and the account of the Nicky Fisher assault makes me uneasy (although admittedly this feeling is entirely based on her sightly spaced-out media interviews).

And there you have why some ‘police bloggers’ and others are attacking her because of the fact she is a “scrounger” and using the situation to make some cash (Max Clifford).

What then does that say about us, not Nicky? You don’t look right so then you cannot be believed, even though there are countless witnesses’ to say you are telling the truth?

It was only a matter of time that something like this came about – regretfully Ian lost his life in this case. We see, too, that the third autopsy is going ahead and this will be used to bring down the charge – aggravated assault is my bet if anyone should run a book.

It is time now that the IPCC or the body that follows it should be truly independent and have real powers – that is one simple way that some trust can be brought back.

How the trust in the police can be rebuilt – well – as a vast majority don’t trust them then that is anyone’s guess.

Hmmmm..I would be very surprised if anyone has “ordered a policy of violence”.
That’s just hyperbole.

I agree that both sides have used the partial information in the videos to make definitive claims.

But it is difficult to conclude that without the videos there would be no investigation, or not much of one.

I think the vilification that the police now receive

Can you point me towards this vilification, please?

Sorry, I meant difficult *not* to conclude, ie no videos = no investigation.

I’m struggling to think of a context which will excuse beating people to the ground when they have their hands in their pockets or smacking women in the face with a riot shield but I’d agree that video footage shows only part of the story in the sense it doesn’t show the actions of politicians, senior police officers and news editors who made violence inevitable.

Let’s hope the enquiry doesn’t stop with a few thuggish police officers on the ground (including all those who removed their identification: even where they did not take part in these assaults they were obviously preparing to do so)

I don’t really understand what this post is trying to say.

Yes it’s true that video footage from “citizen journalists” can only shed so much light – but what’s the alternative? Believing only the official police account? Well there’s lots of reason to not do that, as we’ve again seen.

You appear to be pointing to a basic fact about human existence – once an event has happened, those not privy to it will never gain full access to what happened, only partial representations – and concluding that there is something wrong with citizen journalism of the sort that came out of the G20 protests, and in turn implying that the media is pulling all the puppet strings.

But surely the correct analysis is to view this as two competing accounts – the police, the citizen journalists with their cameras – arguing for different interpretations/recollections/understandings/recordings of the same event. Sure, neither alone will ever tell the whole story, but then again “the whole story” will never be known.

The point is not about discovering “the whole story” from the perspective of some omniscient objective observer, but about the behaviour of the police on 1st and 2nd April from the perspective of those who must go on living in a society where that police force plays such a prominent role.

OK my last comment doesn’t even make any sense.

I’ll try and articulate my thoughts better later.

Well there’s a good reason why there is a lot of anger being directed at the police and an unwillingness to believe them – because they peddled so many lies in the first place (‘bricks’). I also think it’s difficult to avoid making comparisons with Charles de menzes, primarily because it seems they haven’t learnt from the incident.

The thing is Sunny, as I’ve said elsewhere, all this needs to be refined beyond talking about ‘the police’. It’s not ‘the police’, it’s certain elements, tactics and policies within ‘the police’. The vagueness of the language plays into the hands of those who want to call us ‘anti-police’.

cjcjc @4:

I am currently elbow-deep in the legal report from Climate Camp, the fruits of which will be appear over at my place over the next few days, but there’s a specifically apposite figure in there. In 2007 the IPCC investigated around 100 cases, and over-saw police investigations of around 150 more (250 investigations in total). Out of 29,000 formal allegations lodged with them. Of the 100 they investigated themselves, in most cases it was because there was a death involved which might be directly attributable to the police. Only 1% of these investigations lead to anything the victim might call action.

As you say, no video, no interest.

D’oh, brain/finger interface error. 2007/8, that should have read.

I suspect policing is a bit like sausages and politics – we all see the final product but if you visit the factory you’ll leave feeling a bit queasy.

Justin, ok I guess I should be more specific. There are problems among elements of the police and they should recognisethat. There is a problem with the extent of how much power is given to the police – the govt is to blame for that. But there are also issues about specific police action like kettling, which needs blaming and over-hauling. So I think there are different facets to the problem.

I think it actually serves the government’s ultimate aims to focus as much attention as possible on the brutality of “the police”, since it deflects attention from what the whole point of the protest was. As Tony Benn noted to the BBC, perhaps if half as much attention had been paid to what people were actually saying at the protests, then perhaps real energy could be expended in making the government accountable for its actions ie. bailing out big business whilst neglecting ordinary people). As it stands, the point of the protest is barely mentioned.

What makes me feel queasy is the character assassination and generally judgemental attitudes towards Ms Fisher seen all over the media and now unfortunately, here. Few non media types come across that well on the telly for the first time.

I don’t see anything wrong with her attempting to make some cash out of the situation. Surely that would only be bad if she’d actually done something immoral or maybe deliberately engineered the situation in order to cash in. We don’t really need her account, its all there on film. I just hope she’s started a civil case against the police as well.

And Paul S, I think I know what you’re saying. We need as many different viewpoints as we can get to build up the most comprehensive picture as possible, while recognising that there will always be gaps in the story. The charade about there being no CCTV cameras/they weren’t working/oh actually they were didn’t help (and does throw back an uncomfortable reminder about aspects of poor JCdM’s death and the subsequent ‘investigation’). It’s disturbing thst the IPCC seemed to buy into this hook line and sinker initially.

And lastly, while I take Justin’s point about generalising about the police, if some police officers act in this way, are not reported on by their colleagues and are supported by the higher ranks (and remember that the guy who assaulted Ms Fisher is a sergeant) then at some point one has to wonder whether general comments criticising the police are that inappropriate.

That said, we need to look into the source of the problem and my view is that the light needs to be shone on ACPO. Its this body that sells itself as a world leader in public order policing and its subsidiary NETCU is the body that went around shooting its collective mouth off about environmental protesters being a significant terrorist threat. This is where kettling will have come from as well as the tendency to crack down hard on environmentalists. This body needs to be brought under democratic control at least or preferably abolished.

>The thing is Sunny, as I’ve said elsewhere, all this needs to be refined beyond talking about ‘the police’. It’s not ‘the police’, it’s certain elements, tactics and policies within ‘the police’. The vagueness of the language plays into the hands of those who want to call us ‘anti-police’.

Yes. And into the hands of those who want to create a conflict on all sides.

Is it too farfetched to make a comparison with the MPs thing, where the only way to get it on the agenda is a huge relentless series of news stories, but the actual practical changes have to be designed very carefully indeed.

In the case of the police, I’d point again at the underlying legal framework and badly drafted laws, as well as ACPO setup, ambiguous powers, tactics, declared policy not reaching the ground level etc etc etc.

In the real world we will be dealing with reform of the police service not a new one, and it will have the same officers making it up.

To be clear, when I said

although admittedly this feeling is entirely based on her sightly spaced-out media interviews

I was drawing attention to my own shortcomings, not Ms Fisher’s. Its certainly not a character assassination from this corner.

I’ve just seen the Channel 4 item, which the IPCC tried in vain to block. The “pinhole” problem I cited in the post sill persists, but it does give a much better account of the incident than the single viewpoint we saw previously.