April 11, 2009

A Reply and Question for Right-Wingers Determined to Apologise for Police Brutality

Posted in Media, Politics, Society, The Police at 9:19 pm by Paul Sagar

I’ve been name-checked.

Over at Letters from a Tory, I have been lambasted as one of the “cowardly” left-wingers who have remained silent over “new evidence” from the Daily Mailwhich seems to indicate that Ian Tomlinson was not innocent, and that (we are apparently supposed to infer), he deserved to be assaulted from behind by masked riot-police as he was walking away with his hands in his pockets.

Here I’m going to offer replies to both the Daily Mail and Letters from a Tory. Then I’m going to raise another issue, one of why on earth right wingers are determined to draw battle-lines over something which, to me, seems like it should be a non-partisan, non-left/right delineated issue.

Firstly, just a quick reply to LFAT’s accusation. The reason I haven’t blogged on this is because I didn’t hear about it until today. That’s because I’ve been taking a break over the last few days and used my Easter excursion out of London to go fishing instead of trawling the Daily Mail, which you may not be surprised to hear, I don’t read on a regular basis.

Anyway, let’s get underway.

The Daily Mail

I’m only going to respond to the part LFAT quotes, for brevity’s sake, and because I can get my point across just fine this way.

Says:

“[Ian] can be seen deliberately blocking a police van before refusing to be moved on by an officer in riot gear. The photographs emerged just hours after a new video which seems to show that the father-of-nine had been hit three times by police. The footage, recovered from a broken TV news camera, clearly shows a police officer hitting the back of Mr Tomlinson’s legs with a metal baton. It appears to back up earlier film taken by a City fund manager and released on Tuesday night, which showed an officer striking the homeless alcoholic with a baton and then shoving him to the ground. However, the fresh pictures, which were taken by IT worker Ross Hardy, seem to complicate events surrounding the 47-year-old’s death. ‘I’d been watching some of the protests and saw this older guy standing in the road,’ he said. ‘Cops were there already but a police riot van was trying to make its way up the road towards the Bank of England. Tomlinson stood out because of his football shirt and seemed in his own little world. It was weird. The van approached and a cop leaned out to shout at him to get out of the way. But he didn’t go anywhere. He just mumbled something and raised his arm a bit unsteadily. It was then it became obvious he was drunk because he wasn’t really coherent and couldn’t move well. The officer yelled at him again and when he didn’t move the riot van moved slowly up against him. It just nudged him gently but Tomlinson still didn’t get out of the way. They tried nudging him again. When that didn’t work four riot police moved in and dragged him on to the pavement. The van moved past but Tomlinson stuck around for at least another half an hour.”

Let’s deal with the text first.

1. There is no proof that Ian Tomlinson was deliberately blocking a police van. There is an unverified witness statement – but that seems to imply that he was drunk or dazed to an extent to which he did not know what he was doing. So we can’t conclude he was intentionally “antagonising” police, as LFATclaims on his blog.

2. If Tomlinson “appeared to be in his own little world”, then maybe he had already been assaulted, and that’s why he was dazed and confused? Or maybe he was drunk. But let’s be clear: the Daily Mail is throwing mud. The implication is: “Ian Tomlinson was drunk, and therefore a lout, and therefore deserved to be beaten.” Personally, I don’t believe people should be beaten for being drunk (or as it may have happened, for being dazed and confused following an earlier assault, which is very much an open possibility).

3. I also happen to believe that if the police see somebody in a state where they are “in their own world”, either because they are dazed or because they are drunk, the police should treat them with care. They should certainly not see a person’s inebriated or dazed condition as an invitation to use force against them, especially not of the sort the Guardian film shows being used against Tomlinson. I’ll repeat: if Tomlinson was drunk and “in his own world”, that wasn’t an invitation or excuse to use force against him, it was a reason to not use force against him. At least, that would be the conclusion of anybody who thinks it is wrong to use force or aggression against somebody in a mentally impaired state, the cause of which is undetermined. Especially when their impaired state could lead to serious complications if they were placed under physical stress. You know, for example, like being assaulted from behind.

4. Even if Tomlinson was drunk, I will repeat, that is not an excuse for police to assault him. If anything, the opposite. This is because the police are supposed to have a responsibility to look after and protect people, not hit them because they are inebriated (which we are not even sure Tomlinson was, for this could just be Daily Mail mud-slinging).

