- cross-posted to:
- thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- thepoliceproblem@lemmy.world
A police officer has been filmed kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the ground at Manchester Airport.
The uniformed male officer is seen holding a Taser over the man, who is lying face down, before striking him twice while other officers shout at onlookers to stay back in a video shared widely online.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said firearms officers had been attacked while attempting to arrest someone following a fight in the airport’s Terminal 2 on Tuesday. It said it had referred itself to the police watchdog.
Anger has grown over the video and a crowd of what appeared to be several hundred people protested outside the police station in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on Wednesday evening.
Just for context, this is in the UK so the officer WILL be prosecuted and punished accordingly.
It is worth noting that other officers at the scene had a broken nose and other injuries before this happened. It doesn’t excuse what he does but there’s certainly a lot more to the story here.
I’m from the UK, and I can’t agree. Most likely, at worst, he will be dismissed from the police force. It is very rare for police constables to face criminal charges, and even rarer for those charges to actually stick.
Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man, was reading the newspaper on the London Underground. The metropolitan police shot him in the head seven times. No officer was held accountable.
Ian Tomlinson, a newsagent, was walking home past a protest. The metropolitan police beat him to death. A constable lost his job, but was found not guilty by the court.
A little kid with mental health issues went up to a metropolitan police constable to ask for help. The cop pepper sprayed and beat the child 30 times with a baton. He was dismissed from the police force, but did not face criminal charges.
And you claim that the officer responsible for this is “fucked”? Dream on. At worst he’ll have to get a real job like the rest of us.
The only one of those I’m familiar with is Menenez and the officers genuinely believed he had explosives. It was a fucked up situation and I do think they probably should have suffered more consequences. But honestly there’s room for a little nuance.
British cops are not routinely armed so shooting generally is a LOT rarer.
If I shot someone 7 times in the head, it wouldn’t matter how many people agreed with me that we all thought it was the devil himself crawling out of a portal to hell, I’d get charged and sentenced for manslaughter.
The police are able to get away with literal murder and people will come out of the woodwork, wringing their hands about all of the nuances of the situation.
No, fuck that, and fuck the police. They’re a legalised criminal gang that exists to be the fist of the ruling class and nothing more. If I could click my fingers right now and make the entire institution no longer exist I’d do it faster than you could blink.
But then who would who call if someone broke into your home and didn’t even bother shooting your dog?
He had been incorrectly identified as a terrorist and an imminent threat. The fuck up was not the person who fired the gun but whoever gave him the order.
That’d be Dame Cressida Dick, later promoted to Commissioner of the Met.
Afraid that I have to agree. It’s nowhere near as extreme an example, there was a case brought against the West Midlands Police a few years ago where the cops intimidated a bunch of fans from Bristol, detained them, and forced them back on the train to Bristol. It took four years to settle the case, and the only way they were able to be taken seriously at all was because a serving policeman in Bristol felt inclined to back them, despite warnings not to do so by his peers.
It’s the classic “who polices the police” scenario, and sadly the charges are often so painfully low that it feels like the best way to commit a crime and get away with it is to join the police…
I think I’ve read recently about a serial rapist and murderer convicted in UK who was a policeman.
Our timeline is generally dark, but I simply admire how my instinct, feeling that there’s truth to the rule “all free people bear arms”, which I couldn’t justify in my childhood where it only had strange connection with dignity and fantasy\heroic stuff I would read, is being justified by life itself.
Same with the rule that one can’t build a legal system that is just, only that is competitive, and even in that evil may win so an honest man, or a group of honest people, or a whole oppressed people may have to fight the whole world indirectly. Well, that part I should have understood even back then, I have family in such a place.
But will they really?
Here in Aus at least, 3 cops assaulted an autistic or downs guy in his yard one day. The court ordered them to apologise to the victim and do some bullshit “training”.
Yes. This is the UK. The officer is fucked. Exactly how fucked depends on the context which we don’t really have yet.
Can any other Brits confirm you actually crack down on cops? Have you followed their trials until the conclusion to see what ‘punishment’ they actually get?
I’m British, and I wouldn’t say so. In some higher profile cases cops might lose their job, and in extreme cases they go to court, but it’s really rare for the charges to stick. There was a recent case with a famous sportsman - a pair of cop tased him, beat him with a baton, and kicked him in the head until he died. That was the first time in over 30 years a cop had actually been found guilty of manslaughter, but the other cop escaped with no charges. The bastard that got sentenced will almost definitely be released within a couple of years.
So, yeah, if it’s high profile enough, maybe, to some extent, but otherwise, no.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/30/police-officers-in-england-and-wales-guilty-of-crimes-up-70-per-cent
This is a soft-left wing newspaper that’s generally quite critical of the police. The numbers of convictions amd sackings are quite interesting. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement but we’re starting from a MUCH better place than the US or even Aus.
The 70% increase in convictions does not mean there’s an increase in Police bad actors. It’s an increase in pursuing convictions against them.
Read your own fucking source.
Yeah but people complain about police all of the time. Just because only 1% of them were assessed does not mean that the others were legitimate. Sometimes it’s quite obvious that it is legitimate I really don’t think the police are a problem in the UK there’s definitely a few individuals that need their heads examining but mostly people aren’t afraid of them. Stop putting your own biases on everyone else.
And why do you think it’s acceptable that only 1% of complaints are even so much as looked into? I think you have your own, massive bias here that you’re completely ignoring.
Another Brit here, yes cops do get punished in high profile cases with video evidence such as this.
The contradictory examples listed above were quite complex cases from what I remember.
That said, as a teenager a friend of mine was beaten up in a police van in a case of mistaken identity. He was advised by his lawyer to drop the case as there was little chance of proving what happened as the police had smashed up his phone which he had been recording them with.
Due to the context of police officers being injured prior to what’s shown on tape. I expect in this instance, the cop to get a lenient pushiment.
They’re not superheroes…
To be fair, while he will see more consequences than would be likely if this had happened in the US, it’s still pretty rare for police officers to be successfully prosecuted in the UK. More likely we’ll be looking at an IOPC investigation and internal disciplinary procedures rather than criminal prosecution.
I guarantee you that his career in the police is over. It’ll be interesting to find out more about the context, there’s clearly already been a lot of violence happening to the cops before the video starts. I’m certainly expecting criminal prosecution against him.
police prosecutions in the UK are done very quietly, I’m not sure why but you’re lucky to get one small story in the newspapers for even quite horrific crimes. There are perhaps not enough, but they do happen more than people generally think.
Woah there nelly. That be bringing any of that “logic” and “real world understanding” here