Some Thugs Are More Equal Than Others

Two teenagers have now been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the death of 64-year-old David Askew who collapsed and died in the garden of his Greater Manchester home after being harassed.

A post-mortem examination has failed to establish the cause of Mr Askew's death and further tests will be carried out, police said.

How different this response to the that of the ongoing cover-up in London, involving some of their own.

This Thursday will mark a year since the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson after a police assault at the G20 protests. Not surprisingly, no charges have been brought against any police officer. Despite 300 official complaints about the policing of the protests on 1 April, backed-up by any amount of video and photographic evidence, no officer has faced serious disciplinary proceedings.

The state-sponsored thugs who took to the streets that day, removed their identification numbers, assaulted peaceful protesters and bystanders alike, and then repeatedly lied through their teeth about what had happened. They did so in the knowledge that, if history is anything to go by, they could do so with immunity.

Only a week before last year’s demo, the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, published a damning report on the policing of protest. And although, Police chiefs insisted that they took the report seriously, the Met deployed those very tactics a week later.

They will say the same later this week when the Association of Chief Police Officers publish a draft manual for policing protests. But any assurance that the days of assaulting protesters are over should be taken with a pinch of CS gas.

The problem for the ‘Thugs in Uniform’ is that once they’ve kicked the shit out of someone they have to try justify it. And it’s worrying the lengths that they’ll go to.

In a recent case, at Isleworth Crown Court, Plod was again caught out. This time the protester in the dock, Jake Smith, was charged with violent disorder at a protest outside the Israeli embassy. Plod said that Smith had thrown a stick at him and produced video footage as evidence to support this. Smith however, found some material on YouTube that told a different story. ‘Plod the Punisher’ stuck to his guns though, denying that he had any more footage of the incident. But, you’ll be surprised to hear, two days before the case was to be heard, he had to admit that he did have a further seven and a half hours of video that he had inexplicably been unaware of. Unfortunately for Plod, this showed that Smith was innocent.Seemingly a big boy did it and ran away.

It is surely reasonable to ask how the video evidence that the police planned to introduce to the court showed that Smith was guilty.

Would it be unreasonable to suggest that, once they beat the fuck out of Smith, they did a bit of selective editing to put him “in the frame” as they say in the wonderful world of ‘cut and paste’.

Still, they’re not all like this.

When a Nottinghamshire police officer caused two deaths in June, the police immediately reported themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and launched their own investigation.

Officers paid due tribute by saluting the flowers left outside police headquarters. There was no attempted cover-up. No cynical manipulation of the press. No lies about the victims or their families. The officer responsible was charged. He was convicted over the deaths.

The conviction was for neglect, when two police dogs died after being left in the back of a cop car, forgotten by the chump in charge of them.

A head plod told the baying hacks from the media: "We will certainly take any lessons we can get from this process and make sure we put them in place so this sort of thing never happens again. It has caused immense sadness and immense shock." Poor wee souls.

For the sake of the police pooches we can only hope that they do.

As for the rest of us?

Well.

The Met have never bothered their arse to apologise to Mr Tomlinson's family.

Don’t hold your breath.