5. From what the Daily Mail article says, police did not harm Tomlinson for being drunk. But what it clearly implies is that the assault he later received was something he “had coming to him” because he was drunk and wearing a football shirt. I repeat, we do not know he was drunk – there is no proof of this, just speculative mud-throwing. I repeat again, even if he was drunk, that does not excuse his assault, from behind, by a police officer to whom he had his back and his hands in his pockets.

Now the photos:

This photo shows Tomlinson near a police van. It proves nothing without the witness testimony, which is itself unverified. All we have is a picture of a man, near a police van. We do not know if he was obstructing it, or he was drunk, or anything. This photo proves nothing at all.

This photo shows Tomlinson being pushed up against a wall by police. It proves nothing, again. From this picture, we do not know whether police were restraining Tomlinson for threatening them…or whether police have pushed him up against the wall for no good reason. I repeat, this photo proves nothing.

This photo appears to show Tomlinson being hit from behind by a police armed with a baton. We do not know why the policeman is hitting Tomlinson. We do not know if this is provoked or unprovoked. It tells us nothing.

In summary: the Daily Mail is throwing mud. It offers some photographs which prove nothing, and an unverified witness statement which appears calculated to make readers go through the following process of reasoning:
1. Tomlinson was drunk and a football hooligan
2. Drunk football hooligans have it coming to them
3. Tomlinson had it coming to him
4. The police did nothing wrong

To repeat myself: a man being drunk is no excuse for those in a position of power to assault him – and there is no proof Tomlinsonwas drunk, just some photos which tell us nothing an unverified witness mud-slinging. So the Daily Mail has added nothing new to the Tomlinson case, except to nail its own dirty colours firmly to the mast once more.

Letters from a Tory

The triumphalist tone of LFAT’spost is rather strange, given the sheer paucity of his arguments. [N.B. All typos and mis-spellings in the quotes are LFAT's]

1. The video said Ian Tomlinson was “attempting to get home from work” – oh, really?  So he just happened to be wearing plain clothes and accidentally found himself in front of a police cordon that was clearing the area of protestors during a mass gathering around the G20 summit?  Please, don’t insult our intelligence.  This was nothing more than a deliberate attempt to portray Ian as an innocent bystander when in reality he was very much part of the protest.

Well, well, well.  My analysis isn’t looking so stupid now, is it.  Your insistence that Ian was ‘on the way home’, in addition to the number of people who told me categorically in my comments section and elsewhere that all the evidence showed that Ian was merely an innocent man on his way home, was in fact not the whole story (to put it mildly).  The eyewitness says that Ian “stuck around for at least another half an hour”, which seems like very odd behaviour for someone who was unquestionably, without any doubt, definitely trying to go straight home, don’t ya think?

1. Ian Tomlinson was wearing plain clothes after work because he was a newspaper vendor – those were his work clothes. So this is no proof he was “part of the protest”

2. Even if Tomlinson had been “part of the protest”, since when is being part of a legal protest grounds for being assaulted from behind by a police officer?

3. The police weren’t “clearing the area”, they had “kettled” the area. Tomlinson was “hanging around” because he couldn’t get out. The police wouldn’t let him leave. That explains his “hanging around”: not sinister behaviour, but a constraint imposed upon him by the kettle he found himself caught in after he finished work.

4. The reference to the eyewitness is irrelevant, a) because it is unverified and could well have been fabricated by the Daily Mail (they do this you know - e.g. a Mail journalist posting fake terrorist messages on internet sites and then reporting on them as if they were written by real terrorists!) and b) lots of other eyewitness testimony contradicts it anyway. Even if the Mail dredged up one person willing to denigrate Tomlinson and throw mud without inventing the story themselves, one person’s testimony does nothing to change what the Guardian video shows: a man being assaulted by police.

