Tag: Rodney King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?vmznFboXsweQ Certainly the police in the UK and the US seems to have lost a lot of trust, to the point that recorded evidence (like the CCTV tape at the shooting of Jean Charles de Menenez?) goes missing and it seems that criminal cases such as the one against PC Simon Harwood who assaulted and most likely killed Ian Tomlinson at the London G20 get intentionally buried and stonewalled - justice is not being done. But the main evidence in the Ian Tomlinson case was video; the police know this and are trying to get people to not record them, even using privacy laws in a totally incorrect manner (police operating in a public space cannot have an expectation of privacy!), as in the Graber case in the US above ...but without say the Rodney King footage, or the BART killing of Oscar Grant by Johannes Mehserle, or the Ian Tomlinson footage - who watches the watchers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?vZKKQ-gzc_Yw My thoughts are this - if we had video or photographs in the case of Blair Peach, some justice or at least identification of who killed him from the SPG (who became TSG eventually) might have been proven (although it is admitted they killed him, but as the other police officers are lying to protect their comrades 31 years later Blair will probably never going to have justice). Its pretty well known it's most likely Officer E who is Alan Murray, apparently you can kill someone as a police officer (or lie about who actually did) and get a comfy gig as a lecturer in Corporate Responsibility at Sheffield University. I wonder why the students there don't care? Certainly in my days at Sheffield Hallam they'd be protests and meetings). https://www.youtube.com/watch?vVfp1gSq22nI The Graber footage is less than ideal; the person was acting in an infantile and dangerous manner pulling wheelies at high speed, and the muted audio...but the 16 years threatened jail time for recording a police officer (accidentally it seems, unless he was planning a confrontation with the law which I doubt) is extreme and brings up problems with expectation of privacy laws being used to protect police and state from monitoring. Also worrying is the trend of not indentifying yourself; that cop was lucky Graber didn't also pull a gun faced with a unmarked car and unidentified policeman with a gun (it has happened in the past policemen have been shot and killed when plain clothed and unidentified even by their own force) - which follows through to the UK hiding of badges, or the plain clothed SO12 officers who lied about indentifying themselves to Jean Charles de Menenez before they shot him. And with the battle over FITWATCH (I note that the police are failing to prove that Forward Intelligence Team surveillance of protesters - peaceful or otherwise, thus putting them all into the 'suspected' category and inhibiting protest - is lawful) there is a 'them vs us' attitude that the police and the state are allowed to film and monitor us - but to do same means you get kept without charge for days, brutally hog tied, abused or insulted, or told that 'you can't film here' which is wrong unless it's private property. But if the watchers have nothing to hide why are they so scared of being filmed? Is it like with the removal of shoulder badges, or indeed jumping out of an unmarked car, you start to wonder what are they hiding - and why should they hide it if they are indeed the bastions of law they pertain to be? And for those who say 'one bad apple', in the Met and especially Territorial Support Group there seems to be an orchard full...a gang mentality produces a gang response, and in the violent G20 and Climate Camp footage, harassing photographers, journalists, protesters, hiding evidence and not grassing their 'bruvs' seems to be nothing more than the SW1 New Scotland Blue Bovver Boys to me.

Tag: Rodney King

Who watches the watchers? Right to film the police

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