This must galvanise people into action against the terrible policies and brutality that led to it. Without change to policing in this country this is destined to happen again.

How can the right defend the police now? Or how can they defend the actions of some of the police that appear to have killed this man?

This is a tragedy and my heart goes out to Ian Tomlinson’s family. I hope that they get the justice they deserve.

The Guardian is saying (just updated post) that the officer may face manslaughter charges. Damn right!

While it changes the legal position, and will make the officer in question more likely to face punishment, it doesn’t really change anything else: we already knew what the police did to Tomlinson (and that while it was clearly an assault, it was not of a nature that could reasonably have been expected to cause death).

I think it’s extremely naive to suppose that the inquest will be held in public, let alone that the DPP will be allowed to prosecute.

That really is one of those “Oh fuck!” moments.

On the day after this happened, I talked to numerous protesters who claimed to have been witness to the original assault, and said Tomlinson hit his head very hard.

So i’m not surprised at all about this.

My lack of surprise is further exacerbated due to 1. the police lying about bottle-throwing etc 2. the police giving the post mortem to a doctor with a very very dubious history.

But it’s still utterly shocking, whilst simultaneously managing not to be suprising.

“said Tomlinson hit his head very hard.”

Could that result in abdominal bleeding though? Is there a doctor in the house?

“While it changes the legal position, and will make the officer in question more likely to face punishment, it doesn’t really change anything else: we already knew what the police did to Tomlinson (and that while it was clearly an assault, it was not of a nature that could reasonably have been expected to cause death).”

Surely it *does* change things: if Tomlinson died of a headwound received by being pushed to the floor, then there is a direct causal chain from his being assaulted to his death. With a heart attack, the police could argue “he would have died anyway”. They can’t say that now.

AND they lied. Again.

fuck i’m an idiot.

sorry, somehow managed to read “headwound” when it says “abdominal bleeding”

ignore me ignore me ignore me

“I think it’s extremely naive to suppose that the inquest will be held in public, let alone that the DPP will be allowed to prosecute.”

Seems overly cynical to me. This is not just your average police brutality. They lied and lied and lied about this. Moreover there are a lot of witnesses and a lot of outrage and think that this could run on and on.

@Alix, we also saw them beat him in the leg and saw him fall onto what I’d roughly say was his abdomen. Seriously, how much more evidence are the likes of you, LFAT, chavscum et al going to need before your reaction is not “shit, it looks like they killed him” rather than endless bouts of whataboutery and “but are we 200% sure they had anything at all to do with his death”?

Well, I’m not ignoring you entirely. There is a small difference with this new finding – we know he died as a result of a trauma and not a pre-extant condition. Hence the new caution for manslaughter.

Delboy, read my blog and my comments on LFAT’s blog, and my coverage on LDV, become very embarrassed and STFU.

Mods, I appreciate your concern, but if it’s all the same to you I’d rather that Delboy comment (wot I have replied to) was reinstated. His/her stupidity deserves to be laid bare.

Oh woops, you didn’t. I just missed it. Sorry, ignore me.

@Paul, the bad thing is the level of force the police used on an innocent man, not the fact that he subsequently happened to die. Nobody could reasonably expect the treatment they gave him to be fatal (which is why this is a manslaughter caution not a murder caution).

Right, so does john b get a pasting from Delboy now for daring to make a measured comment? And if not, why not?

@john b, they didn’t beat him with a truncheon and throw him to the ground because they thought he would like it did they? They did it to hurt him. Because they wanted him to either leave, stop doing whatever it was they didn’t like (i.e. looking at them funny – being willfully and recklessly in his place of work – illegally walking home), or just bully an innocent man.

If you push someone onto concrete it’s not unreasonable to assume that they are going to hurt themselves badly. I wouldn’t expect them to die, but if I see someone fall over in the street like that I am going to assume that there is a small chance they might.

Meanwhile the Standard was already before this news leading on further examples of police ID badges being absent or covered up.

This is a big wake up call for the new commissioner.

We can only hope something positive comes out of this personal tragedy.

@18 “it’s not unreasonable to assume that they are going to hurt themselves badly” – for legal definitions of ‘badly’, yes it is unreasonable. You would assume, unless the person were very obviously very old & frail (which Tomlinson wasn’t), cuts and bruises.

But yeah, the point is that they hit him without good reason; the fact that he subsequently died, although sad for him and his family, is irrelevant to the police’s conduct (unless the first coroner lied under police pressure, in which case everyone involved should go to jail for a long time. Perhaps I’m too naive but I doubt they’d be *that* blatant)

According to reports I have read Ian Tomlinson collapsed to the floor and died ‘within minutes’.

If the mechanism was blunt abdominal trauma then there must have been a torrential internal bleed to cause such a rapid death.

I wonder if the abdominal aorta was torn ?
Classically this is a condition that mostly affects men who are long term smokers (resulting in vessel calcification) and have high blood pressure – once an aneurysm develops (ballooning of the vessel wall) a person is then like a walking time bomb since a relatively innocuous mechanism can cause the aorta to rupture (precipitating a huge bleed).

Only a third of such patients reach hospital alive (after rupture) and of those that do a further 20% die before staff can get them to theatre. If the surgeons do get you to the table only 40% will survive the operation.
This emergency has been likened to the blow out of a car tyre.