2. The video said Ian was “walking away from them” – this is outright deceit, in my opinion.  Yes, he was physically facing the opposite direction but if you watch the video carefully you will see that he is deliberately antagonising the policeby walking slowly right in front of them as the cordon tries to move people down the street.  He was clearly antagonising them with his hands nonchallantly in his pockets, wandering around just a few steps ahead of them.  I’m also tempted to use the word ‘provocation’, such was his obvious willingness and intention to disrupt the police’s movements.  Notice that everyone else was at least 20 yards ahead of himbecause it was obvious that the police wanted people to stay well in front of them as they moved the protestors away from this area.  The police left him on the ground because they could see perfectly well what he was doing to their efforts to move people on and they were having none of his antics. Do not paint Ian as an innocent bystander – he was exactly where he wanted to be, blocking the police and antagonising them.

Well, well, well.  Huge swathes the Lefties descended on my blog on Tuesday to express their outrage at my refusal to accept that their beloved Ian had done nothing wrong, that he was merely the victim of circumstance, that he was going home from the newsagent and was subsequently set upon by those evil police officers without any provokation.  Ian was in fact quite happy to antagonise the police, as I suggested.  Whether he met the same officers later on is impossible to tell, but it does make all the verbal attacks on me in my comments section and elsewhere look a little embarrassing for you, doesn’t it.  Bless.  Also notice from the photos that he made a pretty damn quick exit when the riot police came near him on this earlier occasion, making his behaviour when he met them a second time look distinctly less innocent.

1. To say Tomlinson is “deliberately antagonising police” in the original Guardian-released video is two things.

One, it is ludicrous. A man walking slowly with his hands in his pockets is hardly “antagonism”.

Two, it is not the point. The police are supposed to rise above antagonism, because they are supposed to be the embodiment of law and order. Even if Tomlinson was antagonising  the police, that is no excuse for striking him with a baton and pushing him forcefully from behind so that he falls to the floor very hard.

Come on LFAT, you cannot be serious – can you? Or do you think the police should have the right to beat anybody they believe is “antagonising” them? I must say that I find that a very scary prospect indeed, and something I always thought that the rule of law and habeas corpus were established in opposition to. Or perhaps you don’t believe in such anachronisms?

2. The references to the Daily Mail and the photos add nothing to the bizarre charge of provocation. This is because the Mail article constitutes nothing more than speculation and mud slinging. More importantly, it is because even if Tomlinson was “antagonising” police – and for crying out lout, watch the video, he is doing nothing of the sort! – that is still no excuse for assaulting him!

3. As I fear LFAT will have trouble with this latter point, let me elucidate. We might understand why, in the heat of the moment, a lone individual lashes out because they have been provoked. We might say “well, I can understand why that happened”. But it is a wholly different step to happily say that such lashing-out is also condoned. For example, imagine that if after Eric Cantona launched his kung fu kick at a Crystal Palace supporter, he said “I was provoked”. We might agree that Cantona was indeed provoked – but we can still say with complete consistency that Cantona should (as a professional footballer) have risen above the provocation. Therefore whilst we might understand why he did what he did, we nonetheless do not excuse his action.

The Tomlinson case may be analogous. Now, let me stress again that I do not believe that Tomlinson was provoking the police. But let’s suppose he was – we might understand why a policeman in a stressful situation snapped and lashed out. But going on record and writing lengthy defences of and excuses for such an assault – on a man with his back turned and his hands in his pockets - is quite a different matter. 

That demonstrates a readiness to excuse violence and misconduct on behalf of somebody whose very position means they should by definition rise above such behaviour. It is to cold-bloodedly apologise for the use of violence by a police officer, and apparently for no better reason than because they are a police officer. It is to say that the police may use violence against whoever they chose, should they feel they are being “antagonised”. 

I’m not sure what to say to that. If you can’t see why that is so very very wrong, I’m not sure there is anything I can say to you.

3. The video said that “witnesses say him dazed and stumbling along the road before he collapsed” – this may be true, but in the seconds before a heart attack you can hardly blame this on the police.  He was sitting down, injured and unharmed, on the video footage and appears to get up with the help of another protestor and then walk away.

Ian’s drunkeness raises a number of difficult questions about how the police should have dealt with him, bearing in mind that he was antagonising officers and quite pissed.  He was clearly able to walk away from being shoved to the floor later on and skip away from riot police when he met them the first time, so he cannot have been paralytically drunk.  Alcohol always raises the issue of how in control of his actions he was at the time, especially given his alcoholic background.  That said, being drunk during a mass protest is not exactly a wise course of action.

