Well, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has made me extremely angry. The news tonight was appalling. They presented the footage of the TSG cop whacking and hitting the woman with a baton but still they had to distract us from the casual violence by remarking that the woman was ‘taunting’ the cops. Was she? I don’t think she was.
It reminds me of the first reports from the G20 protests that accused protesters of ‘goading’ the cops. Really? Where is the evidence…? I saw people on both days remonstrating with the cops, not causing any threat..yet that is construed by the media as ‘goading’. So how do they define whacking demonstrators? A gentle tap..?
On the 2nd April, the atmosphere at the Bank was peaceful. And the cops decided for some reason to attack. This TSG cop appeared, grabbed people, before he attacked this woman I witnessed him grabbing another woman, his arm pulled back with his fist clenched ready to punch her but he let go and pushed her away. I tried to get a pic of that incident but my camera was too slow, the pic I did get was him raising his arm to attack. This cop should have been arrested for the criminal offences he was indulging in by the other cops!!
Oh, and the other distraction by the BBC was the emphasis that the woman had brought in Max Clifford. Er, so what?
The report also wheeled in a former riot trainer who said we had to appreciate what was going on around the cops. When you look at the footage, and make that appreciation of the situation you will find that there was NO justification in the level of thuggery and violence from this cop or any other cop.
Many of the protesters and most of the police are just standing around. There is a bit of shouting. There are no missiles harmless or harmful being thrown. Neither had there been, the ground around the copper is clear of any debris such as bottles or broken bits of placard.
Just after that specific incident the copper slinks away to join another police line facing in another direction. These are not the actions of someone desparately afraid for the safety of his fellow officers.
Yet the damage has been done, the reporter didn’t challenge the former trainer. Most people watching the BBC report will go with the suggestion that there must have been something going on that justified the cop assaulting the woman.
See the video footage at Indymedia
Liz Davies in the Morning Star – Cops must face law
Harpymarx
In your opinion why did the police use the force that they did? What was the motivation of their behaviour. Remember they had cameras on them so they are wary about public reaction. Do you think it has got anything to do with fear, being outnumbered. I mean what is their reason?
Police are told that protesters are violent, that they’re “anarchists,” that they want to destabilize society. Then they’re fed fairy tales about “urine bottles” full of nails or what-have-you. Then, the nature of their every-day job–controlling poor people–leads them to have more and more contempt for the people they police. The widespread abuse of protesters isn’t so different from the widespread abuse of poor-people that quotidian policing entails.
It’s just (1) concentrated and (2) the targets are often white.
David Graeber also has more ethnographic and theoretical work done on this.
Jewbonics
Max
So are you saying that they there has never been any violence (bottle throwing) against the police? And that their fears are being fed by lies?
I certainly think that on occassions, the police don’t do themselves any favours…but I think the question – as posed by one of the other commenters here – is WHY did these officers resort to violence?
Is it because the police are blood-hungry people-beaters? Or is it perhaps more sensible to look at how well these officers are trained in terms of crowd control.
Yes of course it is wrong for a police officer to use gratuitous violence…whether they are taunted or not, they are supposed to KEEP the peace after all.
Its true that when violence errupts during protests it is usually because the police have mismanaged the situation – hemmed in the crowd, and acted in a controlling, possessive manor. Peaceful protests are ones that are usually managed by as less obvious police presence. (I’ve got a link somewhere to this research…I’ll try and find an post here)
Lores: I also think it is important to look at the ideology of the police, what they stand for, and their training is inter-linked to that ideology.
No, I didn’t say that at all. But there have been well-documented cases of police being told by their superiors that protesters (in one infamous example) were throwing bottles of urine at them. I think policemen are put into a structural position where they feel fear, and anger, and so they lash out.
I think those feelings are exacerbated by series of lies they’re told by senior officers, and lies that are amplified by the press about “violence.”
Of course it’d be non-sense to say there had never been bottle-throwing.
But again, I get furious (in my head) at the police all the time, but I think it’s worth bearing in mind that they come from lower-middle class or middle-class sectors. They’re trained to dislike and hate the people they police. It’s no good to paint them as “evil.”
‘A series of lies’ what exactly is this series? Like you said there has been bottle throwing and violence by the protestors in the past so why shouldn’t the police be briefed about this possibility. Is it not a genuine fear?
the problem is that historically, they’ve regularly been briefed about things that their briefers must have known were not true. After Seattle in 1999, cops at every major protest were told to expect “seattle tactics” such as molotov cocktails, slingshots, water-guns full of bleach and urine, people using crowbars to break off slabs of concrete to smash their heads in…. Problem is none of this had been done in Seattle, even according to the Seattle police department, and the briefers must have known this. They intentionally lied to get the cops more willing to accept orders to do things they might otherwise hesitate to do (which cops did, in fact, hesitate to do in Seattle) – like baton charges against unarmed non-violent teenage girls
Jesus look at the miners strikes thats enough never mind 1999, the police have been used as a tool of the government going back to the 1930′s.
[...] to leave significant question marks over the integrity and credibility of any troublesome images. Harpymarx has already noticed how footage from the G20 protests of a huge policeman striking a much smaller [...]