What better story to re-inaugurate my personal blog...er...my cataloging of police abuse than this story of a police officer defending the public honor (or his ego) from a back talking, mentally handicapped bus passenger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... YTPhuPuF20

Please note the Iraq war veteran who basically says, "We didn't treat the Iraqis like that" (and who the cop tried to threaten with arrest if he didn't hand over his phone with a video of the incident.)

I clicked. It said:

This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube's policy prohibiting hate speech.

Sorry about that.

Hmm.

Hmmm interesting...

Here is another video...not the same interview with the guy who shot the video, but in this one, he describes the lengths he went to to make sure the police did not get the video.

http://www.ktla.com/videogallery/673212 ... lo-reports

Ok, Now here is the task assigned to you Vince. Look back on the story in a couple of months and find out what happened to the police officer.

I'll leave that to you Russ.

Hmm. Looking at the news report there is various stuff that is being said:

1) the police were called to the bus because someone reported the woman as being aggressive and that an old man was threatened
2) she was being verbally abusive to the officers, who were holding her but she was not under full restraint
3) the officers knew her, and there's the suggestion that she has hit people in the past
4) she's apparently mentally ill, which means she's vulnerable but may also mean that she's not harmless

It looks, from the video, as if the elbow-to-the-face was not provoked by a physical threat (although there was some sharp movement just beforehand) and I doubt that it's the way an officer would be trained to deal with the situation.

Russ's point is that the police are investigating it, and that there is scrutiny of that investigation to come. Until that's resolved, I'm not sure we can be definitive.

On the "We didn't treat the Iraqis like that" line, it's ironic that today we heard about another video showing uniformed marines urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans.

The police are investigating, but how much do you want to bet me that the main focus of the investigation is how they can find a way to exonerate the officer ?

While Vince does take it too far, in recent years I've also grown increasingly frustrated with the way the police seemingly get away with murder (literally in some cases) and then invariably close ranks in an attempt to prevent the perpetrators being brought to justice. The Met are notorious for this kind of thing. They shot Jean Charles de Menezes in the face on the underground in a case of mistaken identity and then proceeded to tell a string of lies about the incident under oath in order to evade punishment for murder. Not one police officer has ever been prosecuted for that. Neither has anybody been called to account for the murder of Ian Tomlinson, where the police first called in their own pet coroner to conduct the autopsy (a man who had already been heavily criticised by the courts and medical authorities for his poor performance and overly-friendly relationship with the police) and then set out to delay and obfuscate the entire investigation until such a time as the statute of limitations had passed and it was no longer possibly to prosecute. Nobody can ever convince me this was not intentional. Or what about the recent incident which led to the London riots, where the police shot an unarmed man (granted, a gangster) in cold blood and then told a bunch of lies about how he'd first drawn a gun and fired on them, which subsequently turned out to be completely false. Want to bet me that any police officer will ever be punished for that ?

I've noticed a pattern in recent years of the police using excessive, often lethal force and then telling as many lies as they need in order to evade the consequences of their actions. Perhaps it's naive to expect anything else, but I refuse to just shrug it off. We're entitled to expect better of our police.

Sass - I agree with you to a large extent, but you and I know that Vince is coming from a different angle. He doesn't want the police to be more heavily regulated and checked, to be better at not exceeding their remit.

He wants them gone.

Sure, but in the real world that most of us inhabit there are real acts of police brutality that do need to be highlighted and spoken out against. Vince does a decent job of that, no matter his motivation.

Sure, but if the justified cases are drowned out by a load of dross, it dilutes the effect.

Sassenach wrote: They shot Jean Charles de Menezes in the face on the underground in a case of mistaken identity and then proceeded to tell a string of lies about the incident under oath in order to evade punishment for murder.

I am not familiar with this case so please excuse the ignorance but.....How do you know these police officer's lied under oath? Is there definitive proof of the lies, i.e. video specifically refuting the alleged lies, audio recordings or written statements of the officers in question that contradict the statements given under oath?

Well I don't recall all of the circumstances, but it's certainly the case that they claimed a number of things about the events which were subsequently proven false. The one I can remember is the claim that Menezes jumped the barrier at the underground station and ran, whereas in fact he queued up and bought a ticket, which was confirmed by the CCTV footage. They also claimed to have shouted a warning, which was contradicted by the other passengers on the train, and that he approached them threateningly, which again was directly contradicted by eyewitnesses.

In truth I may be wrong about it being a lie under oath per se because it took place at a coroners inquest rather than a trial and I'm not sure if evidence is given under oath in those circumstances, but it amounts to the same thing. There was a jury at the inquest and they effectively called the police liars by declaring an open verdict, which was all they were permitted to do because the presiding coroner refused to allow a verdict of unlawful killing. When subsequently questioned about it by a High Court judge the jurors strongly rejected the official version of events and said they didn't believe the evidence given by the police. I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the police were willing to lie in order to cover up a murder carried out by their officers.

What typically happens though is that in the immediate aftermath of a serious incident the police will attempt to control the media presentation by releasing a completely fictitious account of events, knowing that if/when they eventually have to backtrack the story will not get much attention. This happens all the time. The incident I referred to earlier which was the spark to the London riots is a case in point. The story they put about was that the man had drawn a gun and fired at a police officer, wounding him slightly, and they fired back in self-defence. Sure enough there was a wounded police officer so it certainly seemed credible, but in actual fact it was a fiction. The man they killed was unarmed and ballistics confirmed that the gunshot wound to the police officer had actually come from a police firearm. Of course, all this didn't emerge until a few weeks after the event, by which point the whole country was consumed with the pursuit of vengeance against the rioters and nobody gave a shit, so the police got away with it (or they have done so far anyway). I suspect that most people in Britain still believe the original version of events because by the time the truth came out it got barely any media coverage. What concerns me about this isn;t so much that they killed a known violent gangster, he probably had it coming, but that they knowingly released a stroy to the press that they knew damn well to be a tissue of lies just to cover their own backs. If they're willing to do that in a high profile case where somebody died then what are they willing to do in the numerous cases where a suspect gets beaten up while being 'restrained' ? It strikes me that the Metropolitan Police have almost carte blanche to act with complete impunity, which is a situation that urgently needs to change.

Sure, but if the justified cases are drowned out by a load of dross

I don't post "dross" in my police protection thread. I only post the stories that are, to the average person, pretty egregious. You don't see anyone in this thread saying that the cop was justified do you?

To me the more egregious part is that the cop intimidated and threatened the guy who recorded the incident, BTW.

theodorelogan wrote:I don't post "dross" in my police protection thread. I only post the stories that are, to the average person, pretty egregious. You don't see anyone in this thread saying that the cop was justified do you?

To me the more egregious part is that the cop intimidated and threatened the guy who recorded the incident, BTW.

Actually you put almost nothing but dross in here because you never follow up.

I would agree with your underlying point for this thread if the police did these things with insuficient provocation and then got away with it. However, because you never actually follow up, you have no idea if the offending individual is penalized in any way. I am willing to bet that in the overwhelming majority of instances you post about the offending individual(s) suffer the consequences of their actions.

I would agree with your underlying point for this thread if the police did these things with insuficient provocation and then got away with it.

My underlying point is "here are some examples of police doing egregious things" Not much to disagree with there Russ.