G20: Getting to the truth- the death of Ian Tomlinson RIP

[berniedicters]

A third postmortem examination will be carried out today on the body of Ian Tomlinson, who died during the G20 protests, the City of London coroner has said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/22/ian-tomlinson-g20-protests

The scum that might have caused his death, will not let him rest be placed into the ground, even in death they ensure the suffering gose..

You can't have it both ways, you know, enumbers. If you are determined to make an issue of the means of death - which you clearly are with your previous insistence on it being murder - then you have to accept that every effort has then to be made to establish exactly what he died of.

I would have thought you'd be delighted that the facts surrounding Ian Tomlinson's death were being established with such care, given the maundering on you've been doing about his martyrdom? Yet when it actually looks like that might be happening, all of a sudden it's disrespectful.

So what's it to be? Fact-free bluster about a Martyred Working Class Bloke, or a determination to see that the police are properly, and factually, held to account for the consequences of their behaviour?

 

[TopCat]

When have the police ever been held to account for their murderous behaviour?

 

[berniedicters]

When have the police ever been held to account for their murderous behaviour?

Doesn't mean we shouldn't carry on trying to. And anyway, the mere fact that it's common knowledge that people like Blair Peach have died as a result of police brutality shows that, at least in the court of public opinion, there is some accountability.

It might not change much, but it might just be enough to keep things better than they might otherwise be.

 

[TopCat]

Doesn't mean we shouldn't carry on trying to. And anyway, the mere fact that it's common knowledge that people like Blair Peach have died as a result of police brutality shows that, at least in the court of public opinion, there is some accountability.

It might not change much, but it might just be enough to keep things better than they might otherwise be.

Court of public Opinion? How does that work then? What punishment does it impose?

The police don't give a fig about public opinion.

 

[winjer]

When have the police ever been held to account for their murderous behaviour?

1833, Culley cup?

 

[e19896]

Court of public Opinion? How does that work then? What punishment does it impose?

The police don't give a fig about public opinion.

Look here for an example how as said The Police do not give a fuck about public opinion not one those deaths has any one involved be brought to book as has been said:

 

[butchersapron]

Court of public Opinion? How does that work then? What punishment does it impose?

The police don't give a fig about public opinion.

Damn right they don't - hence the ongoing police mutiny.

 

[Belushi]

When have the police ever been held to account for their murderous behaviour?

IIRC no copper has ever been convicted for any of the numerous deaths in custody.

 

[berniedicters]

Court of public Opinion? How does that work then? What punishment does it impose?

The police don't give a fig about public opinion.

Organisationally, perhaps not. Individually, I suspect they do. Coppers have to live in communities, too, and I suspect it wouldn't take much of a shift in attitudes for that to become quite uncomfortable - and I expect quite a lot of them are well aware of that.

 

[Corax]

Organisationally, perhaps not. Individually, I suspect they do. Coppers have to live in communities, too, and I suspect it wouldn't take much of a shift in attitudes for that to become quite uncomfortable - and I expect quite a lot of them are well aware of that.

I suspect they're, shall we say, socially selective. That is, they surround themselves with those that agree with their views, and anyone they cross paths with that doesn't, is clearly an idiot/pinko/crusty/scrounger/terrorist.

 

[berniedicters]

I suspect they're, shall we say, socially selective. That is, they surround themselves with those that agree with their views, and anyone they cross paths with that doesn't, is clearly an idiot/pinko/crusty/scrounger/terrorist.

Yeah, I think so. But the more selective they get, the more that idiot/pinko/crusty/scrounger/terrorist:honestupstandingcopper skews.

Ultimately, I think this is self-correcting - there WILL come a point where the police WILL be regarded with enough hostility by enough of the population that it will be impossible for them to do their job. My big fear is that by the time that tipping point arrives, we're going to be a long way down a very nasty road.

I'm just not sure - nor are any of us, going by the liveliness of this debate - what it'd take to arrest that slow process, or bring it to a head more quickly.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Organisationally, perhaps not. Individually, I suspect they do. Coppers have to live in communities, too, and I suspect it wouldn't take much of a shift in attitudes for that to become quite uncomfortable - and I expect quite a lot of them are well aware of that.

They seemed to cope with being objects of widespread public contempt during the miners strike.

 

[butchersapron]

Organisationally, perhaps not. Individually, I suspect they do. Coppers have to live in communities, too, and I suspect it wouldn't take much of a shift in attitudes for that to become quite uncomfortable - and I expect quite a lot of them are well aware of that.

Wrong way round - organisationally they're actively anti-racist and all the formal requirements - it's the coppers on the ground who don't give a shit.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Organisationally, perhaps not. Individually, I suspect they do. Coppers have to live in communities, too, and I suspect it wouldn't take much of a shift in attitudes for that to become quite uncomfortable - and I expect quite a lot of them are well aware of that.

