To my delight footage has been found of an officer from the metropolitan police dragging a disabled protester from his wheelchair and across the road during the demonstrations last Thursday.
Jody McIntyre said he was twice pulled out of his chair by the same officer whist taking part in the protests. He had asked for witnesses to come forward as a result of which this video footage came to light.
It shows an officer pulling Jody from his wheelchair and dragging him across the street. The policeman has to be pulled away by a fellow officer.
Jody has been collecting statements from witnesses and even has the badge number of the offending policeman. He intends taking legal action and will be complaining to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
Jody quite rightly believes that he has the same rights as anyone else to protest. He has a brother of 16 who will not now be able to go to university because of the charges.
I’ve elsewhere made a spirited defence of the protesters, excusing some of their rather dubious actions because of the spirit that overcomes a crowd in such circumstances. The adrenalin, the feelings of togetherness, and of shared intent can take over a crowd, and make people do things that afterwards they may feel ashamed of and regret.
Now, I’m sure that the police, just like troops, are affected by the same phenomenon, the same feeling of 'the total being greater than the sum of the parts’, but the police are professionals, whereas the students are not. We pay policemen generous salaries and train them to deal with these situations. Part of that training will surely be how to control your emotions at work. I don't pretent that it's easy, but who said that life wold be easy.
I don’t know what kind of a person it takes to drag a wheelchair bound lad across the road and away from his chair. I’m not sure that it is any kind of “person” at all. But I hope that just for once, just this one time, we manage to nail this sub human “espèce de putain” and drum him out of the police.
The video is from Youtube, and it is towards the end of it that you will see this event. There is, not unreasonably, some swearing in the clip, so don't watch if this offends you.
We have to get used to it. When the EU Gestapo take over fully this will be a minor event. Still made me feel sick, though.
ReplyDeleteThere can't be any excuse for this, Tris. I'm not wildly enamoured of some student tactics or even their reason for protesting but the police have got to calm downm even in the face of provocation, because dragging this guy out of his wheelchair and across the road shames them all.
ReplyDeleteHe (McIntyre) has a bit of a reputation amongst his lefty pals for being a radical but he's a very intelligent guy and no matter what his politics the actions of that policeman were unbelievable.
Well OR. It seems that we don't need foreigners to be thuggish and violent. The English police (in this case) manage it very nicely themselves.
ReplyDeleteBut frankly, although my natural instinct is to support the police (coming from the background that the police were originally set up to protect), I've always found their treatment of the public utterly insupportable.
I've had to do with them on a few occasions (Scottish police), when I’ve been broken into, or had my car stolen or damaged, and I’ve always been left wondering why I bothered. Of course they have never actually been thuggish, but I’ve yet to meet a polite one.
And I know several occasions of them using information on their police computer to smear people they have to do with on a non- professional basis.
So despite my natural inclination to support them, I think they are a pile of crap.
Hi GV. I don’t agree with all their tactics either, but I know that protest have always been a marvellous place for genuine thugs to tag along. They care not about the subject, but any excuse to have a fight with authority does for them.
ReplyDeleteNo. I wouldn’t have wanted broken windows and graffiti, but you do have to ask yourself, what do the authorities do when people protest peacefully and quietly? I can just see Cameron and Clegg being driven past them without even noticing them.
As for their cause. Well of course it’s a long complicated subject. The idiotic notion that everyone and their granny’s dog has to go to university, started by John major when he turned everything but nursery schools into universities and continued by Blair and Brown, is at fault. Of course 60% of the population goes to university there won’t be enough money for their fees. On the other hand every man jack of the people who put this proposal forward did get free tertiary education... all right for them, but not for today’s kids.
The government would have been better to look at setting up apprenticeships; limiting uni to the people with really top marks and making sure that other people got education which was suitable to their talents and abilities.
But then, that makes common sense. What British government in the last 100 years has had any of that?
You can add to that mix that were it not for the Liberal Democrats who bought student and parent votes on their “pledge”; this law would have been thrown out. What on earth do you do when they tell barefaced lies and then drive past you in their ministerial limousines? In my opinion they only get away with this deplorable behaviour because we always just shrug our shoulders and accept that they have the right to pee on us from a great height.
As for the lad. Well, he may be a bit of a lefty, but he has cerebral palsy; he’s in a wheel chair. I guess he presents very little physical threat to the police. He’s also very easy to beat up. Which is probably why this piece of cowardly filth set about him, twice. It’s as bad as beating up a child. To me he’s as despicable as Baby Peter’s killer.
