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

Bernie Gunther said:
Not looking good for there ...
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No...


He conceded that he was bored at some points. He joined his colleague PC Hayes in his vehicle. Harwood's evidence is that he then could not get to his carrier because the crowd became too dense. He then spotted a male protester daubing graffiti on a van.

It has been pointed out that it was not too crowded for him to try to arrest the suspect, but "too dense" to travel just over two metres further to get to his van.
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...

The man doing the graffiti was just a few metres from a crowd which, according to Harwood's notebook, had been acting very violently toward a police cordon.

The jury has been shown footage of the carrier Harwood said it had been too difficult to get to. Ryder points out that it was surrounded by other police officers.

The jury is also shown footage of the crowd at the time Harwood said they had been throwing missiles. There were no missiles being thrown in the footage.

Ryder: Is this the point where they are throwing missiles at the cordon?

Harwood: From the footage, it doesn't seem so.
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Barking_Mad said:
It's a parallel world....From Guardian court reporter...



Well who did then?
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Harwood may be trying to play an "I shoved him, but he only fell over because he was pissed/he tripped over a tripwire hidden by Climate Camp protesters/Satan reared up in front of him and made him fall over" excuse.
 
Don't know about anyone else, and this is very probably just my own bitter prejudices getting in the way, but every time I've seen footage of Harwood, a little voice in my mind says "steroids".
 
OK – a bit of rabbit out of the hat moment. Ryder has repeatedly asked Harwood about his claim to have been under serious attack by protesters, in fear for his life and unable to return to his carrier after trying to arrest the suspect.

He mentioned that Harwood's colleague, PC Hayes, was able to return to the van.

Ryder asked repeatedly: "Is that the truth, PC Harwood. Are you telling the truth?" Harwood said it was.

The counsel then asked the jury to be shown new footage. The CCTV footage shows that Harwood is surrounded by a number of other officers, and turns his back to the approaching protesters.
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Oops.
 
Maybe he'll go for diminished responsibility on the grounds that he clearly has no connection with reality.
 
Harwood: At the time I wrote this, I thought I fell to the floor.
Thornton: Do you now accept that this is not correct?
Harwood: Yes
Thornton: That you lost your baton – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes
Thornton: That you received a blow to the head – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes
Thornton: And that there were violent and dangerous confrontations – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes.
Thornton: And you were struck by a missile – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes.
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Fuck me...he really is being shown to be an incompetent fantasist isn't he?
 
Just yer basic lying copper. They're used to the courts believing every word they say. He wouldn't have figured on their being able to track his entire day on camera when he wrote that nonsense.
 
ymu said:
Just yer basic lying copper. They're used to the courts believing every word they say. He wouldn't have figured on their being able to track his entire day on camera when he wrote that nonsense.
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Except in this instance he has been cut loose - the proverbial 'one bad apple' - hence all the stuff about how training is ongoing, and the even-handed briefings etc.
 
Metal Malcolm said:
cop said:
Harwood: At the time I wrote this, I thought I fell to the floor.
Thornton: Do you now accept that this is not correct?
Harwood: Yes
Thornton: That you lost your baton – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes
Thornton: That you received a blow to the head – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes
Thornton: And that there were violent and dangerous confrontations – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes.
Thornton: And you were struck by a missile – that is not correct?
Harwood: Yes.
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Fuck me...he really is being shown to be an incompetent fantasist isn't he?
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And that isn't the brief for the family. That's assistant deputy coroner, Judge Peter Thornton QC.

He's toast.

(Does anyone know whether City of London coroner's juries are drawn from the same pool as the Old Bailey?)
 
BBC 'headline' on website

G20 officer 'was moving man on'

The Pc who pushed Ian Tomlinson at the 2009 G20 protests tells an inquest he did so after a strike on the thigh had failed to move the newspaper seller on.
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And the article seemingly exists in the same world as Mr Harwood....
The Pc who pushed Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London did so after a strike on the thigh had failed to move the newspaper seller away from the police line, an inquest has heard.

Simon Harwood told the hearing he had been "amazed" that Mr Tomlinson fell forward after the "poor push" in 2009.

Mr Tomlinson, 47, got back to his feet but collapsed and died minutes later.

Pc Harwood later said he was very sorry "if it is the case that in any way I have caused Mr Tomlinson's death".
'Ignoring requests'

Pc Harwood, part of the Metropolitan Police's specialist Territorial Support Group (TSG), was caught on film pushing Mr Tomlinson to the ground in Cornhill, central London, on 1 April 2009.

During his evidence, he explained events leading up to the push on Mr Tomlinson and said he had palmed off protesters and pushed a cameraman as confrontations "got out of hand".

He said he had first seen Mr Tomlinson talking to two police-dog handlers and an officer near a bike shed on the Royal Exchange.

He said he saw a police dog bite Mr Tomlinson on the ankle and another officer push him away from the police line.

"I then remember Mr Tomlinson moving in front of me from my right to my left as though he was walking or encroaching into the police line," he said.

Pc Harwood said he struck Mr Tomlinson because, although he was not a threat, he was ignoring other officers' requests for him to move.