The problem is that they don't very often live in the communities they police, except when they're probationers living in the local section house. They're insulated from public opinion in such a way that the opinions of the people they police don't matter and carry no weight.

 

[e19896]

Yeah, I think so. But the more selective they get, the more that idiot/pinko/crusty/scrounger/terrorist:honestupstandingcopper skews.

Ultimately, I think this is self-correcting - there WILL come a point where the police WILL be regarded with enough hostility by enough of the population that it will be impossible for them to do their job. My big fear is that by the time that tipping point arrives, we're going to be a long way down a very nasty road.

I'm just not sure - nor are any of us, going by the liveliness of this debate - what it'd take to arrest that slow process, or bring it to a head more quickly.

The tipping point has to be one through evolution of time, it remains a fact those who killed Ian will never be brought to book, but there is a need to build on the G20 and what was seen, this will not happen overnight that i very much agree with, however there seems to a moment and then it is lost,
i hope the same is not going to happen here, but being old and cynical haveing much of my resistance kicked out of me over the years i agree we're going to be a long way down a very nasty road and i feel this something we can not negate from..

 

[ViolentPanda]

Wrong way round - organisationally they're actively anti-racist and all the formal requirements - it's the coppers on the ground who don't give a shit.

And they "don't give a shit" because there are no social or career consequences to not giving a shit.

 

[TopCat]

Hardly any Met police live in the M25 area. if they did they would have to moderate the behaviour otherwise they would feel the communities wrath every time they kill someone.

 

[berniedicters]

The problem is that they don't very often live in the communities they police, except when they're probationers living in the local section house. They're insulated from public opinion in such a way that the opinions of the people they police don't matter and carry no weight.

They do have to live in "the" community, though. Perhaps my rural perspective is showing here a bit in my use of the word "communities", as many police around here do live in the areas they police.

I'm by no means suggesting that all around the land, coppers are experiencing some kind of epiphany because of conversations over the garden fence, but there does come a situation where policemen have to live in barracks, and I think it's unlikely we'd reach that point without some pretty catastrophic change having taken place first.

 

[winjer]

Coppers have to live in communities, too, and I suspect it wouldn't take much of a shift in attitudes for that to become quite uncomfortable - and I expect quite a lot of them are well aware of that.

Most London cops seem to live far outside, Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Hardly any Met police live in the M25 area. if they did they would have to moderate the behaviour otherwise they would feel the communities wrath every time they kill someone.

Precisely, but then they're not policing the community for the community's benefit.

 

[Belushi]

Most London cops seem to live far outside, Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire.

Yeah, my mate from the met lives right down in Kent, he gets free train travel withing something like 60 miles of London and got all kinds of help buying his house.

 

[Belushi]

Dont the Met have a rule that you cant live in the community you police?

 

[ViolentPanda]

They do have to live in "the" community, though. Perhaps my rural perspective is showing here a bit in my use of the word "communities", as many police around here do live in the areas they police.

In rural areas, though, the police usually have tied accommodation, so have no choice but to live "in the community"

I'm by no means suggesting that all around the land, coppers are experiencing some kind of epiphany because of conversations over the garden fence, but there does come a situation where policemen have to live in barracks, and I think it's unlikely we'd reach that point without some pretty catastrophic change having taken place first.

I think we need to accept that the police service(s) aren't constabularies in any way that's meaningfully related to the original definition of the word "constable", and that we do, in effect, actually already have a (poorly-trained for the role) para-military police force (sans barracks), and that it's only the distaste of our political masters with reference to accepting this "fact on the ground" that prevents this being acknowledged.

 

[_pH_]

In rural areas, though, the police usually have tied accommodation, so have no choice but to live "in the community"

ime there's very little of that left now.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Dont the Met have a rule that you cant live in the community you police?

In the division you police, I believe.
My point here is not that they don't police their own community per se, but that they, as a soi-disant "middle-class profession", police communities that they may not live in, and to which they have little or no social or class connection.

 

[ViolentPanda]

ime there's very little of that left now.

Seems to depend on the individual "police service" nowadays. I know that Norfolk still has it, as do some other areas where property prices didn't tempt the police authorities to flog the housing off.

 

[_pH_]

Yeah that may be true, I'm going largely on Cambridgeshire where afaik all the police housing has been flogged off or had a change of use

 

[AKA pseudonym]

via twitter:

@krishgm The IPCC /G20 story will have to wait until tonight for legal reasons

 

[_pH_]

via twitter:

@krishgm The IPCC /G20 story will have to wait until tonight for legal reasons

Is that to do with the attempted injunction on channel 4 news?

 

[laptop]

Is that to do with the attempted injunction on channel 4 news?

Almost certainly. Meanwhile, the video an extract of which the IPCC sought to suppress went in full on www.guardian.co.uk yesterday...