sergeant into question.
(Her subsequent derisive self-serving actions speak volumes but highlight the damage caused by that Sergeant’s intemperate actions)
Talk of drawing moral battle lines rather than building bridges would suggest that subservience rather than respect, as your political masters crave, is the objective.
There are 648 of them, there are 60,000,000 of us. Which side would you really prefer to be on?
Remember the ability of the Police, as a whole, to function eventually depends upon the respect earned by each individual member.
Having checked the Sky news website the comments posted are all (but one or two) insupport of the police. The media coverage is the issue as Gadget points out.
The problem with journalism now is that there are no decent investigative journalists left. They survive on handouts from press officers, PR and media consultants like Max Clifford.
Every journo wanted this womans story as an exclusive, and they got it because they agreed to represent her as she and clifford chose with no difficult questions. If they were proper journalists they’d do background checks, look for elements that would sustain or undermine her credibility and present the story in a balanced way, not just repeat what she wants to tell them.
The reason that the death of that brave officer has not been repported is because it has not been “spun” to the press. Who would want to? You can’t sensationalise it for the consumption of the masses.
Respect for the police may be in decline amongst certain sections of society. However, much of the news media has not deserved our respect for quite some time. They do not investigate and establish facts anymore, they just repeat what they are told to get that exclusive story. And it usually is just a story, not enough to establish actual facts and the reality of a situation.
Alas, the police lost the respect of the public, especially the middle-class, generally law abiding public, when the focus moved from “the copper who exercised his (and it was almost always his, in those days) discretion to a system of fixed penalty cameras. Rightly or wrongly, the man in the street felt victimised and lost some sympathy with the police. Various events since that time have moved the support closer or further – heroic actions on 7 July in London move it closer, the Stockwell shooting moves it further. Andy Hayman’s use of a force Amex card for dandy dinners and fine wines, and whatever else moves away, as does Ian Blair’s general hyperbole. The BBC reflects the social mores of our age. It sees the mood as being away from police support (increased fear of crime, higher costs of policing, never see a copper when you need one, dumbing down etc etc) and therefore is willing to give airtime to those with a plausible complaint. I have no idea how the Tomlinson and Max Clifford led issues will be resolved, but by the time they are determined, the media circus will have moved on.
And in the meantime and officer is dead. My condolences count for little, any more than they do for our fallen in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.
“… up north (in my force anyway) police officers WILL attend if your house, garden shed, car is broken into or stolen, SOCO WILL attend …”
Not here, not unless what’s been stolen is valuable. There’s a reduced police presence because we’re a “low crime” area, most stations are closed evenings and weekends. Response time, if any, is a couple of days. If reporting a theft it’s hard to even get a crime number, because they don’t want to give one.
As for the reporting, frankly, what do you expect? Murders happen every day, few are reported nationally unless it’s relevant to some particular media campaign. The current media campaign is about police brutality. There can be no excuse for hitting a woman across the face, more especially if the hand and arm that does the hitting is wearing armour and it would appear that the officer concerned was attempting to conceal their identity. Add that to the possibility that the press had been excluded from the area and it seems that CCTV were deactivated.
We’re supposed to believe that surveillance keeps us safe. We’re supposed to believe that the Police Force is there to keep us safe – but it doesn’t, does it? Not if an individual officer is allowed, or encouraged, to behave in such a way.
The Police, individually, are decent folk but the bad apples are letting them down, and destroying public trust.
Would I voluntarily walk up to a Policeman/woman, to pass the time of day or ask for advice? – No.
Would I voluntarily speak to a PCSO? – No.
It’s time to rebuild the trust that existed, to read the excuses on here will not help rebuild that trust
IG,
Is there any reason why a post of mine is “awaiting moderation”? Or is the following comment aimed at my post?
Ta.
TaffyMedic.
Any chance of a link to the Red Ken “defending us” story please?
Sam – he’s comparing the news coverage you twonk
This is how I see it:
I read the BBC and I expect them to report exactly what has happened, nothing more, nothing less.
If I ever wanted to read an opinion on what happened, or read about events skewed toward a particular political viewpoint then I’ll read a newspaper. (some people DO like to be told what to think)
Trouble is, although the BBC are more or less unbiased in the content, the actual amount of coverage they give issues seems to be the problem.
I cannot see the death of PC Toms at all on the Daily Mail website. Not newsworthy obviously. But then, this is the same ‘newspaper’ who ran loads of stories on the ‘innocent’ Binyam Mohammed (the one who went to Afghanistan to get over his drugs problem and was ‘brutally tortured’), while giving a few lines to a few servicemen who were killed in Afghanistan the same week.
I am seriously beginning to believe the DM (other than Littlejohn) has been taken over by the left.
The Daily Express had Miss (Ms?) Fisher on their front page in print yesterday. The online version didnt have it at all. Would that be because they suddenly realised they had made a mistake and would get a good kicking from their readers?
I have been on a few other blogs and I must say generally that most posters are totally against Miss (Ms?) Fisher and for the sergeant. It seems there are also a fair few comments that are not exactly pro-police but also angry with the trial by media regarding Mr Tomlinson. Given the enormous coverage, and the squillionth re-run of the videos, is it possible that if either officer is taken to court, will they get a fair trial?
If you dont know about it go to http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
Also, after the ’smeargate’ scandal and the fact it was Guido (www.order-order.com) who exposed the emails rather than MSM, maybe the untruths they spout in/on MSM will no longer be believed by more of the public.
Sorry for 2nd post…
Mrs Rigby said -
‘As for the reporting, frankly, what do you expect? Murders happen every day, few are reported nationally unless it’s relevant to some particular media campaign. The current media campaign is about police brutality. There can be no excuse for hitting a woman across the face, more especially if the hand and arm that does the hitting is wearing armour and it would appear that the officer concerned was attempting to conceal their identity. Add that to the possibility that the press had been excluded from the area and it seems that CCTV were deactivated.’
So how many people do you know who are murdered doing their job?
So woman cannot be violent? What is all this about equality then? I have known and been in scrapes with women. One night shift made 3 arrests…all were drunken violent females. She didnt go down when he ’slapped her’ across the face and she went back for more. Press were excluded from the area???? Are you really serious??? I saw more photographers/cameramen than you get at the cup final.
The trolls obviously have a website where they can copy and paste the same old tired crap over and over and over…
It would be interesting to see if the same person posts under different names as well.
The reason that the media especially the BBC is running with Slapgate is because they are controlled by the government who want us to be diverted away from all their probs and the dirty tricks they have been up to.
Black Shuck on April 18, 2009 at 2:00 pm wrote
… I’m a newspaper reporter … It is ironic that local newspapers … are dying out. What you read there is probably closer to the truth. …
In my opinion, this is because people will have seen the incident themselves or will know someone who has; therefore the local newspapers are somewhat constrained by how far they can lie by omission or maintain the Egalitarian Fiction that we are all equal and that nobody is to be held accountable when Reporting Diversity . The consumers of the national newspapers or broadcasters are less able to verify content.
Black Shuck on April 18, 2009 at 2:00 pm wrote
… It is the job of the press to publish the truth and most reporters worth their salt try to do that. We also have a duty to give both sides a chance to have their say. …
For example when Nick Griffin of the BNP was on trial twice and the Drive-By Media covered the prosecution evidence but not the defence evidence?
Is it not the case that members of the national Union of Journalists have a policy opposite to what you have stated regarding reporting of the BNP?
Great post as usual. Max Clifford being behind this woman will turn public opinion against the protestors. From the people I have spoken who have differed in their views of what happened to Tomlinson, overreaction/trial by media to murderers, I’ve noticed a shift in opinion away from the wholesale condemnation of the police – purely based on this bitch.
Sorry – forgot to mark my condolences for the officer who died.
also where did you get that youtube incriminate yourself thing on the top right of your blog?
Staying out of the infighting in the comments a mo, you’re not quite right there IG:
‘ “we start to see the moral battle lines being drawn” ‘
They’ve been drawn for a long time now tbh. Couldn’t be clearer in my mind.
All in all I fear your chip is showing. I was reading you as part of my education but I’m only learning how you twist every situation to suit your hateful agenda.
I’m sorry the policeman died. I’m sorry the TSG man hit the silly woman. It is wrong for the two acts to be compared in any way – they are not part of the same moral battle.
Just to add my penny worth here. I reckon that gobby bitch who got slapped got all that she deserved (and look at her lapping up the publicity, even that leech Clifford is on it now).
Not all of us have gone insane and lost all respect for the police and I reckon 99.9% of the lads and lasses out there policing the G20 did a stellar job.
The witch hunt caused by the media and their “select” reporting is absolutely ridiculous…the beeb seems to be siding with the protestors with absolutely no justification…”he just hit me” without making clear that there was obviously a reason that person was hit, apart from the fact she is a benefit sponge- she also assaulted a police officer who had already told her to get out of the way.
Broken Britain anyone?
“It is wrong for the two acts to be compared in any way – they are not part of the same moral battle”.
He wasn’t comparing the two acts on moral grounds but on media grounds.
It is okay to judge the police based on seconds of footage which prove nothing but incriminate one party in a trial by media – but not her or Tomlinson in some people’s views. Not any more. Judge away about the moral character of all involved, the “force” used, and draw your own conclusions. That’s the pathetic infantilised whinging baby society we have become.
As an example of how the media can manipulate: I’ve just been on the phone to my Mum back home and even she – educated, well-read and someone I have infinite respect for – has been finangled into believing exactly what Max Clifford, and thus the media he has been talking to, WANT her to believe.
Mum: The woman said why didn’t he lift her up and move her out of the way and I agree.
Me: Cause then he would have had a sexual harrassment case filed against him for touching her inappropriately. And it wouldn’t have stopped her from having another go.
Mum: I suppose that’s true enough. But why didn’t he just handcuff and arrest her if she was causing that much trouble?
Me: Ok so a policeman in the middle of a protest is supposed cuff her – bearing in mind he has a lot of other potentially violent people around him – then take her away from the scene, find somewhere to drop her off in police custody, then get the names of witnesses, statements and so on… all whilst trying to police a protest? And as he would have set a precedent with her, he and the rest of the Police there would have to start arresting all the other people who start getting aggressive meaning more time handcuffing and arresting than actually policing and aiding those who are there to protest peacefully.
Mum: *Silence* True. I hadn’t considered that.
So my Mum, a 53 year old who certainly wasn’t born yesterday, was fooled by the spin of Max Clifford and the BBC who should know better.
God help the Police if this is what they are up against.
If she gets enough money to take her assets over £8000 she will have to come off benefits, unless she continues to claim illegally. Perhaps in a couple of months someone could make a report to the benefit fraud hotline.
See their is more than one way to break the benefit dependency culture in this country!
My tuppence worth…
The police I encounter on a routinely, weekly basis doing their normal duties = pleasant enough, professional, slightly world-weary sounding characters.
The police I have encountered on the very occasional time I’ve actually been on a large demo = slight scary and moody looking. And that’s the worst I can say about them, which really isn’t that damning, is it?
My condolences to the families of Gary Toms AND Ian Tomlinson.
This is trial by Media with Mr Clifford laughing all the way to the Bank.
It’s the job of the IPCC to deal with this hopefully by doing a bit more than just watching 5-10 seconds of shaky footage and listening to so called “Peaceful Protesters,” who i’m certain if left alone in the City would have planted a few trees and left the area unscathed……..
Having made this point i’d like to add i’ve sat in Court with a former colleague who was prosecuted by the IPCC and it wasn’t pleasant viewing.
I’ve also worked on real “Peaceful” protests and didn’t need anything more than a firm manner (and i’m a former TSG Officer) to do my job, the current Tamil presence in central London being an excellent example.
As to the tactics, had the French CRS, South African Police or the LAPD been faced with a hostile crowd and acted accordingly would the Media Hounds be interested? I think not.
Rant over, goodbye PC Toms rest with honour.
It’s wrong that the media should appear indifferent to the death of a police officer. Perhaps it is that we expect criminals to behave criminally and that’s not news. The story is the police behaving criminally – that is, unfortunately, the news.
Moreover, those robbers will without a shadow of doubt be hunted down and treated as their crime deserves. If police officers treated criminal behaviour among their own with the judicial fervour they will apply to these men, perhaps we wouldn’t have had a dead man in London.
The media coverage perhaps reflects the status of the police above that of the common criminal. I can only hope it stays that way.
The media is rather indifferent to all types of workplace fatality, and my cursory glance at the statistics suggests that being a policeman is in fact rather safe when compared to being a farmer or a builder.
So the national press is probably not full of stories about dead policemen for exactly the same reason that it’s not full of stories about dead farmers or builders.