Law or no law, if I had been there with my friends, we would have kicked seven colours out of the policeman. And if, like all the rest of them, this one gets away with this, I imagine, and indeed hope, that people will make it very clear to the police, and the parliamentarians, who also seem to evade the law for their crimes, that we will not tolerate this kind of behaviour any longer...
Ooops rant over .. that feels better...
PS... Did you hear about the pea brained Commissioner. Apparently he phoned Charles the next morning and offered his resignation... to Charles!
ReplyDeleteWhat century is this idiot living in?
If a police officer is found wanting in the proper conduct of his or her duties, then by all means, let us seek proper justice done.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it remains clear that the police service in the UK remains among the most liberal, and maliable [I personally think, weak] in the EU area. If these riots had begun on German or French streets, just you watch the bloody aftermath as the rioteering thugs arte brushed aside in a clean wipe of almighty justice ... I look forward to the introduction of water cannon, so private individuals can feel safe from the baying, thirsting mob of criminals trying to undermine our liberal way of life...to riot is to seriously undermine the value of peaceful protest.
So Dean... the point of the post was to talk about Jody. Do you think it reasonable that this thug dragged the lad from his wheelchair, across the road and had to be pulled off him by another police man.
ReplyDeleteIf he'd been defending himself from a big bad thug, I might have seen the point, but whatever else Jody is, he's not a physical threat.
Tris,
ReplyDeleteAs I already said above, obviously where a police officer fails in his duties then punish him. This is a disturbing thing - naturally.
I hoped that I'd made that clear above.
Dean wants one of these so he can keep his 'liberal' society in line. 1 cctv camera per 14 (or less) individuals more like a police state run by incompetants to feed the rich their divine rights.
ReplyDeletePolice doing what police do best, no more less. Reminds me of Discharge lyrics;
ReplyDeleteKept in line with truncheons
Rifle butts and truncheons
This is state control, this is state control
State control, state control, this is state control
Beaten up behind closed doors
Cracked and bruised ribs, bloody mouth
Cracked and bruised skull, bloody mouth
State control, state control, this is state control
You refer to the feeling of getting caught up in the crowd tris... this is the police getting caught up in the trappings of the state and thinking they are beyond reproach. The BBC interview with Jody, if anyone has seen it, is totally hilarious. The journalist tries to discredit and shame him, asking him if he threw things... after being told that he has cerebral palsy and can't even push his own wheelchair. Yet, even after this, he asks if Jody was taunting the police... because if a disabled kid taunts you, it is totally ok to beat the shit out of them with a nightstick.
I work with the police a lot, phoning them at least once or twice a week.(See various rants on ma blog)
ReplyDeleteYou may be old enough Dean, to remember the miner's strike and the activities of the Special Patrol Groups that were set up to break the strike.
But I certainly do...where the "government" of this country deliberately destroyed it's own industrial base for political reasons.
Where military bases were closed because the area they were in didn't vote tory...hang on...
Conan,
ReplyDeleteThe Thatcherite legislative agenda as a whole I may occasionally defend, but in this case - yes. Yes, the mine closure programme was political, after all I didn't see the then Thatcher government ending subsidy for unprofitabe farmers ... they vote Tory after all.
But, the need to maintain order in society is vital, protest, sure - peacefully. Peaceful protest brought an end to the Raj, peaceful protest is noble, creative, effective - violence is anarchy, the enemy of the maintainence of any social contract. It must thus - no matter the motivations be utterly, and unremittingly crushed, a no to disorderly violence, mass chaos and anarchy.
The social contract as the foundation stone of our sacred Burkean inheritance itself demands nothing less. This is where Maggie was right to crush the anarchists. There can be no change, reform, status quo or fair or unfairness in the absence of society
ReplyDeleteThe only true state of nature.
Dean "the need to maintain order in society is vital," YES but that will only happen when we have a grown up DEMOCRACY as it will suit all participants then rather than the two fingers the general public are given by the westmidden troughers.
ReplyDeleteDean, the right to protest is individual. As many stupidly handled confrontations in Northern Ireland confirmed, escalation is not the way. Just because some bam next to me in a demonstration throws a half brick, it does not mean that the police/army can CS gas, rubber bullet or water cannon *me*.
