I’ve found myself locked in a back and forth debate over the last few days with an old friend who is a staunch ‘left winger’ and attended the G20 protests – the highlight of this event of course being the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson due to police brutality. According to the Guardian’s first article various witnesses saw any number of the following things occur to a person who may or may not have been our man. Mr Tomlinson was:
- Attacked violently
- Struck on the head with a baton.
- He was rushed from behind by a riot officer with a helmet and shield
- Flung by the arm, to fall forward on his head.
- He hit the top front area of his head on the pavement.
Now, thanks to the wonders of digital imagery, investment fund manager, 38 from New York – who surely risked life, limb and sanity amidst the howling mob of anti-capitalist papparazi to capture what is amazingly the only available footage of the savage police attack on Mr Tomlinson you too can know the truth. Watch closely:
Now call me an insensitive bastard if you like, but after reading the wildly descriptive allegations about the extent of police brutality extracted on Mr Tomlinson I can only describe my reaction to investment fund manager, 38’s footage as a complete bloody let down.
But wait, there’s more.
Not content with trumping the right wing media with their shocking footage of a ‘baton wielding’ Officer X giving Mr Tomlinson a bit of a smack on the leg and then violently ‘throwing him to the floor’, the Guardian provides us with a follow up article detailing the accounts of the various ‘eyewitnesses’ who were hinted at in the original story. This is such a startling display of journalistic integrity with direct quoting of previously paraphrased statements that I’m left puzzled by only two small details:
- Why did the Guardian not go through these statements and replace some of the bigger words with smaller ones?
- And secondly why did they not provide these accounts in a braille format?
The reason for these questions?
Because the relationship between these wild accounts and the video footage is so incredibly thin that I am forced to deduce that the Guardian believes its average reader to not only be particularly dull-witted, but also just about fucking blind.
Allow me to elaborate.
Marcus Bensasson, 30, photographer, south London
“One image shows a bystander being shoved in the back with a shield at the very spot Ian Tomlinson collapsed.”
At the very spot…
Dr Justin Meggitt, 40, senior lecturer in religious studies, Cambridge University
Whom I shall not quote directly, tells a gripping tale of a police force drunk with power, unleashing their hounds of oppression on dashing young male protestors who’s only crime is the lobbing of the odd plastic bottle at the establishment lackies, but where oh were Dr Meggit is Ian Tomlinson? Did you see him, or was your attention too heavily focused on the plight of those young men?
Anna Branthwaite, 36, freelance photographer, south London
“It wasn’t just pushing him – he’d rushed him. He went to the floor and he did actually roll. That was quite noticeable. It was the force of the impact. He bounced on the floor. It was a very forceful knocking-down from behind. The officer hit him twice with a baton when he was lying on the floor.”
“So it wasn’t just that the officer had pushed him – it became an assault. And then the officer picked him up from the back, continued to walk or charge with him, and threw him. He was running and stumbling. He didn’t turn and confront the officer or anything like that.”
Anna, oh Anna. If only your experienced camera had been as swift as investment fund manager, 38’s…or your imagination.
Recall with me the footage, We quite clearly see Mr Tomlinson standing by the bicycles unpropelled by the forces of police brutality, His hands are in his pockets his expression is something I can only describe as grumpy. no doubt he is bloody annoyed at having to walk a detour around the mess protesters and police have made of his route home. He does not show any signs of having just been in a scuffle, he has no visible blood gushing head wounds. He then instead of moving smartly out of the way, walks deliberately and slowly in front of the biggest clump of them and for this visibly annoying act delivered unto him is a quick smack about the leg with a baton and a shove in the back that sends him falling forward onto his hands by the looks of it after which he sits on the ground, has a word or 6 with the officers and then is helped up and wanders off.
So please Anna, please would you care to elaborate for me at exactly which point he was beaten while laying on the ground and then picked up and violently propelled forward to be thrown to the floor again?
Kezia Rolfe, 27, NGO researcher, east London
“I saw him suddenly fall back as though flung down with force. It was as though he had been spun. He fell and hit the top of his head hard. I was shocked. He lay on the ground for around 30 seconds without moving before a protester helped him up.”
Kezia mate, with respect, did you spend the day researching lager? The whole incident captured on video barely takes 30 seconds. The man was pushed and fell forward. If you look at the stop motion he gets his hands out palm down just before falling out of the frame. For him to have spun around and struck the top of his head in that last foot that is off camera would have been in complete defiance of the laws of physics.
Amiri Howe, 24, actor/musician, west London
Another stirring tale – Amiri will no doubt be capturing all of this in the script for his one man performance art show, perhaps he’s started already…
“We saw a couple of scuffles happening. Our friends were inside trying to get out – no water, no food, we wanted to get them out. Police started coming forward. Missiles started to be thrown.”
I like this about Amiri, because he wasn’t afraid to admit that people were throwing stuff at the angry law enforcers.
“The guy [Tomlinson] was stood there. He got hit near the head with a baton. It was like a pencil, he just fell to the floor and hit his head again when he hit the floor.”
The other thing I like about Amiri’s story is that it’s almost as creative as Anna’s and yet fundamentally different.
Finally lets hear the words of investment fund manager, 38 – perhaps the only sane person there at the time:
“I saw him wandering around [before he was attacked]. He was just taking a look. He just got too close to the police line. [When he was attacked]” …
“Then I looked at the footage again and thought ‘my God, it’s the man they pushed to the ground’. It must be him it was minutes later who collapsed.”
There are numerous other accounts of the events after Mr Tomlinson collapsed, what’s important to note about them is this:
- No-one indicates seeing any signs of a visible head trauma or of any blood on the man’s head, face, or clothing.
- No one seems to indicate that he was attacked again after the incident caught on video.
- There is very little to suggest in the way that he, or the police behave on the video to suggest that this was the continuation of a previous incident.
So really in conclusion can we see this as anything other than the tragedy of a man with a weak heart in the wrong place at the wrong time, being handled a bit roughly by a police officer who was most likely already at the end of his tether after a bloody long day of dealing with angry slogan chanting, bottle throwing protesters.
We all have the right to be human beings who make mistakes, even the ones who end up carrying riot shields for a living.