They’re all awful for the people involved, but a look at the coverage of Ms Goody’s demise over the last month should convince everyone that whether or not you get in the papers is not a useful indication of some absolute worth to society.
Stop worrying about it – the poor chap would still be dead even if he was on every front page, and I doubt his family’s crappy lot would be much improved by Max Clifford sniffing around.
As soon as I hear Max Clifford was involved, I felt that the woman had no legitimate case to make.
She was getting plenty sympathetic coverage from the press. Getting him involved proved to me that she had no legitimate point to make and needed his well proven expertise to try and make one.
I just googled PC Toms and found one story. Presumably the local paper. By best wishes to family, colleagues and friends.
For someone who asked further up, I would always consider asking PCs and even PCSOs for assistance and have tried to teach my kids this.
The publicity around the alleged assaults by police officers (now totalling four, I believe) SHOULD be given a lot of publicity. So should the alleged murder of PC Toms.
The problem here is not that theactions of G20 police have been given too much coverage, it’s that PC Toms has not been given enough.
Policing of demonstrations has long been contentious, particularly when the Met has been invloved. (During the miners’ strike, the Met seemed determined to break down the working relationship between local forces and the miners.)
A large officer striking a small woman, even if she was – shock! horror! – swearing, is a most unedifying sight. An officer hitting and pushing a man from behind, a man with his hands in his pockets, seems somehow alien. It’s the kind of thing you expect from the CRS or the Russians, not British bobbies.
IMHO, the police had been hyped up to expect the kind of mayhem we’ve seen in Continental meetings of the G8. Partly through good intelligence, partly through large scale policing and partly because this is Britain, it didn’t happen (the crowd wasn’t drunk!).
You then have many officers pumped full of adrenaline and it’s got nowhere to go. They then react to minor issues as if there was a full-scale riot.
Would you expect someone on speed to react rationally? Adrenaline has many similarities to amphetamine. However, neither is an excuse for violent behaviour.
It goes without saying, though, that anyone killed by act of violence when doing their job should be headline news.
My sympathies go out to PC Toms’s family.
Here’s a thought for the people who thought that the ‘gargantuan’ nasty police sergeant was unjustified in his actions – what would you think if it turned out that that woman was about to spit in the face of the nasty police man? Would he have been justified in backslapping her across the face? Rather than the prospect of the worry of whether she was HIV, Hepatitis or a carrier of other nasty infectious disease? I’ve punched someone before for doing exactly this and believe I was perfectly within my rights to do so, spitting at someone is for me one of the single most disgusting acts and I’ll gladly punch anyone who tries to do it to me again, because if that stops the weeks of worry over whether you have caught a communicable disease, then so be it!
Also, I’ve not seen it mentioned on any of the blogs I’ve read, but as a self defence tactics instructor, does anyone feel that the level of force used by the ‘nasty police man’ was very well restrained? The slap to the face could have been much much harder, hard enough to knock this ‘feeble woman’ over – the video shows that she was momentarily stunned/displaced – level of force and proportionality well used if you ask me. Baton strike? Same again, it was not a ‘full on’ baton strike as the hips hardly moved in the strike (thereby transferring more force) and there was no real ‘hit and stick’ that we teach so again restraint – although to be honest I would question whether he was fully justified in using a baton strike – but then I wasn’t facing what he was facing – ie out of shot crowd etc etc – so without that evidence I’d withold judgement on that one.
Oh – and of course – thoughts to PC Toms family, friends and colleagues. Could be any of ‘us’ or ‘you’ next time!
The number of assaults against police is truley staggering.
The MET figures are appauling – I don’t know if this story is getting the coverage wherever you may be.
Put’s the four IPCC referals in to conext.
Perhaps Max Clifford could reflect on these.
http://www.birminghammail.net/news/top-stories//tm_headline=attacks-against-west-midlands-police-officers-soar%26method=full%26objectid=23412611%26siteid=97319-name_page.html
MariaAmira,
Excellent post, I’ve just had a very similar conversation with my own dear mother and like yours she is a very well educated woman and she too had been “duped” by the media. I explained whi I think she was wrong and he was right and she got it. Both her and my old man now live in Spain and I suggested she consider what the Spanish Police would have done in that situation her reaply was “Ah, well, erm… I suppose a slap would have been the least of her worries.”
Nuff said.
Regards,
TaffyMedic
Note to self: Always use spell checker whilst typing under the influence!
My condolences to Officer Toms family, I can only imagine how hard this must be for them.
Its sad the way the media acts, it really has to stop. I posted the story on twitter and have asked my meager following to do post it too.
It may be an impossible task to fix the injustice and imbalance in news reporting but I’ll sure as hell try and I’m starting today.
Hmm.
Well, I am not sure how far news spread across our country, but I am hoping someone has heard about the cop from Rochester, New York who was shot in the back of his head.
That story got just as much coverage as the story of the woman hit.
A cop getting shot in the back in the head and surviving should be on the same magnitude of news as the cop getting killed.
So, I don’t exactly understand what you mean by “moral battle lines being drawn”.
[...] Policeman killed – no story. Woman slapped – big story. Critically injured Metropolitan Police Officer Gary Toms aged 37, has died from his head injuries after trying to [...] [...]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8005107.stm
Given the accuracy of the Met Police press releases over the years, we can safely assume they are talking bollocks.
My guess is that the copper who was killed was run over by a police car. None of the people being arrested were charged with assault, the coded language the met used seems to support this.
Call me cynical, but the police are using a tragic accident to draw fire away from their negative image. Met PR stunt.
MariaAmira – good post.
Mark – I just don’t agree. The officer was well within his rights on on the esc. of force criteria to do so. It’s not nice – but neither is standing in front of a crowd that wants to do you harm.
Also to compare adrenaline and amph is a fallacy at best.
The body has plenty of mechanisms for bleeding off/using excess adrenaline naturally (the most common one being violent shivering (those who’ve been in that situation know what i mean – although if i remember rightly the shivering is made worse by the crash in blood sugar that happens after a violent situation has finished and the body tries to exit “fight/flight” mode again).
As far as i know, the body has no natural reflex to bleed off processed Amph’s and more importantly – the neurological and physiological changes are quite different.
Of course, it’s an awful thing when a police officer dies on duty, whatever the cause. That should be a matter of public interest and hence reported in the media; however, at the risk of sounding callous (cards on the table, here, I served 22 years in the British Army), ultimately, just like a soldier, the policeman’s oath obliges him to take mortal risks (perhaps not quite as many or as often). Participation in, or even transiting through, a demonstration should not be a mortal risk for a civilian. Whether Tomlinson died as a result of the alleged assault by the anonymous TSG hero is still not clear; it is, however, interesting that the default assumption, not just by the media but among a rigorous sample of half a dozen of my mates, is that he was, indeed, killed as a result of the police’s action.
Leaving aside the alleged manslaughter and the Clifford connection for now (and the unsavoury things it may or may not suggest about the woman who was allegedly assaulted), the general public do have some interest in how the G20 demo was policed.
What I saw was a highly-motivated front line of police officers who gave the impression they’d been briefed to expect a very hostile and violent crowd. While there was undoubtedly some nonsense from the demonstrators, like the attack on the RBS, generally, the crowd looked like the usual gang of middle-class wankers having a jolly Glastonbury day out protesting.
I have no particular brief for the cops – I have a lot to do with them professionally and like most large organisations they’ve got good and bad – but it is certainly true that at the senior echelons, they appear to have gone out of their way to push aside policing by consent with some startlingly dumb strokes recently and, especially in the Met, also appear to have become thoroughly politicised and, for reasons I guess we can all understand, have found the middle classes a more and more attractive target for target-driven policing. While effective in managing Home Office requirements, this does tend to annoy the broad mass of good people.
That same broad mass of good people tends to be an ungrateful and short-memoried bunch and it only takes one idiotic act to undo all the good will built up by many brave and sensible acts by individual policemen.
I’m struggling to be neutral, here. I’ve done riot control in a very robust and forthright environment (NI in the old days), dealing with some real scary rioters and it’s hard, difficult, unpleasant and terrifying work. I feel huge sympathy for the poor sods in hi-vis jackets and can quite imagine how it was for them, even in the relatively benign environment the G20/April 1 events provided.
I think posters upthread musing on how lucky the demonstrators were in not facing the CRS or the Berlin Polizei or the OMON or whoever are missing the point – unless they’re implying that high-impact kinetic policing of legal demonstrations is something they’d like to see in this country?
Whether Tomlinson died as a result of the alleged assault by the anonymous TSG hero is still not clear
Yup, that was a heroic act from the TSG officer, Homer is re writing the greek tragedies right now to include when a middle aged balding man was pushed over with his hands in his pockets.
Forget slaying a gorgon, pushing over a fat man is now heroic.
Oh get over yourself gadget.
“Max Clifford being behind this woman will turn public opinion against the protestors. ”
Oh dear oh dear. No it won’t. People are livid.
Honestly, I cannot believe that happened. I’m sorry you had the sorrow of losing a fellow officer. I guess it just goes to show me that UK media isn’t that far off from US media.
Let’s hope she donates all the money from the media coverage to feed poor starving orphans, or buy herself a nice shady island where she can gripe to a coconut tree…or something.
Nice to see Nick Hardwick (head of IPCC) remains impartial!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8006622.stm
This article and many of these comments are not surprising. The number of people here prepared to defend assaults against members of the public tells you everything you need to know about the police in this country.
I know coppers aren’t always very bright, but even by your lamentable standards this gutless and misguided sleight of hand in which you blame the media for public anger towards you is pathetic. It’s not the media. Of course it bloody isn’t it. You think the media had anything to do with people’s reaction to 25 seconds of grainy handycam footage? They just broadcast it. They could’ve broadcast it with no comment at all and it would’ve been even more damning.
This siege mentality you have relies on a fundamental misconception that the public would only love you if they knew you better. You remind me of the Blair cabinet.
The media cooperated with the police PR agenda when you published how much the demonstration would cost to police. They dutifully reported that when you put it out there for them to report. Just like they dutifully reported that de Menezes was wearing a large coast on a warm day and vaulted ticket barriers – information they mysteriously received from somewhere, eh boys? They dutifully reported that Tomlinson died of a heart attack and that the gallant cops treating him were attacked by protestors. They followed your carefully managed PR briefings to the letter. And then you have the nerve to complain about their biased coverage! When the Met has been using them very effectively to spread it’s lies and propaganda.
MariaAmirias post was particularly disingenuous. My mother would’ve hammered you into the ground like a tentpeg if you’d dared to advance an argument as specious as that in her presence.
King Ludd This is really simple. Due to technological advances, you are now having to see ‘for real’ the unpleasant nature of public order policing. Not very nice is it. Riot cops are recruited for their ability to take huge amounts of bullshit, abuse, non-compliance and sometimes violence from arrogant and usually state-benefit-funded rent-a-mobs. Sometimes it gets nasty. I spent Friday night clearing up sick from a man who lost half his head in a car crash while I waited for Paramedics. Didn’t see that in your newspapers. Grow up.
PSU Officers cover up their numbers because they do not trust their senior management or the IPCC.
Statement by Boris Johnson Chair of the MPA
Death of PC Gary Toms
18 April 2009
On behalf of all MPA Members I send my deepest condolences to the family of PC Gary Toms who has died today.
PC Toms has made the ultimate sacrifice and given his life in the line of duty.
As a member of the Met Firearms unit, he would have been only too aware of the danger he faced on a daily basis but was nevertheless diligent in his dedication to the safety of Londoners.
We must remember that as each Police Officer begins the day’s shift they can never know what may lie ahead. Londoners rely on their courage and selflessness to keep the city safe and we commend and support each and every officer’s dedication to fighting crime and making London a safer place for us all.
But today our thoughts are with Gary Toms’ family, as we salute his courage and mourn his loss.
King Ludd @ 6.34am
Policeman killed – NO STORY/Woman Slapped – Big STORY
Those are the facts about the media coverage. That tells you everything you need to know about the media in this country. I think you doth protest too much?
@Boy in Blue
I’m generally sympathetic towards the police. And I work for a local newspaper. At various times over the years I’ve tried to get comments from police officers working on a tough case about how things are going for them, what difficulties they are facing, what kind of hours they are having to put in e.t.c. Almost always the response I get is ‘no comment’.
And then those same officers probably wonder why their side of things hasn’t been represented in the paper that week.
Not their fault, I suppose. They are probably told they must not say anything to the press by their senior officers.
But you know what? If an officer DID break ranks and tell me, on the record, about the horrific stuff he had to do in the aftermath of yet another nasty traffic accident I’d definitely quote him. And I’d have that quote in the first paragraph of the story too.
All the best,
Golam.
Next PSU duty I do I’ll ask the drunken fools who are chanting and baying for blood to stop.
