What scares me is you lot don't just see a PC with history (allegedly) as a problem... you see "reasonable force that ends in unfortunate circumstance" as a PROBLEM..... we need the fooking police there...
I don't think Tomlinson did much wrong really... but a shove = killer?!!! really? no !! even from a coper with history !!!
You lot are trying to undermine what keeps us safe !!! think about it !!
The 'shove' was in the back of a man who wasn't particularly steady on his feet , wasn't looking and had his hands in his pockets preventing him breaking his fall.
If someone had deliberately shoved your grandad in the street perhaps for walking too slow and he had died and it had been caught on tape would you say 'he did not mean to kill him' or 'string him up'?
The Police had plenty of options in this case. They could have arrested and handcuffed Mr Tomlinson if they felt his actions warranted it. None of the other officers around PC Harwood seemed that concerned.
TBH the other officers around Harwood were very lucky that having witnessed a shambling man being shoved over from behind the mob of actual rioters did not turn on them.
Lets be honest. If a mob really decided as a group to take out ten or twelve police officers using strength of numbers then they could. The only thing stopping that happening is the view that the police are upholding the law and have the authority to do so.
It would only take two or three more officers behaving like Harwood before the whole police were discredited and seen as legitimate targets.
I am a law abiding citizen and believe as you do in the need for the Police to maintain law and order. However I do not actually believe in 'kettling' as a legitimate form of crowd control as it breaches the fundemental human right of innocent until proven guilty.
Mr Tomlinson was in the rioting area but was not a rioter simply a Londoner caught up in the wrong place and probably being driven in the opposite direction of where he actually wanted to go and into the middle of a load of rioters surrounded by Police bearing riot shields , shouting orders and threatening tear gas and police horses , baton charges etc.
I would not have succumed meekly to being herded in that way had I been in London that day and been there on other non riot related business and would without doubt have been arrested for refusing to be bullied into the kettling area.
Kettling is essentially confinement. The court of human rights has said it is legal.
It has not mentioned whether its legality has certain conditions attached.
If an innocent person is pushed into a kettle and is subsequently crushed by the crowd within I would also expect another murder charge to be brought against the police.