Allow me to try and summarise the situation that we have reached.  These new photos and this one new eyewitness give us nothing more than another small piece of a very large and tragic puzzle.  As I said on Tuesday, which was conveniently ignored by all the people who verbally abused me, “I’m not going to sit here and defend everything that the police did at the G20 …[and] I’m not going to write this incident off as irrelevant or unimportant and an investigation into his death is the right thing to do, but it is quite clear to me that people like you have done everything possible to make Ian out to be some kind of martyr for protesters everywhere.”  However, you were all up in arms at the police and right-wing bloggers just a matter of hours ago and it was even claimed that “the stench of hypocrisy is over-whelming” in the failure of right-wing bloggers to comment on the new video footage.  Now, curiously, you have gone completely silent when new evidence arrives that doesn’t fit with your tribal anti-police agenda.  Not a single one of you has even given a passing mention to this new evidence and that, I’m afraid, makes you look rather cowardly.

1. The part in italics so spectacularly misses the point I find it hard to believe LFAT is not being deliberately deceitful. The very heart of the issue at steak is whether the assault on Tomlinson is what led to his heart attack and death (as well as the other issue about whether the police should be assaulting people from behind regardless of whether or not they go on to die).

To say ”the police cannot be blamed” is to simply assume the bone of contention over which so much is being debated. I will return to the issue of LFAT’s sincerity later.

2. There is no proof Tomlinson was drunk ad nauseum infinitum.

3. If Tomlinson was drunk, it does indeed raise issues. Issues such as how the police should treat a drunk man, acting in a confused manner, inside a police mass-arrest of legal peaceful protesters and by-standers caught-up in the confusion. But one thing it certainly does not lead to is the conclusion that a man’s being drunk gives the police carte-blanche to assault him, as LFAT is happy to imply.

4. LFAT’s comment that he is not going to defend everything that the police did at the G20 protest is very odd. I’d like to hear what he isn’t prepared to defend, given that the most heinous event from that day – the death of a man following what video footage strongly implies to be an unprovoked attack by police  – is the one he has chosen to apologise unconditionally for.

Finally, a word on LFAT. I cannot decide about this blogger. Does he (I assume LFAT is a he) actually believe his own arguments? To do so would require a striking blend of inability to follow logical reasoning (given the absolute paucity of his arguments) combined with an unflinching commitment to authority and willingness to apologise for police actions which (somewhat ironically) parallels the ideologues of the 1950s and 60s who swore blind that Soviet Russia was a utopia, in the face of all available evidence that it was hell upon Earth.

The alternative is possibly more troubling: that LFAT is not as unintelligent as his arguments would imply at all. Rather, LFAT is very intelligent, and has learned the lessons of the American neo-conservative right: that having the best logic or winning the arguments isn’t what matters in politics. What matters is making the most appealing case - and that, sadly, has little to do with intellectual rigour or truth, and much more to do with populist demagogic appeal.

So what say you, LFAT? Are you plain stupid? Or are you a manipulator of facts and people?

A Question

“Why have so many on the right decided to draw ideological lines-in-the-sand over the issue of Tomlinson’s assault by police?”

For example, why has LFAT gone out of his way to imply and argue and insinuate that Tomlinson deserved to be assaulted and that the police have no case to answer against them? Why have newspapers like the Mail and the Sun in particular decided to come down so hard on the side of the police and against the man who died (as well as all the peaceful, legal protesters)? And why is this being parsed so heavily in terms of left-right ideology?

From where I am sitting, this should be a wholly non-partisan issue. Whether you are on the left or the right, the principle that the police should not assault unarmed men walking away from them just seems a matter of basic morality. I don’t care what you think about redistribution, equality, the role of the state, benefit scroungers or tax havens. If someone had asked me two weeks ago: “can those on the right be as opposed to the police assaulting people as those on the left?” I would have replied “Of course! I may disagree with rightists on a whole host of issues – but surely we can agree on something as basic as the principle that the police shouldn’t assault members of the public!”

Yet such a sentiment has been proved wholly wrong by vast swathes of the right. Why do you rightists think it is OK for the police to assault people (especially those who later die)? And why do you wish to make this an ideologically partisan issue, drawing battle-lines with the left?

That’s not a rhetorical finish, by the way: I really do want to know.

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