Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Violence at G20- but it wasn’t a protester....

Another video of a policeman apparently assaulting a peaceful protester has appeared on YouTube. It seems a (hopefully) small number of officer's use these protests as an excuse to throw their weight about and attack members of the public who genuinely feel a need to peacefully protest. It's no wonder the violent hijackers of such events get away with it. The police should concentrate on these thugs, or is that asking too much?

The most disturbing thing I see here is two alleged assaults (that we know about) by officers whose identifying numbers are obscured. It does smack of a conspiracy, that there is perhaps a group of nominated officers whose role is to either quell or provoke crowd disturbance. This may be confined to a small number of officers, with or without the tacit agreement of their superiors or even the government. Or it might, more frighteningly be a deliberate course of action, instigated and supported at the highest level to give credence to banning all forms of protest.

I accept that looking at the whole video there seems to be some disturbance in the crowd, but this is quickly aggravated by the apparent assault. And in all honesty, the woman appears merely to be speaking to the officer trying to make some kind of complaint and he just isn't interested.

The officer concerned has been identified as a member of the territorial support group, who are allowed to use violence but it must be proportionate to the circumstances. A woman half your size complaining doesn't seem to me to justify a slap in the face and a whack with a steel baton.

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