If they ignore me, I’ll use the magic words… ‘please stop.’
As they surge passed me and start taking chunks out of all the innocent members of the public, shops, animals and each other, at least I can be satisfied that i will not be complained about, I was polite and asked nicely.
I can see the headlines now…..
Simply put; We, the Police, canno t win no matter what we do. If we’re soft and fluffy the same people would be on here bleating and wanting someone’s head on a plate for not preventing widespread disorder.
Golam,
Say I gave you a quote and you printed in glorious technicolour with my details and a picture of me. I’d guarantee it’d be the last time I was seen in a uniform.
We have mortgages to think about…
Come on, don’t be so naiive.
Ah joy – Nick Hardwick making an inane comment about the covering of numbers. I wonder exactly how many times people have to be told:
1) There is a number and ID system on the back of each helmet that is visible to anyone behind the officers so they are not anonymous.
2) The ID numbers are usually the first thing to go in a rough & tumble situation as they are secured by a piece of metal with roughly the same durability as a bent paperclip.
3) Even if an officer were to take the massively unlikely step of deciding to cover ID numbers for fear of a media frenzy, what would that tell you about the perceived “fairness” of the IPCC or the FCIO? (Force Complaints Investigation Officer – not sure if the terminology has changed?).
Nick Hardwick’s background doesn’t exactly give me confidence that he is an impartial individual either: NACRO for 6 years, former chair of EMAG, and a Doctorate in Social Sciences.
I fail to see his detailed experience of frontline, particuarly riot policing?
Lol, lol, lol,
Sorry i’m falling about laughing, for all those people harping on about the “slight” woman.
Me and my burly boy mates will run happily shouting Tally Ho towards a report of 30 armed men fighting in the street, get a shout of two women fighting in the street and we all wimper silently in our cars praying no one knows we are there.
I’m a 5″2 female (in my magnum’s) and got a punch in the head that sent me flying, i’m now going to have to have surgary, he was 6″2, he got a four month suspended, where’s my pay out?
Rest in peace Pc Toms
Can anyone tell me how precisely the officer received the injuries from which he sadly died. At the moment it appears that the only information available is along the lines of:
“Police were called to Rosedale Road in Dagenham, east London just after 6am on Saturday to reports of an aggravated burglary.
Shortly afterwards, an armed response vehicle chased a silver Chrysler that failed to stop into Ashlin Road, a dead-end road in Leyton. PC Toms got out of his vehicle and was fatally injured.”
It is impossible to see if he was assaulted or whether an accident occurred as he was leaving the car. I do note that the three suspects being followed do not as yet appear to have been charged with assault or other violent offense. However, if the incident had been recorded and passed to the media I am certain that there would have been a more significant coverage.
I do not have any sympathy for the female protester as the video does show her acting in an extremely aggressive manner as part of a crowd surrounding what appears to be a small group of officers. Her association with the parisite Max Clifford and the manner in which she appears to be trying to squeeze as much money as she can from the even also reduces her credibility. However, the actions against Ian Tomlinson and the information released to the media following the incident (at which time the media was on the side of the police representation of the event prior to the release of the video showing the reality) is a completely different situation which deserves to be covered in depth.
“Stanislav – I’m not comparing the INCIDENTS I’m comparing the press COVERAGE of the incidents and the relative value of our lives in the media.”
Inspector: The word ‘news’ is derived from the word new. The purpose of news is to bring new perspectives, enlighten, educate, inform; to challenge our preconceptions, and force us to reconsider them in the light of new information. This is what a good newspaper or news programme does.
Therefore, it is more newsworthy to see footage of police acting thuggishly, ‘out of character’, in the manner of exactly the kind of louts they’re supposed to protect us from… than it is to read the undeniably sad story of an officer dying in the course of his duty. The FOOTAGE of police behaving in this way is very new – since this kind of thing has long been alleged, but rarely captured on camera, and NEVER before highlighted to the extent that it recently has been. It has rightly precipitated a massive review, still unfolding, of the police’s role in society – their status as ’servants, not masters’, as the head of the IPCC put it.
Do you begin to understand now why the G20 footage is viewed as so important by both the news agencies and concerned members of the general public alike? The police are there, in theory, to guarantee and protect our rights as law-abiding, democratic citizens, including our right to peaceful protest. To see them abusing their powers in a political role far outside their remit shames them and diminishes them in the eyes of not only the British public, but the watching world.
Lest we begin to think that the Tomlinson and Fisher incidents are isolated cases, here’s an article from that radical Marxist propaganda rag, The Sunday Times. Can we all just be absolutely crystal clear about the fact that the police are paid better, trained harder and – rightly – held to much higher standards than nightclub bouncers? And I doo nightclub bouncers a disservice – they are clearly, on the whole, far more restrained in comparison.
————————————————————————-
“At 4.50mins in to this clip an officer is clearly seen smacking a protestor across the head with his shield. At 7.49mins in an officer punches a protestor in the face.
Graphic new video evidence showing a policeman hitting a protester with a shield during the G20 demonstrations in London is being released by The Sunday Times today.
Lawyers have included this and another film of a policeman punching a man as part of a dossier alleging 10 serious assaults. It will be passed to MPs.
Footage filmed at the Climate Camp protest on April 1 shows an officer in riot gear punching a man hard in the face as a crowd retreats from a police line.
A second video shows Alex Kinnane, 24, an IT technician from London, being hit on the back of the head with a shield by an officer in riot gear. In both cases the victims appear to pose no threat to the officer.
The evidence has emerged after a second postmortem examination on the body of Ian Tomlinson, 47, found he died of abdominal bleeding rather than a heart attack after being hit by a police officer.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6122785.ece
I have known and been in scrapes with women. One night shift made 3 arrests…all were drunken violent females.
Thespecialone you’re talking crazy! When we women punch it’s like a cuddle and knives turn to kittens when we touch them. It makes chopping onions quite difficult.
Anon, did ya not get your £50, comp pay out that they decline to pay saying they are broke and ordered to pay a penny a week for infinity and you never get the dosh….
thats happened on every single one of the 30 + assaults I have gotten
I want to know the address of this woman so I can arrest her for section4 poa.
“People are livid”.
No they ain’t. This has turned into a witch hunt against the police now. I’ve lost all sympathy for the protestors. Even the Tomlinson case which had some credibility is now looking decidedly biased. No reports of bruising, no video to show anything but a shove and baton to the back of the legs but a finger pointed at police murder and request for only the police to look at how they manage riots?
How about they use water canon, tear gas and plastic bullets next time as they do eveyrwhere else so they don’t have to police these things at such risk to themselves in the first place?
“In both cases the victims appear to pose no threat to the officer”
The operative word being APPEAR. But hey based on this evidence alone you go ahead and try by media.
Such bullshit this has turned into.
anon1
If walking away slowly with your hands in your pocket poses a threat then maybe Tomlinson was threatening. However, in the second instance of the female protestor I agree it is not as clear cut.
I am very sorry to hear of any death in the course of public service. We can be certain of further news of PC Gary Tom’s death, when the circumstances are known. It would be wrong (but no unknown for the Met) to release statements/speculation/comparisons which later proved to be either deliberately misleading or factually incorrect. As a result of proper restraint on this occasion, the media have little to report and rightly refrain from any speculation or comparison.
That you choose to disregard restraint and make comparison for blogging purposes is nothing short of blatant hypocrisy.
I’m really feeling for all the police who were at the protest. As once all the trouble makings have received their compensation and sold the story, the policeman are left with losing jobs and criminal records. And of course lessions with be leaned, and in future police will have nothing but bad language (home office approved) to defend themselves. The public need to lean that the police are normal people and not the army of “THE MAN”. And ask themselves how they would deal with a mob of people, who would kick the cr*p out of them given the chance!
The police had the same problem as troops in troops in iraq!. Who’s the enemy when everyone looks the same?
Anyone with a brain would of stayed away from that part of the city.
As a memeber of the general public I can say that you guys & girls are doing the best job you can do with the cr*p you have!.
To Thethinblueline, not a single penny do you think it’s because i’m a woman? or maybe because i’m police?
Regarding the new footage of “assaults”
The punch is to a protester who isn’t getting back and appears to be saying something. The police are trying to advance and most protesters have turned and are starting to walk away, a line of protesters are facing the police and slowing them – it seems that they’re repeatedly pushed and shouted at to make them move and they’re still deliberately facing officers and slowing the line down. The punch barely makes contact and is from a distance so is low level force.
You also don’t know what the protesters have done before and after and what they’re saying. “Help me officer, I’m diabetic and need insulin!” is different to “I’ve got a weapon and will kill you all”. As usual the context isn’t reported by the media.
I’m with fingermoose, police should start talking nicely and politely at all public order events and should ignore warning signs in the crowd. “Yes he is showing dangerous warning signs but I’ll wait till he actually attacks someone before doing something, otherwise I might have to shove him slightly and that would be awful”.
@finger moose
Fine, I’ll stop being naieve about the police when some of your colleagues stop being naieve about news reporting.
Though I must concede that I don’t have a mortgage to worry about. Can’t afford one on my wages.
Camera
“the police’s role in society – their status as ’servants, not masters’”
Try this on a Saturday night in my town.
Servants to whom? The shit we deal with?
You would probably cry your eyes out and run like the wind if you even had to LOOK at the kind of crap we deal with every day.
Grow up.
Log Entry – exposing the “blatant hypocrisy” of the differing media coverage IS THE WHOLE POINT of the post. Clever eh?
“On F Division this week we literally saved lives. Two to be precise. I commanded both incidents and it was a privilege to be there with our teams. But then, no one wants to hear about that.”
Golam,
I’m not saying you’re naiive about the Police, but the fact that you expect one might risk his career, pension, mortgage and relationships with friends and family so that you can get a leg up in the journalism world.
I wouldn’t suggest that my colleagues are naiive about the media. Clearly they’re not. What bothers them is that a common assault (by charging standards) is given more media coverage than the death of a Police constable on duty.
The Police Sergeant will not be sacked. That much is clear.
As for Ian Tomlinson, it is unfair to comment at this stage, other than to say; how many of us, in our lives, have pushed someone over?
But for the grace of god….
Is it me or is i that when there is a peaceful demonstrations there are no complaints about police assaulting people for example, when 10,000 student doctors protested about unfair systems in the nhs it was manged by about 12 officers and there were no allegations of police assaulting people. yet in a “mainly peaceful”(BBC) where police get bottles thrown at them, hit with sticks and other make shift weapons then the police act unreasonably and hit people and push people away who are obviously no threat to them. It s not like people approach police with concealed weapons in the hope of harming them is it?
met bobby makes a good point. We police rugby matches between Bath and other major teams, someimes up tp 15,000 spectators present in the city after the match, with about 30 officers max and no trouble at all on either side.
Servants to the public, Alma Matters. And to the laws of the land. Your task, should you choose to accept it (actually, strike that – as you already have) is to enforce the rule of law; not conspicuously break it by, eg, launching unprovoked assaults on peaceful protestors.
Which I’m sure you would never do.
The publicity centres upon what I appreciate is a very small minority of officers who’ve perhaps been misled by their militaristic uniforms into believing that they’re some kind of invading army, rather than public servants and keepers of the peace.
Sterner criticism still must be aimed at the senior police officers who fed the press a stream of reports about a forthcoming ’summer of rage’ and then – surprise, surprise – got exactly what they wished for.
As for this kettling tactic – another brainwave of your superiors: just no to that – as I think we can now all agree? When you’ve exercised your democratic right to peaceful protest, most people want to go home to their wives, husbands, kids. A hot meal, a bit of TV. Not be held in a virtual cage, in their thousands, for 7 hours without food, water or toilet facilities; told no, you can’t leave; ID’d and photographed before you’re finally allowed to go, even though you’ve committed no crime, and are under no suspicion. I can understand that a large crowd should be dispersed slowly. But 7 hours? It seems like punishment. It seems abusive and anti-democratic. It seems almost designed to radicalise the views of many people who previously considered themselves moderates. It amounts to a gross abuse of power.
Speaking of which, what do you make of this absurdity:
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Photography_police_swoop_on_innocent_tourists_news_280903.html
Most of you here to seem to miss the point in the cases that have been so far highlighted and exposed by the press and public show police have acted with a disproportionately heavy handedness to the threat, in the case of the young woman there was no threat and in the case of Ian Tomlinson he wasnt even involved in the demos and was walking along a road with his hands in his pockets minding his own business. Also a cordon is not legal territiry to be defended at all costs, it only acts as a cordon with the consent of the public to acknowledge it as such.
The Tomlinson events though do highlight years of systemic culture in the police force that has covered up and enabled bad police operatives to flourish and continue in the force. The first post mortem results raises concerns that the police were aware at that time there was an incident and were trying to close down the possibility of further investigation until of course the camera evidence surfaced.