[10] I don’t think I’m being overly cynical. I’d imagine quite a lot of the police whoe were there that day will be thinking “that could have been me” and will be expecting the Police Federation to put pressure on in appropriate places. ACPO will think “this shows up that our tactics were cr*p” and between them they will argue that in order to preserve the reputation of the police it is necessary to close the story down. Our Home Secretary will give in to these arguments. The family will have it “explained” to them that they should not seek a private prosecution and bloggers who persist in the story will have their computers seized and be served with ASBOs prohibiting them from accessing the Internet.

Oh, and if you’re organsing a demonstration in future expect to be told that mobile phones and cameras are prohibited, and that stewards who do not enforce the prohibition will spend a night or three in the cells.

Thank you for that info, a&e. Though clearly I am morally repugnant and a harbourer of murderers to even ask.

Thanks, Alix – purely speculation on my part of course.

We shall have to wait for the full report.

@ CJ

My answer to “The G20 reason to save journalism

We must protect journalists’ jobs – as G20 showed, we need them to challenge the official version of events”

http://willrhodesportmanteau.com/2009/04/17/the-money-shot-was-the-protesters-attacking-rbs/

I linked to the Guardian piece where that headline comes from.

Something positive would be paper journos doing their job – not sucking the official line tit.

@ A&E

So it could well have been his stomach smacking against the ground that caused this bleed, if that were the case?

It’s possible Will, or maybe there was an earlier blow that might have been inflicted prior to the footage that found its way onto the news.

As I say this is all purely speculation but I can’t help thinking that there might have been a pre-existing condition to explain such rapid blood loss (enough to cause death in a few minutes) – so far we have the images and hearsay so I think we all have to be careful about any firm conclusion at this stage.

That would make a lot of sense, actually. He barely had time to get his hands out of his pockets before he hit the ground, so it was pretty full-bodied.

Expect Chavscum along any minute to tell us how Tomlinson probably bumped into something at work while drunk.

So where did ‘heart attack’ come from, who’s ‘initial assessment’ are they referring to ?

[30] Acute blood loss increases cardiac demand (since the heart has to do more work to sustain blood pressure and organ perfusion).

In these circumstances CHEST PAIN may develop related to cardiac ischaemia (i.e. reduced level of oxygen available to the heart through loss of circulating blood volume).

I was sceptical about the initial reports. My friend banged on and on about a ‘conspiracy’ and a ‘cover up’, particularly with regard to the pathologist, which I thought was bollocks. Now I’m much less certain.

There’s a part of me, however, that feels uneasy about manslaughter charges being made against the officer. I think he should be charged with something, and certainly kicked out the force, but I’m just worried that this will change little within the Met. They will be able to point to this one bloke who acted out of line, rather than accepting that it’s an institutional problem and making real policy changes. What the officer did was wrong – but I’m sure it happened hundreds of times elsewhere that day.

The debate musn’t become centred on this one policeman and his actions if there’s to be a real change in policing in this country.

Yes, Duncan [32] that hits the nail on the head.

Cjcjc @19:

The Standard are trying to climb out of a huge credibility hole caused by the gap between their quite disgusting approach to covering the issues during the first two days, and reality as it became apparent over the next two days.

DoTW @30:

The pathologist who did the initial autopsy. Who, it was revealed the following day, had been censured for professional misconduct in an earlier case involving the police.

We are now in a position to speculate as to why that pathologist was chosen with such speed to perform this autopsy.

@31

Makes sense, so Tomlinson himself probably thought it was a heart attack ?

@32 & 34

Its quickly turning into a shit episode of quincy.

But yeah, the point is that they hit him without good reason; the fact that he subsequently died, although sad for him and his family, is irrelevant to the police’s conduct (unless the first coroner lied under police pressure, in which case everyone involved should go to jail for a long time. Perhaps I’m too naive but I doubt they’d be *that* blatant)
Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull. One reason that protestors and bystanders are deserving of humane treatment is precisely because it may cause unforseeable serious injury. We will find ourselves in a situation where the elderly and the vulnerable are functionally not able to protest, because of the potential of police violence.

This is not just your average police brutality

I actually think that’s quite a naive point of view. I very vividly recall an arms fair protest in 2004 where I witnessed police tackle a man to the ground and kick him repeatedly in the stomach when he was lying curled up on the floor. Considering that there’s footage of Tomlinson being attacked from behind and thrown to the ground when his hands were in his pockets it isn’t beyond the realm of sanity to presume he could have been hit elsewhere on his body earlier. The problem is that the police always lie, they always conceal their badge numbers when they’re engaging in crowd control with protestors and the media has never cared before so nothing has been publicised until now. These issues aren’t new issues, it’s just that no one has died before.

As posted above, the eggshell skull rule means that for manslaughter it is irrelevant that the assault would not reasonably be expected to cause death. It is sufficient that the assault was illegal and had some causal connection to the death. Also see here: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/homicide_murder_and_manslaughter/#UNLAWFUL_ACT_MANSLAUGHTER_1

There have been cases where an assault leading to a heart attack has resulted in a manslaughter conviction. This new evidence makes it very difficult for there to be any other outcome, although the fact that the assault was minor can be mitigation.

The BBC were initially talking about reasonable force, but that is also a red herring as there is no general right to use reasonable force against an innocent bystander; only to prevent a crime, make an arrest, or in self defence.