Describing the moments he hit the father-of-nine, the officer said: "I struck the upper part of his leg with my baton. I didn't get a reaction so I pushed him with the right palm of my hand to the top right of his shoulder.
Ian Tomlinson on 1 April 2009 Mr Tomlinson was filmed moments before he died on 1 April 2009

"Once I pushed him, he fell forward. I was amazed that he fell forward. I looked for other threats, then I moved back behind the police dogs."

Pc Harwood said he had used forced "initially as an encouragement to make him move away".

"I hit him in the thigh because usually that's where you get less harm but the maximum reaction. It really encourages people to move away."

He then said he had pushed Mr Tomlinson because he had got no reaction to hitting him in the thigh with the baton "and I needed him to move away from the police line".

Mr Tomlinson, who was not a protester and had been selling newspapers in Fish Street, was on his way home when he encountered the protests.

The inquest, at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, is examining the actions of the police, the pathologist and independent investigators.
'Clenched fist'

Pc Harwood told the court of the moments leading up to Mr Tomlinson's death.

He said he had had to "recompose myself" after several confrontations as the demonstrations got "out of hand".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

I was starting to believe that this was getting out of control”

End Quote Pc Harwood

He said he had been "frightened and confused" in the tense atmosphere and after being hit on the back by an object and palming off a protester who had approached him with a "clenched fist", he had felt "very" scared.

As video footage was played to the jury of Pc Harwood at the Royal Exchange Buildings, the officer said: "I was frightened and confused, I wondered where I was."

He said he had had to find time to recompose himself after realising he had lost his colleagues.

On Monday, Pc Harwood told how he had been in fear for his life after attracting the attention of a "hostile crowd".

He said protesters had jeered and shouted as he tried to arrest a man on suspicion of criminal damage to one of the police vans.

There was a "large gasp" from the crowd as the suspect he had hold of collided with the door of a police van, he said.

Footage showed him leading the man further away from the vans with the crowd surging behind him.

"At the time because he was becoming more aggressive, more hostile, I was starting to believe that this was getting out of control.

"I was aware there was a very hostile crowd and I was actually in fear for my life then from what was coming towards me."

The inquest continues.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12973564

I feel a complaint coming on...
 
These TSG boys do seem to scare easy, don't they. Delicate little things that they are.
 
What happened to the guy whose head was smashed into the door of the van? Was he badly hurt? Did he complain? Was he convicted of anything?
 
ymu said:
These TSG boys do seem to scare easy, don't they. Delicate little things that they are.
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Remarkably clumsy too. Accidently bashing heads into van doors while making an arrest, then seconds later apparently tackling a cameraman to the floor by mistake. And misjudging how much force there was in a 'poor push' to the back of some unsuspecting, unthreatening type a little later.

Says volumes about the recruitment and training policies I guess. I suppose we should be surprised that Harwood was amongst the best trained crowd control units at the demo. A wonderfully high standard all round in this unit of elite TSG apples.
 
nick h. said:
What happened to the guy whose head was smashed into the door of the van? Was he badly hurt? Did he complain? Was he convicted of anything?
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Im not sure, the video showed he had quite a lot of blood coming from his face, although it is unclear how serious his injury was. It would be interesting to see if he comes forward.
 
Harwood reminds me of one of those US pilots who bombs his own side because he's on amphetamines. Just an out of control maniac. What with his road rage history he must have a personality disorder or be a junkie.
 
That bbc account is shocking. Doesn't even mention that his testimony was basically proved as false by the video evidence, which was surely the main story there.
 
Barking_Mad said:
To be fair im not sure you can really say from this footage (2m 10 sec) that the door is deliberately opened on the protester being dragged away by Harwood, or that Harwood purposely hit him against the door as it opened.
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I'd agree, if it wasn't for Harwood getting tripped up lying about that too.
 
Barking_Mad said:
To be fair im not sure you can really say from this footage (2m 10 sec) that the door is deliberately opened on the protester being dragged away by Harwood, or that Harwood purposely hit him against the door as it opened.
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Looks *awfully* like it though ...

'Constable Savage' appears to have plenty of time to see that he's about to smash the guy's head against the edge of that door

What's particularly telling for me is that there's no reaction at all from either him or the other officer along the lines of 'oops, we smashed that poor guy's head against a door, is he ok?'

If it was in any way an accident, you'd expect them to react accordingly.

They're acting like they didn't notice anything whatsoever happened there, which given that they can't have failed to notice, suggests to me that the intention was to do it discreetly.
 
BBC added this at the end of the article

Pc Harwood later accepted he had "got things wrong" in a statement he made on 16 April 2009 about confrontations with protesters minutes before he encountered Mr Tomlinson.

Claims that he had fallen to the floor, lost a baton, received a blow to the head and been struck by a missile were all wrong, jurors heard.

Judge Peter Thornton said: "When this was written on 16 April, can you say why you got it wrong on that date?"

Pc Harwood replied: "Because at the time that is what I believed happened, from the information I had. That is what I believed happened to me there."
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