This also shows the police in their usual MO of protecting individual officers and the force itself even if it requires the fabrication of evidence.
@Golam
I can ofcourse see both sides of the coin here. The press (god bless them!) report as they see it, they can only operate with the tools at hand although it can be said and I’m sure Golam would agree use a certain amount of ‘poetic licence’ to get the job done. However I don’t think there are as many rules applying to journalists in relation to personal conduct in and out of their employ as their are to police officers. One that springs to mind is written in the statues. ‘Misconduct in a public office’ – Common Law (which if you didn’t know) deals with malfeasance or culpable misfeasance. Now i’m not a betting man, but I would imagine an officer who stood up to be counted by speaking to a local journalist keen to better his or her career with the ’scoop of the week’ might be putting themselves in the firing line so to speak (if they were misquoted)
Who (as a serving police officer) would speak to a journalist in the current climate? Unless ofcourse they were retiring the next day or could claim/fein mental illness. You see its a trust thing. Officers appear to be under all sorts of scrutiny both legally and morally and are now naturally very defensive. This is probably why these blogs are so popular. Their profession and senior managers don’t appear to be willing to stand up to the media. So whats the alternative?
We are lucky in this country to a large extent. We are able to demonstrate close to police lines without fear of being shot, arrested and never seen again, sprayed with water cannon (trust me that hurts, bad experience in paraguay another story) and other injuries. We are able to cover our faces (apparently) without fear of arrest and it would seem damage public property without fear of prosecution.
A couple of slaps and a bit of ‘truncheon rash’ is hardly news worthy.
However the death of Mr Tomlinson and PC Toms is. I would hope Mr Tomlinson’s death albeit tragic is not as a result of police action as this would only further the anti police feeling and greatly go towards destroying what trust the public still have in the police service.
I feel we should put our faith in the investigation and stop making judgement before judgement is served.
PC Tims deserved the respect that his office commanded and as a law abiding society should make the effort to remember his sacrifice. My condolences to both families.
Lets simply put things into perspective. a) let the media do their job, but they also need to report both sides. b) let the police do their job but they need to be a lot more disciplined and continue to use reasonable force. c) stop that stupid woman from making any money out of this (its our money) d) let the investigators investigate. e) Stop the politicians using the police to do their dirty work. f) let democracy triumph!
How sad this site is. The inspector has no understanding of either his village or the role of the police. If inspectors did their job and showed leadership and exercised discipline in their men the police would not be in the state they are in. The fact is police are paid to put their lives in danger apprehending criminals but they are paid to protect the public not assault them.
Everyday I see gum chewing police officers doing their own private shopping whilst on duty, being rude, parking in restricted areas for personal reasons etc. etc. They act as if they are above the law and any accountability.
I suggest Inspector gadget tries to understand the DIVERSE public he has to SERVE.
Richard Hunt – what utter rubbish.
You are prejudging a series of events without the full facts being established by the IPCC. Trial by the media?
This so called young woman has been abusive and has assaulted a police officer. She has been paid a large amount of cash to sell her story? She has admitted this.
There was earlier contact with Tomlinson and the police, we do not yet know what this consisted of.
A cordon is not utilised with consent, it is a use of force and is perfectly legal and can be enforced by police officers, whether others consent or not.
You clearly do not understand police culture, because if you did, you would realise that most of us are sick and tired of being painted as racist sexist thugs who enjoy beating people.
The bigger picture is that because the media are being manipulated for other purposes and are being selective in their coverage. Solicitors releasing edited footage? People like you are using this for other causes.
It is not the fault of rank and file officers, that the powers that be and this includes the IPCC are fighting for their political lives because they have messed up with inappropriate press releases.
Most rank and file cops have never had any dealings with the IPCC. Why did the IPCC fail to attend the forensic post mortem, they could have insisted on being there?
It is not a police officer that performs a post mortem, it is a Home Office Pathologist who is appointed by the Coroner. If they have made an error, that is a matter for them. I have no doubt that there will have to be a third post mortem at some stage.
I do agree that it has been poor that officers were not identified by collar numbers of their equipment / uniform, this will be addressed I have no doubt. But this would not have changed the outcome in policing this event.
The vast majority of cops are perform their difficult duties with great professionalism.
Have you asked how many officers were actually injured and assaulted in G20? Have you asked about the officer that smashed in the face with a large pole. Officers having paint thrown in their faces. Officers having their helmets ripped off them?
This was not a peaceful protest, officers have the right to use force to protect themselves, others and property.
Stop portraying us as thugs, this is offensive.
You need to look at the bigger picture here and stop seeing this as a class war issue.
When you get a minute have a read of Sky, see what the vast majority of people who have responded to the news stories have said. Thank God for the Great British Public who are sick to death of the so called do gooders.
I am just wondering. The significant number of police who were policing the protests acted in a honourable and good manner. The minority did not. the complaint here seems to be that the media is focusing upon the two or three events where the policing did not appear to be of an expected standard as per the medias view.
May I just ask how this is any different to the representation of the protesters which the media provided up until these events were caught on film? Up to that point all the protesters were being represented in the media as being aggressive anarchists and the predominant image was of the two individuals smash the RBS branch window and not of the events whereby the protests were peaceful or very minor.
It is not just the police it is just that the media will jump on any story which has a touch of sensationalism. As I mentioned earlier if the sad incident involving PC Toms had been recorded and released to the media then it would have received significantly more column inches and exposure. As it is details of how he received the injuries, what precisely the injuries were and if they were caused accidently or by a deliberate assault have not been released which does not provide much information for the media to report on. This make the comparison of how the media has reported the two different events pretty much moot and pointless.
Hi Inspectorgadget, you’re in the observer today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/19/police-g20-tomlinson-assault
Undoubtedly the proliferation of images from mobile phones and cameras on the internet is helping to push the case of the police critics. Footage of clashes at the G20 on sites such as YouTube are being countered by police bloggers like InspectorGadget – who has posted videos showing the protesters goading officers, under the headline “Police outnumbered and attacked”. Comments on his site spoke of being assaulted with stones and bottles.
This is probably the closest they’ve come to even handed reporting on the G20 summit, their reporting has been very one sided. They’ve failed to mention the context of the sergeant hitting the woman and say that he’s covered his numbers when we know the white denotes sergeant, they say about police “covering faces” when they’re wearing anti-flame hoods etc etc. They also crucially fail to say the footage you’ve linked to isn’t “goading” it’s officers being attacked with a huge metal pole!
Realistically are any of us surprised at how rank&file police are being portrayed by the media, not to mention being hung out to dry by the management/IPCC. Equally is anyone shocked that the death of a serving officer in the line of duty warrants less media attention than a bit of good old polis-bashing?
I’m sure Jackie Smith and Tony McNulty, among others, are secretly thanking the Met for taking the focus off them and their ‘expenses irregularities’.
Regardless of any and all of the above, the Met, and every other force in the land, will continue to serve the public without fear or favour, malice or ill will, regardless of how much mud is slung now, or in the future. This division of public and police is exactly what the agitators and anarchists want and strive to achieve, and if the police allow themselves to become isolated from the people they serve, then the anarchists have succeeded. I don’t believe this will happen as a result of the G20 operation or the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson.
RIP PC Toms.
God bless the Met.
I did as you asked, SpartanCop. I went to Sky News, against my better judgement, and I read the comments from the Great British Public (why did you capitalise that? You make it look almost sarcastic). I’ll save you the trip and reproduce the first three for you here:
1. “Silly cow I have no sympathy for her, if she didn’t want to get hurt she should not have been at the rally!”
Posted By Arnie
So Arnie is basically saying (I think?) that if you attend a political rally you deserve to be beaten. I’m sorry, but I just can’t agree with that.
2. “Well, it seems that the reason no criticism of the police is apparant is because none is being printed. Several people have commented to criticise the police and none of their (intelligent) comments have been printed. Although there is no promise of neutrality in these areas of comment, it smacks of Fox News in terms of bias, perhaps it reflects the viewpoint favoured by the editor on the day. Who knows, it is illegal to strike anyone, not only the police, they are only public servants nothing special, however a mature police officer should be above taunting.”
Posted by Alycia
I agree with this comment. Sky News is not exactly known for its commitment to providing a rounded and balanced view of world affairs. That they’re editing out comments that don’t correspond with the Murdoch worldview is singularly unsurprising. The Daily Mail operates a similar policy, leaving its comment pages skewed in a very misleading way.
3. “one other point not visible in all the pictures and video’s she was holding a drink and threw it ….this women has been on benefits all her adult life and has never worked looks like she wants to cash in”.
The woman’s employment history is absolutely irrelevant, I think we can all agree, and it suggests to me that this poster has poor logical abilities. So I’m tempted to treat the rest of his comment with caution – especially as he’s referring to hearsay evidence not present on the video.
I think we can more or less disregard Sky News and its highly selective comments as representative of anything important at all, don’t you?
saw – Hey wait a minute! none of the Ruralshire Tactical Support Unit slapped anyone on the G20 days! we were too busy eating doughnuts in the back of the van.
“saw – Hey wait a minute! none of the Ruralshire Tactical Support Unit slapped anyone on the G20 days! we were too busy eating doughnuts in the back of the van.”
I for one support your right to eat as many doughnuts as you can fit in, Inspector.
The vast majority of police officers are decent, law-abiding, responsible, dedicated public servants, who are largely above criticism.
The media spotlight is shining, not on them, but on a very small minority of officers who are concealing their collar numbers (so what if they also have them on the back of their helmets? That’s irrelevant), and visibly breaking the law. And we’re not talking about shifting a few knock-off goods in the pub – I wouldn’t deny them that small perk either. We’re talking about violent, unprovoked assaults on innocent members of the public.
Clearly that needs addressing.
It’s disappointing to see other officers defending these thugs when, as I said, they themselves are not the target of the criticism.
Good Lord, saw, I don’t want to know what area you live in. In my area, the police have always been polite and helpful. If they truly are as bad as you say, perhaps you should take it further than posting on a blog.
King Ludd – I love your metaphor! I’ll have to remember that one (and I am not being sarcastic, I love the english language). I have read enough news reports from a wide selection newspapers on the cases of Ian Tomlinson and Nicola Fisher to have enough ammunition to hold my own. Conceited as this may sound, she would perhaps find my argument specious as you say but she would also have to admit I do my research thoroughly.
Fingermoose – I think you’re right. The Police should adopt a much more gentle approach to the protesters next time around, so that when the same small minority of protesters start causing trouble again, they can’t complain about bad treatment. It would give the Met a ‘compare/contrast’ option. And of course it would keep the Press and Public happy as they are never more pleased than when they have something to complain about. “Police stand by whilst protesters destory Albert Memorial!” “Police ‘too scared’ of reprimand to deal with violence!” “Police put lives in danger with their laissez-faire attitude!”
No, you can’t win, and never will. But this trial by media policy which is being used at the moment is immoral, unjust and frankly undermines the justice process. In the minds of a fair portion of the public, the Policeman who pushed Ian Tomlinson is a murderer – because the press have let them think that way without any evidence whatsoever beyond a few seconds of shaky video footage.
I have been pondering on this hate war against the Police which has been waged by the Press and Public. Something my mother said sparked a thought. She is of the generation who can clearly remember the Thatcher Era and the Miners Strikes. Thus she also remembers the frankly despicable treatment of the miners by the Police Force. I am certain this has a large impact on the thoughts and feeling of the public today – I am however too young to remember any of it.
So I pose a question to those who were there – what do you think? Are the public wrong to punish the young for the sins of the fathers? Or are they right?
I can only go by what I read, see and hear and it is my opinion that the majority of the Police present at the G20 Meltdown handled themselves with restraint and understanding.
Oh dear. The government tactic of criminalising everyone has spread to the police now.
Nice to see them get a taste of the zero tolerance themselves.
Perhaps they might be a bit more understanding of the ordinary citizens minor transgressions in future.
PS. @ Inspector Gadget – It has just occured to me that you have 133 comments on this particular entry…if you want me to stop clogging up your blog with comments, just say the word
Sorry!
The sad fact is if the police were confident about their actions and attitude past and present they would be able to rise to the current media and public challenge and calmly reassure the public that these are isolated cases and not the defacto norm.
I however know through past experience that these types of police behaiviour and attitudes have been systemic for many years and it was only a matter of time before they would be exposed.
A statistic for you to consider …
A recent MORI survey for the British Medical Association showed that 90% of the population in the UK expected their doctor to tell the truth but only 58% believed that the police would.
I wonder what the statistics would reveal if the survey was carried out now?
Nick Hardcore head of the IPCC(Independent Protesters Complaints Commission) said “I have real concerns about the way the protestors behaved at the G20.They were punching and kicking anyone in uniform throwing urine over them and trying to stab officers with infected needles-one even hit an officer over the head with a metal pole.I am also concerned about the way some protestors covered their faces so they could not be identified and none of them were wearing identification-they didnt even have their names sown into the back of their jumpers.What were their Mums doing?Why didnt they come out and tell them to stop it and get back home as their teas were ready”
Nick Hardcore is 104 and a retired hippy
Sad to say if the response from Inspector gadget is genuine I am afraid it simply reflects what is wrong with the management in the police service today.
Not sure P C Toms is going to be a good example. I suspect he either shot himself by accident or was shot by a colleague. Either way,not very heroic.
That may be why the media is curiously silent.
I’m sensing a little resentment at the idea that the IPCC should have the temerity to poke its nose into police affairs (after it initially accepted the first police press releases uncritically, at face value).
RichardHunt
I wonder if the BMA ever asked Harold Shipman if his victims trusted him ?
oh no ,they couldn’t, could they ? cause they was all dead , like.
“I however know through past experience that these types of police behaiviour and attitudes have been systemic for many years”
With off the cuff, made up, extrapolated statistics ,like that it’s no wonder you may have been slapped around a bit in the past just for being a smart arse.
Are you a Labour spin doctor , or just a prat ?
uniform
your attitude only goes to support my point.
I have to say that I have never been ‘knocked around’ as you put it, if I understand the implication of your statement, I have only been witness to such events nor am I a Labour Party spin doctor.
The BMA didnt protect the public nor did the police when it carried out its own investigations at least the IPCC allows some accountability.
I didnt know the police had a right or that it was legal to slap around a smart ass!
As I said you prove the point wonderfully, thanks!
So far I have refrained from commenting on the individual actions of police officers at the G20 cos I wasnt there and have only seen video footage.Today I managed to see some longer footage so for what its worth here are my thoughts-
1.In “Slapgate” I saw a small number of officers in danger of being surrounded by the crowd and isolated.The Sergeant comes over and is clearly looking at the officers and the crowd away to his right.Suddenly to his left there is a movement and something blurred heads towards him I think it might be the womans arm.He must have clocked this movement out of the corner of his eye as he doesnt have time to look and puts his arm up in a block and hits the female.He steps back and sees the female advancing towards him.He warns her to keep back but she keeps coming.He steps back again and draws his asp she grabs at his jacket and starts to throw liquid at him as he hits her on the thigh with his asp totally in accordance with training and a reasonable response in the situation.
2.”Shieldgate” I see 3 officers being pushed backwards towards a low wall or a bench which means they are in danger of being pushed over by a crowd of 30+ demonstrators plus others out of shot.I see the middle officer point and gesture to the crowd to get back as the officers try to push the crowd back with small shields.I then see the middle officer point directly at a man in a brown coat and from the movement of the shield it APPEARS that this man has got hold of the shield and is pulling at it.The middle officer then does a circular motion with the shield to break this mans grip-totally in accordance with training-this circular motion combined with the pulling of the man means he is struck on his head.Everything I saw there was in accordance with training and reasonable self defence.
3.”Pushgate” I see Mr Tomlinson walking away from the police in a slow deliberate manner with his hands in his pocket being “passively resistant”.The officer comes up behind him and strikes him on the leg with his asp then gives him a hard shove from behind knocking him over-whilst both moves were in accordance with training Mr Tomlinson was not offering violence towards the officer or another person but being a nuisance.I come to the conclusion that this was not justified and is an assault.Whether or not the push directly caused Mr Tomlinsons death is going to be down to the scientific evidence but I think this one will go to court.
There have been a lot of people getting excited on this blog about police actions etc but the bottom line is this-Police officers were having to stand toe to toe with violent people and a hostile crowd and the” winners “were those with the biggest army or better tactics.European police forces would not have done this-they would have withdrawn to a safe distance fired teargas rubber bullets and used water cannon on the crowd then snatch squads to arrest as many as they could before withdrawing and repeating the tear gassing.Therfore it would appear that the G20 will bring about a fundamental change in police tactics because ordinary coppers will no longing be willing to be punch bags or Aunt Sallys-so what will we get-I dont know but to all those screaming for change(As I have said elsewhere)-BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
Camera and Richard Hunt
The point about the IPCC and its in its title is that it is meant to be INDEPENDENT-that is it should investigate complaints against the police in an objective non biased way not favouring the police or the complainant
Unfortunately of late there have a number of cases recently where the objectivity has gone out of window in the rush to find a scapegoat-officers prosecuted only to have the case quashed at the first Crown court hearing etc as there was no evidence
Believe or not no copper wants to work with a bad un but the IPCC is not showing itself in a good light because of its non objectivity and is losing the trust of ordinary decent police officers.
It will be interesting to see what Nick Hardwick has to say on Tue.
The nature of the present and few preceding topics suggests that more should be written in your sleep, IG. Nobody resorts to hypocrisy in dreams.
Retired Sgt
You say no copper wants to work with a bad un, why then do the good officers allow the the bad uns to get away with it?
I beleive there are far more good ones than bad.
Why do the force go to extraordinary lengths to prevent public exposure of any wrong doings by officers?
And if any issue ever gets to the magistrates court, why do magistrates accept the police evidence as being the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
It is this culture that allows the bad ones to exist and it is down to the police management to extract the bad apples before they ruin the orchard!
Black Shuck
thanks for showing up here! There seems to me to be a few different parties to our complex little world. The politicians seem to have every opportunity to put their side across. The Police and the Judiciary have resorted to blogging.
Strange as it may seem I have often seen biased media coverage as the evil part despite the fact that every journalist I have met seems perfectly reasonable. Perhaps this is because we’ve never heard their side of the story?
I hope you will continue to comment on here and other sites?
I fear that if tactics change, driven by the media, there will be a lot more injuries (to officers and protesters) and damage in the future. Or it will be tear gas/water cannon etc. Does anyone really want that?
Just a thought, press coverage of the G20 has created a shit storm. I make no judgement call on any of the incidents.
Why is it that the same negative publicity never comes into play when a social worker or social services are involved in a death?. Baby P DIED as a direct result of social services LACK of intervention.
The Mets senior management are accused of lying and media manipulation over G20. Well what did the senior social services management do with baby P. They LIED.
As unpalatable as it may be to some tree huggers police officers are called to account for their actions. When is that rule ever applied to social workers?.
“Dont know where you live but I attended 3 “run of the mill ” burglary calls yesterday.”
That’s great! Took the police almost a week to turn up for my shed being burgled, well over a grands worth of stuff nicked frmo it. Because it took them so long, it got ripped off again as I had already bought a replacement mountain bike… I couldn’t work out the first time how the thieves got into the place. They simply unscrewed the door and emptied the shed… then on presumably seeing I had a new bike they came back and nicked that one too but the second time left the door off!
Don’t even get me started on their unhelpful behaviour when I was beaten unconscious by a group of chavs. The police decided not to do anything because I identified their car as being dark brown (it was dusk with orange street lights on) and the car of the suspects was actually black!
I’ve been stopped by the police at night walking home because apparently a young guy like me shouldn’t be able to afford to live in an affluent suburb with half a million quid houses. I’ve had them fire questions at me so fast in the process they accuse me of being on drugs when I am hard of hearing and cannot lip read fast enough, asking me too if I have a job because I guess only wasters go out for quiet walks at midnight, insomniacs are supposed to lay on the couch watching tv and getting fat.
I’ve been stopped too for the suspicious activity of taking photographs of St Paul’s Cathedral because I was doing it at night. You know this little and popular thing called floodlighting which you might have noticed works well on film? During this I was actually asked if I was homeless because I suppose homeless people carry thousands of pounds worth of photography equipment around with them(!) The justification was that my jeans were torn – that I paid an extra 50 quid for the holes is irrelevant. Whatever happened to the powers of deduction that spot labels like “Diesel” on them?
My experiences with the police have been utterly negative. Without fail they have made me feel like I am a criminal, a burden or I have done something wrong. Is it really so hard to be friendly and polite? Perhaps some police officers are nice, but my experiences of them suggest otherwise, and that they can be so unpleasant to the public just makes us dislike and mistrust the police more.
How do you think my gran, a 91 year old woman who has always voted conservative and reads the Daily Mail reacted when I told her about being stopped for taking photographs of St Paul’s. She really did mention how World War 2 had been fought for nothing.
PC Toms – RIP.
Gracchus – there WAS a baying mob beforehand. I was at the protest, and it was not pleasant. Even before the TSG Sergeant made the decision to use force.
Thanks for the posting boss, I know the blog is widely read within the department and ever since the Few Good Men posting you’ve had our support in whatever you do.
Gary Toms was a good lad who died doing no more or less than thousnads of coppers do day in day out up and down the country, whatever the media would have you believe he wasn’t and never has beenthe exception. For all that have passed on their condolences thank you.
I don’t believe this is a genuine police officer – how about a collar number !
“Talk to me when YOU have 2 1/4 million readers.”
You do seem to be doing your best to piss them (us) off, though.
For years you’ve being saying the police are managed by donkeys. When evidence which just might support that view arrives, and the mass media jump on to what’s pretty much your bandwagon, you get all uppity.
When stories like this one http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7784301.stm stop needing to be told, then you might have a chance of more favourable press.
Your book and your blog give the impression that the British police are an organisation in need of profound reform. If you think such reform could possibly happen without considerable journalistic gore, then you’re in for a nasty surprise.
A significant number of very senior people in the police need to be replaced, and they’re not going to leave quietly. What’s started here might just be the beginning of what you’ve been wishing for for years, so why your response should be to insult hordes of your supporters is a bit of a mystery.
saw , really quite pathetic , ’slapped’ down you were, and resort to questioning the reality of this blog.
Are you Mcnumpty in disguise ?
He hadn’t got a clue either.
For aw wider perspective on the G20 protests see
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/04/politics-of-stoopid.html
<i…. One thing that does not come over from the growing collection of videos on “police brutality” during the G20 demonstrations is the context. Greenie protestors have developed and refined the art of provocation to a quite remarkable degree, calculated to try the patience of a saint and geared to trigger precisely the responses which have been so assiduously filmed.
As to the demonstrators themselves and their creed, one can only marvel at the police restraint – that there were in fact so few instances of “brutality” when the natural and human instinct would be to irrigate the area liberally with tear gas …
… Instead, while the [political] claque is wrapped up in its interminable court gossip, the “atavistic romantics” dominate the streets demanding exactly the opposite of what is required, screaming “police brutality” to an eager audience, when we should be shooting them all before their warmist creed drives us into starvation.
That our political claque can no longer focus on anything that even remotely approaches serious issues – like our survival – is the politics of stoopid. …
Certainly the death of a police officer doing his duty is tragic and his family deserves our deep sympathy. But so are most deaths, including that of Mr. Tomlinson or e.g. Jean Charles de Menezes. The police (and many posters here) has been showing its disrespect for these deaths by immadiately publicly badmouthing the victims (illegal alien, fleeing th epolice, alcoholic).
The statement of one poster that Mr. Tomlinson was “passively resistant” while walking away from the police with his hands in his pockets demonstrates (shockingly) that in a situation like a demonstration police officers see everybody as an “enemy” who is resisting somehow, no matter what he is actually doing. The police should, however, protect the civil rights of all citizens, even when they disagree with the government.
After the execution of Mr de Menezes and the police´s handling of its aftermath it is no wonder that the public should be distrustful.
Finally, the problem leading to mismatched coverage might be that (1) gangsters committed a crime but at the G20 seemingly policemen did so, which – hopefully – still is newsworthy and (2) police usually do not investigate against the “black sheep” among them unless they are forced to do so by outside pressure, mainly the media.
Oh saw – you sad sad person.
If you dont like it – \/m – JOG ON.
Nick Hardwick ,IPCC big master, has lost the plot, and any semblance of independence.
He has effectively examined , tried and found guilty ,any case involving a complaint which emanated from the G20 slapping carnival.
Quoted from the Graudian
“warning that police should remember they were “the servants not the masters” of the people”
meaning: Not like masters like me.
“He is also seeking the necessary resources for the watchdog to conduct more investigations independently from police”
suggestion: get a short shield and stand to then soldier.
“I think that raises serious concerns about the frontline supervision,” Hardwick said. “Why was that happening, why did the supervisor not stop them? What does that say about what your state of mind is? You were expecting trouble?
“I think that is unacceptable. It is about being servants, not masters: the police are there as public servants.”
He said such infringements were within the IPCC’s remit “and we will deal with it”.
No qualification needed: Hardwick has do nothing short of issue a communique insisting on the guilt of a round robin of youturde , mobile phone trash, alleged assaults , to his growing army of policepolice.
Lord Melchet “Bring in the Flanders murderer ”
Question ?
When are the federation , who take £17 – 19 per month off 145,000 members ,going to argue , on national TV and in the now indivisible newspaper industry for some restraint and to wait for ALL the facts to be revealed ?
Hardwick on courts not liking his evidence gathering.
Hardwick said that while the IPCC had attempted a number of prosecutions over the Countryside Alliance demonstration these had failed: “We had to go with what the court said but we were very very surprised at some of the verdicts. I don’t think this would happen now because there would be all this evidence.”
Interpretation :If big master Hardwick presents evidence to the courts in future , well you better believe it all or else.
priceless , pre-warn that all Police are guilty and then put the courts on notice to find guilt.
Hardwick arrogantly believes that everything he does and says is without fault , which is the road to tyranny and oppression for his targets.
Ex-Pat Alfie said it so well, I can’t do better than c&p :
Every death is to be lamented, be it that of a Policeman, a Fireman, a Serviceman on Active Duty or, come to that, anyone else. For some the risk of death goes with the job and that risk is (or should be) accepted.
In many cases that risk can be diminished by thorough training, good working practices and discipline. Much of which was noticeably lacking during the G20 demonstrations
With regard to the Public’s perception of the Police it is too simplistic to blame the Media alone.
Knowing the Media’s insatiable appetite for sensationalism the Met’s handling of the entire G20 episode was a Public Relations disaster and did little to instil confidence the Police as a whole.
To permit Officers to conceal their faces and Identity Numbers when confronting the Public was, to say the least, worrying and indicative of things to come, such as the excessive zeal of some baton wielding uniformed thugs against some non-aggressive demonstrators.
Consequently when violence did erupt, sympathy for the Police had long since evaporated, through no fault of the Media.
As for that Police Sergeant, presumably an experienced and well trained officer, to allow himself to lose control when taunted, and strike a slip of a woman, shows an alarming lack of self discipline and certainly brings his fitness to continue as a Sergeant into question.
(Her subsequent derisive self-serving actions speak volumes but highlight the damage caused by that Sergeant’s intemperate actions)
Talk of drawing moral battle lines rather than building bridges would suggest that subservience rather than respect, as your political masters crave, is the objective.
There are 648 of them, there are 60,000,000 of us. Which side would you really prefer to be on?
Remember the ability of the Police, as a whole, to function eventually depends upon the respect earned by each individual member.
——————————-
I agree with this.
No wonder the police are known as woodenheads – what a disgraceful blog – his main mistake is thinking of himself as an “emergency service” – never mind.
Lets hope we get some reform.
Saw,
I think you will find it is ‘wooden tops’. Still you have been wrong with all your other posts; why not this one as well?
Look chaps I’m struggling a bit with all this. I’m a nice middle class law abiding professional person who goes to work pays his taxes (more often than not) and votes randomly depending on his mood in the ballot box. I’ve also met a lot of coppers as part of my work and to a man and woman they have all been more or less of a type: likable and quite funny with a care worn sense of irony and full of stories about the job that would make most normal people’s hair fall out if they heard it. So I generally have quite a lot of respect for the fuzz and and actually a lot of sympathy for the crap heaped upon them by politicians and the management consultant obsessed senior managers. However, even I think this TSG thing has gone A BIT TOO FAR – sorry for shouting. You can’t just go around casually cuffing people ‘cos they are pissing you off – and because they are a bunch of hippies. it’s not on. It really isn’t It’s not very English either. It’s a bit Argentinian circa 1981. Alright it’s not that bad but its the same mindset. And when one of the TSG are casually wading in and cuffing girls round the head what are the other coppers doing standing there and metaphorically whistling with their hands in their pockets? Why are they not nicking him for err…..common assault or whatever…or s. 5 or christ knows how many other offences. And this chaps is your problem: We, that is the ordinary decent people of England, do not trust you, our constabulary, to do the decent thing when one of your bretheren crosses the line. Culturally you do not dob in your mates ….even when it’s live on TV!!!! And this looks very bad to us. So bad that some of us will begin to think that whilst you’re telling me off for- I dunno- doing 40 in a 30 mph zone you are fighting of the overwhelming temptation to rearrange my expensive dentistry down some dark alley for which egregious act there will be never the slightest prospect of redress or even acknowledgment. It’s a perception thing really. So please don’t brush it off as “the world’s gone mad…” because I sense that unless there are a few show trials we are going to get the impression that you can do what you like without impunity or even a quiet word in your earhole from a wise ..ahem Seargent …to the effect that: “mate if you are going to slap a girl in the mouth, however, irritating she might be, it wouldn’t be the brightest thing to do it in front of a load of people with cameras particularly when you might be one of the most recognizable officers in the Met”. In doing what did he – tall dark Seargent with ego problem- sent a message to us a bit like this: I can do this and a lot more without any fear of anything bad happening. What sort of culture allows for that type of thinking? So there is some sorting out to be done and a bit more humility as to why we need a bit of reassurance that your not going all Gestapo on us.
@ saw
Actually it’s woodentops! get ur slang right!
“It really isn’t It’s not very English either. It’s a bit Argentinian circa 1981″. I think thats where I went wrong fighting in the Falklands War and then joining the police service! Oops! knew it would manifest itself in some bizarre ritualistic behaviour on the streets of London.
Johnnie,
No mate, you went right in fighting the Falklands War – my point is the sort of principles you fought for: democracy, tolerance, the right not to be overborne by a fascist dictatorship are fundamentally English (or British) principles – which are the very things that this sort of bad behaviour by your colleagues undermines. We don’t do policing like that – just as our soldiers do not wander through an Iraqi village randomly slotting civilians in revenge for a murderous attack on their mates- that’s the sort of things Americans do. B
I personally think, not that it counts for much, that the majority of people should be posting on pickled politics. There is only so many times you can run the same old tired argument on a police blog.
Regards.
Ken Livingstone interview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8005000/8005498.stm
I’m not overly impressed.
Yes, we are indeed servants – to the millions of people who want to see that violent protests are firmly policed to prevent the city being ransacked.
baggers – these are not the kind of “girls” that you have ever met! and if you think bashing people is not very English, you clearly have not been out on a Saturday night for a long, long while. Apart from that, amusing comment!
I was at a football match this weekend. Several thousand ‘football supporters’ escorted in groups around a county town by a few hundred police officers and then kept in check by them (I was one of them) and a few hundred stewards for 2 hours by means of segregation into concrete and metal pens. Many had young children and despite this were engaging in mutual exchanges which consisted of chanting abuse towards each other. (The sort that my children haven’t yet heard)
After the match the away fans were kept behind in the ground for a few minutes whilst most home fans dispersed. Those home fans who remained in the vicinity bore a striking resemblence to the stereotypical hooligan element that my 25 yrs in the police has enabled me to readily identify. They remained in the vicinity of the ground for the sole pupose of goading the away fans. We then took the away fans to a nearby railway station where their transport home (trains and buses) awaited them.
Our senior officers were on the ground along side us and had planned the whole operation extremely well (I’m not a senior officer and I’m just as quick to point out their failings when they occur). I was dressed in my normal everyday uniform and I and the officers I was with were friendly and polite towards the fans (and the hooligan element) at all times.
On occasions years ago we used to suffer running battles in the town centre and trashed pubs. Now we don’t. Had we not policed the match in a firm but friendly manner with the numbers of officers we had then I am sure we would not have had such a peaceful day. It was obvious to me that things could have got ugly if we did not have such a firm control of the day before, during and after the match. I am sure most of the 30,000 people who attended that football match realised that and 29,700+ were very apreciative of the manner in which we did things to ensure the maintenance of public order and therefore their personal safety. I am also confident that they were willing to put up with a little so-called ‘infingement’ of their liberties to achieve that.
I wasn’t at the G20 demonstrations but I have been on duty at a great many football matches and demonstrations and think I can honestly say that generally, the British police do a remarkable job in keeping the peace at public events and sporting fixtures. We do the same at demonstrations as well whilst enabling legitimate protest to take place.
Dear Saw,
However understandable it may be in times of strained relations, the adrenalin fuelled message has the least support. The generalised insult is not even honest, if like most of the public you acknowledge the majority of police as intelligent and hard working. A mid position usually gets a fair hearing but what is essentially a police blog will take no prisoners when public ignore a reasonable standard of courtesy expected from a guest.
IG – what’s this one about:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-plainclothes-police
How do you prevent an embarrassing blue-on-blue when you’ve got coppers dressed-up as protesters and carrying weapons?
Or do they have a pre-arranged ’safe word’ like the S+M crowd?
Hijacked once again!
I washoping that 168 comments meant that we had 168 expressions of sympathy and understanding.
Instead we have 168 comments and continuing argument about Tomlinson.
I knew Gary, I was lucky enough to be one of his street duties tutors. Can we separate the rants please?
AM.
“my point is the sort of principles you fought for: democracy, tolerance, the right not to be overborne by a fascist dictatorship”
What avout mutual respect, politeness and responsibility for your own actions?
Something the loud mouthed aggressive bint in “slapper-gate” seems to have forgotten when she advanced when told to get back, spat, and grabbed at a police man.
Im not a copper, and given the utter crap the police are on the receiving end of now I’m glad I didn’t choose that career choice. Best of luck to those who have done so – you need it!
My God! They ARE desperate to avoid the point i.e.
Woman slapped – Big Story
Policeman dies – No Story
A policeman’s death in the line of duty is a tradgedy. I would hope no-one would deny that.
I found this blog mentioned in today’s Observer and must say it has been an eye opener all round.
Woman slapped – Big Story
Policeman dies – No Story
Loads of people standing around bored and pissed off but static in a ‘kettle’ Dull story not that many good pictures – the odd woman getting slapped being the exception that proves the rule
Major change to UK public order tactics, to avoid officers going hands on and using bodily containment to create static crowds, with a move to a more continental (and equally ECHR compliant) hey presto great pictures of:
Water cannon hosing protesters down the streets, from a distance (Germany)
Rifle mounted CS grenades creating tear smoke barrages causing mass temporary blinding, some vomiting and the odd death, from a distance (France)
Letting things develop then when we want to send out the message that its now time to go home, shooting one or two people in the head with live rounds, from a distance (Italy).
I don’t think these options are as good as what we have now, but the important thing is that they will make much better television.
“My God! They ARE desperate to avoid the point i.e.
Woman slapped – Big Story
Policeman dies – No Story”
Loads of people have addressed this point in these comments.
Truck driver dies – no story
Farmer dies – no story
Window-cleaner dies – no story
People dying doing their job is just not news, sorry about that.
Once well-respected national police force sinks towards continental levels of craptitude – news.
That’s actually flattering to you guys, though you’re doing your best to be churlish about it.
Saw
How did I guess you would have come to this blog via the Observer?
Mmmmm, let’s see…..
Condescending – check,
Pseudo-intellectual – check,
Gratuitously insulting – check,
Pretentious – check
And in the great Grauniad tradition – can’t spell.
As someone else said – JOG ON
Gadget,
Anyone in front line service facing the ‘great british public’ in all its irate and unpleasant guises should live by the following axiom; “When you do right, no one remembers; when you do wrong, no-one forgets.”
Please tell me that getting held-up at gunpoint is not a trivial crime. This happend to me recently and all I got was a short interview by a police officer. I haven’t heard from anyother authority about this. I was like I made a call to report unruly neighbors.
I just hope you realize that the Daily Mail doesn’t speak for us ordinary citizens, not everything Ken L did was bad and that large parts of Britain don’t believe what Max C tells us to believe.
I saw the video, and though the baton strike was a tad ecessive, i don’t really see what the big deal was, she looks like a gobby cow who woulden’t do as she was told.
re: Teofilio Cubillas
What a sad culture on this site picking up on a typo. There was a time when the police helped the public when they had committed a minor transgression – now they charge them !!
Bye – won’t be back.
… After 90 complaints were made about the policing of the recent G20 protests in London there have been calls this weekend for a review of public order policing. The president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Ken Jones, discusses the calls for a review. …
Listen here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8007000/8007589.stm
… Nick Hardwick, the head of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, has called for a national debate on how public events are dealt with by police. The death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 events and footage apparently showing police brutality have fuelled calls for a review. David Davis, former shadow home secretary, and Derek Barnett, vice president of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales, discuss the calls for a debate. …
Listen here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8007000/8007668.stm
‘Nick Hardwick, the head of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, has called for a national debate on how public events are dealt with by police’
What a great idea, we could form ‘think tanks’ comprised of university professors and academics, who spend their lives locked in offices reading books, and readers of the Guardian and other well meaning members of the public, all for whom the closest they have ever been to a public order situation is trying to push to the front of the queue at their local wine bar, advise the police on how to deal with violent idiots.
Another great idea from politically motivated dickheads.
In my circle of acquaintance – close & casual, working & middle class, friends, colleagues, “left”, “right” etc, etc, I haven’t heard any opinion other than variations on the theme of “not retreating from the police line when warned was daft, really – it pretty much constitutes a failure to protect oneself by taking appropriate action”.
I don’t think that the public in general would take any other line; their perception on law & order issues is, I reckon, generally pretty accurate & common-sense – certainly much more so than that of politicians.
Will
“My God! They ARE desperate to avoid the point i.e.
Woman slapped – Big Story
Policeman dies – No Story”
Loads of people have addressed this point in these comments.
Truck driver dies – no story
Farmer dies – no story
Window-cleaner dies – no story
People dying doing their job is just not news, sorry about that.
Once well-respected national police force sinks towards continental levels of craptitude – news.
That’s actually flattering to you guys, though you’re doing your best to be churlish about it.
Will, the issue is that if a truck driver,farmer or window cleaner should inadvertently cause the death of some one then they are not tried and found guilty,before trial, by the gutter press and the government’s thugs now known as the BBC.
Saw
Clearly your po-facedness doesn’t extend to acknowledging the Grauniad / Typo reference. I note you don’t take issue with the rest of my observations though.
Bye.
What I don’t understand was how some of the camera wielding vultures weren’t accidentally hit by a misguided baton / shield at least once or twice.
Now that truely amazes me .
When a crowd get’s too close ,another words in your face you will always get idiots amongst them who will try anything or be centre of attention .
PS
I seen this on the live text coverage
G20 call for action amid protests
amongst the live text commentary
1309 Commander Simon O’Brien from the Metropolitan Police’s Gold Command centre says the 3-4,000 people now outside the Bank of England did not tell the police their plans, making decisions about policing levels “very difficult”.
that appears to be great leadership in anticipating what can happen etc . There was always a “BE PREPARED” for any circumstances attitude in our briefings .
Now Police leaders expect the protestors to tell their every move .
Imagine how gullible/stupid that sounds .
191 posts
got to be one the largest responses yet !
My God! They ARE desperate to avoid the point i.e.
Woman slapped – Big Story
Policeman dies – No Story
Ok Gadgester, I know it’s pointless posting this late on but I will anyway.
I don’t like the police, and I’m not too keen on your blog after the last few posts. But I can see where you’re coming from, a bit, with this.
A few weeks ago a chopper came down in the North Sea, the second one in six weeks. Unfortunately this time no-one made it, all 16 onboard died. I work offshore so that was quite big news to me. I was constantly flicking between SkyNews and BBC news24 (or whatever it’s called), not a mention; the top story was what was on the dinner menu at the G20 piss-up. It got good coverage in the Aberdeen papers, and the Jock editions of the nationals gave it a mention. But that was about it. I’ve been trying to find stories relating to the investigation but the press seem to have lost interest.
You are as guilty of the press though of late, with deliberately misleading blog posts, and ridiculous statements like “1.8secs of coverage” just make you look daft.
PS. Condolences to the friends and family of Mr Toms.
Looks like all the handwringing and mea culpas from the top brass and the politicians over G20 policing methods has emboldened the Tamil protesters this morning!
Let’s hope some of the people pontificating about ‘right to protest’ are caught up in it and unable to get to work/home…
I’ve made enough comments about the G20 thing on my blog (hint: you’d probably disagree) but I have to agree that it is a shame Gary Toms didn’t get more coverage – brave officer, died in the line of duty etc. I also agree that that woman who got hit was looking like a right pain in the a*se (however, that does not justify striking her).
However, I suspect we’d disagree as to why he didn’t get more coverage. I think it’s because the Met’s thuggery at the G20 (yes, I do expect police officers not to react to provocation, I don’t expect it to be easy, but that’s why it is such an important job) has tarnished everyone’s opinions of the police to the extent that I couldn’t help wondering ‘I wonder if Gary Toms was at the G20? I wonder how he behaved?’.
And that’s not fair on him; it’s not fair on a great number of other officers either. But it’s the actions of certain officers that are tarnishing the rest. If the rest don’t want to be tarred with the same brush, they need to stand up against that sort of thing…
There may be arguments on both sides of the story, but I was there and the police aggression even towards middle-aged white men like me was uncalled-for: outside the core group and presenting no challenge or threat whatsoever.
There’s no excuse for hitting women unless they are attacking you with some kind of deadly weapon – which the woman in question wasn’t.
As for Mr Tomlinson, the man posed no threat, so what was the problem? Just shows officers as bullying thugs – and so cowardly they have to remove their ID to try and avoid being caught.
The police are a disgrace and ought to realise they are meant to serve and protect us, not beat us up for no reason.
Peaceful protest is lawful and should not be seen as something you have to squash.
Oh, and well done for putting another side of the story. If only more people could actually argue their sides of the story reasonably without resulting to personal attacks or tired old cliche (fascist state/ bleeding heart liberal etc), we might actually get somewhere.
Oh, and as I didn’t mention it before, I’ll just be clear – I think the police have to put up with an awful lot of abuse and insult. As well as fixing where the police go wrong, we should look at where society has gone wrong to be so anti-police in many areas.
Anyway will have to start reading your blog more often, have been impressed with what I’ve seen, although I’ll reserve the right to disagree with you
Richard Hunt and saw
Having been a police sgt for 26 years I can say with reasonable authority that police officers do not like wrong uns-many officers are found to be unsuitable for the service.In my time I have got rid of some but the problem now is that Senior officers refuse to bite the bullet or wait until it is too late-this is exacerbated by the fact that many supervisors at Supt level and above have done no real policing and are one trick ponies having been promoted usually on the back of numerous courses and the occaissional foray into the real world.This coupled with targets etc mean that the only way these officers can get on as they have no police experience is by fiddling crime figures(eg changing robbery to theft from person etc) or sucking up to politicians.There now comes another factor into play-diversity targets-this means that any officer who is a member of a minority group will tend to recieve favourable treatment at a disciplinary hearing as the Home Office is now monitoring what punishments ethnic officers receive.There was recently a case which brought anger from all contributors to this site when a black officer punched a MOP to the ground and smashed his camera after he took a picture of the officer driving through a No Entry sign.The offender was not prosecuted and received a slap on the wrist at his discipline hearing when he should have been sacked.There are also many police officers with criminal records still serving because the Chief Constable would not sack him or her or the offender was reibstated on appeal.I have a further example of my own where my penultimate new probationer was a disaster-he claimed he was dyslexic but could produce no evidence of this -ie a statement -he displayed worrying behaviour towards females there were honesty and time keeping issues and he was also a drinker who became involved in fights off duty.Most of the evidence was supplied by fellow officers and it was agreed to dispense with his services as being unsuitable-he appealed to to the Chief Constable and was reinstated.A contact in HR told me this was done as there werent enough “Dyslexics” in the force.What message does this send out?Not surprisingly he caused firther problems but still has not been sacked and is no longer allowed out of the police station?And then you wonder why Sgts and Inspectors are struggling to control constables?I could go on at length about the selection and training processes but I think thats enough to being going on with.
I just read the article that Sarah linked from the Guardian website (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/19/police-g20-tomlinson-assault)
I particularly liked this statement: “the baton-inflicted bruises of a young woman who alleges Taliban style brutality”
PAH! “Taliban style brutality”! Don’t make me laugh. It is quite clear these pricks have never seen the result of “Taliban brutality”. As a member of the TA I have been to Afghanistan as a medic. I have seen first hand the results of “Taliban Brutality”…
Taliban brutality is:
Being shot in the face for disagreening with them.
Women having their faces slashed with machetes (usually so forcefully that their cheekbones are broken) because they didn’t wear a HiJab.
Chopping people’s hands off or just shooting them again in the head, for talking to coalition forces.
I have seen a case where a man was shot in the stomach as a result of talking to coalition forces. For those not in the know, being shot in the stomach is one of THE most painfull ways to die. It is very difficult to treat. If you’ve just eaten acid leaks out and begins to digest the skin around the wound.
Please don’t even think of comparing the G20 protests to “Taliban Brutality” they simply don’t compare.
Regards,
TaffyMedic.
P.S. BOB: you actually are a moron. I do hope that next time you have reason to call the police they find your statements on here. Perhaps you’ll get the service you deserve.
An example of colleagues standing around and doing nothing whilst a colleague breaks the law?
200!!
I once had to deal with about 20 hells angels at an event I was running, nowhere near on the scale of the demonstrations here, but 2 of us had to try and control an angry group of bikers intent of kicking the crap out of somebody that had ‘disrepected’ them (in their eyes – a 70 year old man in reality). I am not a police officer but an every day MOP and I dont mind telling you I was scared. I have never been trained in crowd control but I can empathise with the officers mentioned. Unless you have been heavily outnumbered by people you think are capable of seriously injuring or even killing you, you cannot get into the mindset of what happens. If your job depends on you being there you cannot run off and hide, and if you show people in that you are frightened you are sunk. When I was dealing with the bikers I had no time to work out if one of them was a threat, two of them or all of them, or even if some of them were trying to calm the situation down. I was just concentrating on trying to calm things down and calculating my chances if I took on the largest one. Fortunately it stopped almost as quickly as it started and other than having to clear up one broken nose (the old guy took one to the face) it all calmed down and everybody went on their ways.
But my point is I had no time to assess who was a threat and who was just a bystander, so I can fully understand that if you are there to police an event that it can be immensely difficult to work out what is going on in the heat of the protest. The demos in London were not a surprise and people knew they were planned, had I come across the police driving people back up the street I would not wander slowly up with my hands in my pockets I would get the flock out of there.
First time reader with major concerns over the powers that Police will leverage in order to ‘ensure public safety’. I do the see beginnings of a police state as our civil liberties ere increasingly undermined and eroded by unecessarily heavy handed anti-terrorism laws.
However, despite my fears,a nd looking forward to some good healthy debates on this site, I will say that the press coverage of anything is out of kilter in this country. Everything ‘bad’ is sensationalised and good stories are releagted to inside pages or ‘Drop the dead donkey’ slots on TV news.
The death of a serving police officer is sad and deserves equality of coverage, however it doesn’t detract from the imbalance in the shift of powers to the police to stop basic rights as demonstrating (peacefully), gathering to demonstrate (as with the power station folks) and the recent photographic restrictions which are insidious to say the least. We live in a CCTV monitored society actively endorsed by police forces throughout the UK, so the very least they should expect is a cameral lens up their virtual arses as an incentive NOT to abuse their powers, or the public.
The most balanced view of the media imbalance has been expressed most succinctly by the marvellous Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. I suggest you all spend 30 minutes watching this weeks to see just how ‘cock’ the news reporting on the G20 was. he doesn’t let the police off scot free, but he does put a fantastic realist perspective on how its presented to the public.
Fascinating blog which I will spend some time back reading – I do like a good debate.
GJ
Gary Toms died after he tripped and hit his head of the pavement, the robbery suspects tried their best to revive him despite being wanted men and risking arrest.
To tell you the truth I’m not sure how he died, but we will go with this story as it shows the public in a better light which is more important than the facts.
It’s not nice when it happens to one of your colleagues, but when it happens to Ian Tomlinson it’s OK is it?
If your a policeman your loyalties should lie with the public NOT your fellow officers.
When we hear stories of police testifying against other police officers who have broken the law, then they might deserve some respect until then they only deserve to be treated as the government thugs they are.
TaffyMedic @ 11.39am. Please help me, you call me a moran, for what. Highlighting the double standards in the reporting of issues in the UK?.
1, There are double standards in how police are viewed and reported by the press for a death but, it is different if social services are involved (Baby P). Or is it only reportable if there is a direct action causing death rather than inaction?.
2, I can assure you that any Barrister defending potential charges against police officers’ at G20 will have a field day it court. Simply because the press and BBC have already prejudiced a FAIR and OPEN trial.
If only you knew?.
I love your headline picture, the one of the heroic copper with blood all over his face. I think if you check the reports you will find that the “blood” is actually red spray paint. I can understand your difficulty though – it was VERY difficult to find pictures of injured coppers on April 1st demo day, despite the thousands of press present. Not too difficult to find video/photos/witness statements for wounded protesters though.
Well, maybe it’s just a great big conspiracy against the poor British bobby. You guys need to wake up fast – even your trained poodle (”I”PCC) is reminding you that you are servants NOT the masters.
Remember the SPG? “Disbanded” when someone found baseball bats, crowbars and sledgehammers in their lockers? I can feel a name-change coming on for the Territorials, can’t you?
Jo Public doesn’t need to believe some scruffy protester whingeing about police brutality … the pictures and videos speak DIRECTLY to ordinary people. That voice even reaches my 75 year old dad, who has read the Daily Mail all his life, and wouldn’t agree with a protester in a million years.
You just don’t get it do you? We can see for ourselves …
“P.S. BOB: you actually are a moron. ”
There are at least two people posting here under the name of Bob.
Incidentally I’m giving stories of previous brutality a great deal more credence after these events.
Paul
In the case I have highlighted above police officers were more than ready to give evidence against the idiot who punched the MOP but it never went to court.I also know of officers giving evidence in court against colleagues who had broken the criminal law-yet these cases rarely get reported.
I have given evidence in discipline hearings against other officers but have never done so in court as it has not been necessary.
All police officers ask for is a fair throw of the dice-we know when we go to work that we or one of us may not come home again-we also know that we may have to do something to another human being that we dont want to do-that is punch or baton them hard because he is a 20 stone drunk with a samurai sword or is one of a crowd of umpteen who is trying to do you serious harm.That punch or baton strike may have no consequences whatsoever other than a sore bit of the body but on occaisions it may result in a serious injury or death-if that is the case we need to know that we will be treated fairly and not prejudged.We are asking youngsters to go out there to ensure that anarchy does not reign
Finally to all of you out there who are critical of police tactics tell us how you would deal with a screaming mob-not just at a demonstration but on a normal Friday night…..
Linked arms, hi-viz, no shields or helmets, and a disorderly protest…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8008044.stm
About 36 seconds in.
blueboy83
“it was VERY difficult to find pictures of injured coppers on April 1st demo day, despite the thousands of press present. Not too difficult to find video/photos/witness statements for wounded protesters though”
Thanks for making my point again for me.
As for the paint; I know it is paint, I was there. Subtle point; if I poured paint over a member of the public it would be ok yes?
Grow up.
Spartan Cop – leaving aside his tragic and probably avoidable death – are you suggesting that the treatment of Mr Tomlinson was acceptable ? If ‘there was earlier contact with Tomlinson and the police, we do not yet know what this consisted of’… I am curious to know – what sort of contact would make it OK to attack him, in your opinion ?
Retired Sgt I’m pleased you recognise that the assault of Tomlinson was at unjustified but I am quite surprised that one individiual being slightly sarcastic to a group of about 10 coppers should be batoned and shoved to the ground from behind with no warning according to your ‘training..’ – maybe in some countries but I had hoped not in the UK.
All the police on here seem to think that the best thing to do with a ‘gobby cow’ is smack her round the face and then baton her. So that must be part of the training too I assume. All of you are ignoring the treatment of the black man who asked very nicely if he could leave – which sparked off the row in the first place.
I agree that the media coverage concentrates on one or 2 bad incidents out of many – it’s a problem with the media and I can see that’s a problem for you – but I’m not sure it’s a bad thing… in the past any incidents like this would be denied or covered up with statements like ‘there was earlier contact between him and the police’, ‘he died of a heart attack’, ’she was threatening the officer’, ‘he was a terrorist’, ‘he jumped the barriers’ etc. Times have changed… we can see these things quite clearly for ourselves now.. so you can’t cover anything up. This is a good thing for the public and a good thing for good police – isn’t it ?
The Bob I am aiming at is this one:
“Oh dear oh dear. No it won’t. People are livid.”
and
“Oh get over yourself gadget.”
I apologise to non-moron Bob.
Blimey.
Before I read all these new posts and start wittering on about the ‘enclave mentality’ of police work, or something, which I probably will at some point, I’m going to stick up for the Inspector here and say that he’s just an honest bobby from a quiet rural community, and that he didn’t personally kill Ia.
Everyone should read this moving account for a look at the other side of police work:
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/the-rich-girls-are-weeping-technical-overhaul-this-week-more-new-stuff-on-thursday/
Bah, it removed my brackets. After “Ia” it should say (sniiip – Ed).
Bugger.
““Oh dear oh dear. No it won’t. People are livid.””
Yeah that was me.
People are livid.
I don’t see how that makes me a moron.
PC World on April 18, 2009 at 12:51 pm wrote
… I won’t be doing any more Level 2 stuff after this and would encourage colleagues to hand back tickets. …
Are all the Police Officers on demonstrations volunteers?
Is volunteering mandatory?
Does not volunteering end one’s promotion prospects?
inspectorgadget
Interesting reasoning you have there … you illustrate an article about a policeman killed with … a picture of a copper sprayed with red paint. Not misleading or anything. Still, when it comes to misleading people, you guys have serious form. That Ian Tomlinson, he just slipped and fell down the stairs guv, honest. He threw his head against me truncheon sarge, what could I do?
Furthermore, you say that the lack of pictures of a wounded copper on the day is “proof” that the media are biased. That’s seriously dodgy logic.
If you care to look at the evidence, I think you’ll find that the press on 1st April and 2nd April towed the usual line – they swallowed everything you guys fed them. “Man dies of heart attack – heroic police try to save him as baying mob pelt medics with bricks and bottles.” Remember that story? It was UNIVERSALLY reported. In the UK and abroad. Even in the Guardian. It’s on the microfiche, you can’t uninvent it now that you want to claim that the press has got it in for you.
The press are after you because they have seen some of the EVIDENCE (videos/photos/witnesses) and you guys LOOK guilty as sin. Your boss knows it, the IPCC knows it, the demonstrators know it, the politicians know it (Ken’s trying to stay friends though) and even middle-englander knows (you didn’t do youselves any favours cracking their heads open in Parliament Square).
Be a man (not as in the brute who whacks the mouthy 5-footer), but a real man who can admit you messed up bigtime. Now that takes balls.
Bolly-knickers needs some Sheriff-loving.
blueboy83 – Tomlinson was hit with a truncheon on the head? and also he did not fall down any stairs. You must have seen a different video.
on April 20, 2009 at 9:09 pm inspectorgadget
Claustrophobic inspector
You are correct. This is now boring. We all know that the public get the policing they deserve. Change of subject due. Just watched Ashes to Ashes. How excellent.
You’re wrong. The public are getting the Police service that New Labour want.
What the public want is a Police FORCE that deals with crime, and isn’t a political correct, quota filling, box ticking arm of a bunch of champagne socialists. The G20 Policing fiasco has given the New Labour gang an opportunity to meddle even more- it’s only going to get worse- for you-and for the public.
TFS – totally agree.
Come on Inspector Gadget, you’re really NOT paying attention. The prime witness in this case posted a report very early on (before the video even appeared) that Tomlinson had been assaulted BEFORE this second incident. I suggest, “Inspector”, that you do some reading.
Is this the best you can do?
Well, what do you know, Gadget boy took my advice and swapped his headline pic to something a little easier to defend.
Now I can’t criticise your new choice of pic – definitely a line of heavily armed/armoured, well trained riot cops stepping over a small pile of burning rubbish
(tut, tut, you weren’t trying to suggest that petrol bombs were thrown were you? That would be very naughty…)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8008846.stm
To any serving police officer can you explain why the Tamil protest was not moved on after the allotted 12:00 time limit, where they not causing an obstruction and as it was inside the no demonstration area around parliament was this not illegal. Surely this illegal demonstration deserved kettleing, so that the details of all those attending could be taken. This was an obvious public order situation that should have been dealt with robustly, after all they are supporting terrorists and some of them seemed to be getting very agitated.
Twisted Fire Stopper
on April 20, 2009 at 9:09 pm inspectorgadget
Claustrophobic inspector
You are correct. This is now boring. We all know that the public get the policing they deserve. Change of subject due. Just watched Ashes to Ashes. How excellent.
You’re wrong. The public are getting the Police service that New Labour want.
What the public want is a Police FORCE that deals with crime, and isn’t a political correct, quota filling, box ticking arm of a bunch of champagne socialists. The G20 Policing fiasco has given the New Labour gang an opportunity to meddle even more- it’s only going to get worse- for you-and for the public.
on April 20, 2009 at 9:54 pm inspectorgadget
TFS – totally agree.
So Gadget, and all the other Police bloggers/posters, what needs to be done?
I’ve just watched the commons select committee grilling the great and the good of the IPCC- chaired, by of all people, the totally honest, upright RH Keith Vaz MP.
It seems like the Police are going to be steam rollered into an inquiry or review by the New Labour gang, which will inevitably result in more forms to be filled, quotas to be met, focus groups, and other, touchy-feely things.
I’m a member of the public, but my job brings me into contact with the Police on an almost daily basis-on the whole, I’ve nothing but admiration for the coppers I’ve met, got a good relationship with most of them, but I have met a few who were not as professional as I’d like (I’m sure you can say the same about other Emergency Service personnel that you meet as well)
What is beyond doubt is that whilst members of the public on the whole respect the IDEA of the Police, they just don’t trust them anymore, to deal fairly with the needs, whatever they are, when the average Joe comes into contact with them ( I assume average Joe to be a tax-paying, working/retired law abiding citizen)
Most of my friends, relatives and colleagues equate, rightly or wrongly, the Police with the New Labour project.
The media doesn’t help, with all the mobile phone footage of the G20, I agree it is easy to take video and photos out of context, but the sight of balaclava’d ( I realise they are fire/flash hoods) coppers in riot gear, with service numbers hidden, apparently hitting out at random protesters while Gordo Brown smoozes up to Obama, just don’t play very well with the public.
In my view, ACPO/Police authority/Met Commisioners are indelibly linked to the New Labour project, and seem to be growing ever distant from the public that you should be serving.
Undoubtedly, we need a change of government, but will the Police be able to throw off the misconceptons created by their increasing politisation?
TFS, I could not agree more, I realise that my above post had a negative stance, but that is due to my frustration at the way the police are being used in this county. As an average (working/retired law abiding MOP) I am not shocked that there was excessive force used on a number of occasions (very hard to judge) I am apprehensive about the tactics, general attitude shown and the politicisation of the police. Especially as this appears to be coupled with double standards on different type of obstruction and public order issues.
I particularly do not like it that when a infrequent crime is made, no action is taken, victim support leaflets are handed out and counselling is offered.
As an average MOP I do not blame individual police officers for force policy, but I am increasingly concerned about the culture I witness. The increased lack of courtesy, authoritarian attitude and willingness to jump to the support of seemingly prima facie evidence of assault without question.
blueboy – heavily armed? would that be the 50g tin of pepper, the stick or the shield? heavily armed – chortle.
We used to have a rule of law in this country , you were innocent till proven guilty , that applies to policeman as well as the general public .
We should all wait till any investigation is over before we utter comments of any kind.
I bet if a member of the public had used a “stick” or “50g of pepper” on a copper they would be looking at serious time … no need for CCTV evidence. Chortle.
99% of these demonstrators were armed with … loud voices and empty hands. Get a grip…
Big D
Innocent until proven guilty? The 1st April demonstrators were judged GUILTY by police and press about two weeks before the event. Don’t make me laugh.
A chap dies, the police claim they know nothing, except that the protesters may have contributed to his death. Your coroner says natural causes. The press swallow hook, line and sinker. Oops. Perhaps the FOUR FIT officers present may have seen something? No, no contact. Ooops. Some Yankee Banker films the whole thing. Poor old plod boy, face covered, no ID numbers, innocent until proven guilty. Surely you are HAVING A LARF?
We’re on to your little game.
My old man made an interesting comment today. He’s a retired gent, spent 40 years being a psychiatric nurse- a job that has to use reasonable force in the face of violence now and again. A respectable law abiding man.
He went to London the other day with my mum and got him self lost. As he told me- a few years ago I might of asked a copper directions, but not now. They aint exactly approachable- they look like the sort of police you imagine in a third world banana republic, more a branch of the army. People you want to keep clear of. I remember when coppers would nod and say hello. The lot I saw the other day looked on edge and scared and wouldn’t have taken much to upset them.
And thats from a man who does not watch the news or read newspapers. But has spent 40 years spotting the signs of incipient violence and reading body language for his own safety. Make of that what you will.
And before you ask, it was last saturday.
I repeat my question; can any serving police officer explain why the Tamil demonstration was not broken up after overstaying it allotted time and displaying flags in support of a terrorist organisation?
blueboy, Im not having a game and Im nothing to do with the police force however you sound like a very angry man .
Just the sort if I was a copper I wouldnt particularly like to have to face in a protest .
Dave , like you dad i can remember what policemen used to look and act like 40 years ago.
Unfortunately it isnt just the police who have changed , just look around at Joe Public .
You certainly wouldnt ask many of them to help you these days ( you darent even look at some of them )
Again I will wait to hear all the evidence before I go around slatting people.
blueboy – looking at serious time? clearly someone who has not been near a UK Court in the last ten years. guffaw.
[...] I have just been reading about Police Officer Gary Toms on the Inspector Gadget blog. Never heard of him? Gary died tackling a robbery and barely made the media a week ago. The [...]