ReplyDeleteOr shoot me dead.
tris
ReplyDeleteNot 'delight' no one (normal) can delight in seeing another human being who is unable to defend themselves being abused by those who should protect them.
You wonder whats in the mind of a police 'man' can we call him a 'man' to behave in that way in the full glare of the media.
and ask what would he do to a prisoner in a out of the way secure cell and know one to know or stop him.
Haven't seen Cameron outside 10 downing street jabbing his finger and condemning the police actions towards this innocent man........YET
Deano
The social contract is an organic one in a constant state of change not a one monolithic unchanging entity fixed forever
Edmund Burke-
People crushed by law have no hope but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
Calgacus
To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of 'government'; they create a desolation and call it peace.....
'YOU WONDER WHATS IN THE MIND OF DEANO'
Niko
ReplyDeleteIn this case we are defending the British social inheritance [which Burke argues IS constant, by our duty to act as custodians only], of peaceful protest, respect for the rule of laws bound up in our conventions as a society.
Burke did talk about the need to preserve our customs, habits and traditions did he not? So the Westminster Parliament IS a fixed institution so long as it fulfils its job, which is to embue that social inheritance which we must preserve.
The rule of law is vital in the task, after all Burke does also mention that true liberty is only realised in the true state of man - SOCIETY.
Conan,
ReplyDeleteI quite agree with you, escalation of conflict is counter productive, thus we need to enable our police to control these forces which threaten to unleash themselves upon the innocent, the peaceful, like a tempest of irrational and dangerous violent chaos.
Kettling is not working, we need to consider providing the police service with new means of containment of violence - so we do not see anymore people in wheelchairs manhandled like this.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission?? Good luck with that! It’s rather like the Electoral Commission isn’t it? A way of kicking things into the long grass under a very thin veneer of being seen to do the right thing. But almost always finds, after a long and expensive process, that no wrong doing was intended or there is no case to answer or some such other fudge.
ReplyDeleteOf course peaceful protest would not have brought an end to the Raj if Dean’s erstwhile hero Winston Churchill had still been prime minister. It’s well known that he thought that giving India back to the errr..Indians was a mistake. I can’t see Ghandi impressing the drunken old soak very much he would probably have got the water cannon out, or more likely the Maxim gun!
ReplyDeletePerhaps there is more to it.
ReplyDeletehttp://order-order.com/2010/12/14/wheels-come-off-protesters-complaint/
Wheels Come Off Protester’s Complaint
Jody Macinytre, radical pro-Palestine supporter and sufferer from cerebral palsy has made much hay of the fact he was dragged out of his wheelchair by riot police at Thursday’s protests. Yet he has previously admitted to be coordinating breaking police lines. He claims on his blog he is a revolutionary yet spent a BBC interview declaring his innocence and denied live on Sky that he was in fact a revolutionary before going on to claim that the police had no reason to move him out of the way. However he has revelled in, and incited, violence on his website.
His argument is undone when a quick glance at his blog shows that he has been at the forefront of the protests so far at Westminster and managed to walk all the way up to the top of Millbank back in November, blogging that “It was an epic mission to the top. Nine floors; eighteen flights of stairs. Two friends carried my wheelchair, and I walked.” Macintyre can’t hide behind his disability when the police treat him like any other violent trespassing thug. It’s called equality…
Hat-Tip : Phil Taylor
UPDATE: Further pictorial evidence emerges of the police being as gentle as possible in moving Macintyre and in doing so the officers put themselves in personal danger from the hail of missiles. Here is a quote from Graham Mitchell the photographer “Mr McIntyre was in the front row of the crowd and in a very precarious position, especially as he is wheelchair bound. It was clear from my vantage point that the police moved him as gently as possible and in doing so the officers put themselves in personal danger from the hail of missiles. Once he had been moved away from the front line to a safe distance, the officers sat him on a low level wall. Mr McIntyre got up and started arguing with an officer. He was so wound up that he eventually tried to strike an officer and was only stopped from doing this due to the intervention of a famale passer-by.”
http://order-order.com/2010/12/14/wheels-come-off-protesters-complaint/
ReplyDeleteWheels Come Off Protester’s Complaint
Jody Macinytre, radical pro-Palestine supporter and sufferer from cerebral palsy has made much hay of the fact he was dragged out of his wheelchair by riot police at Thursday’s protests. Yet he has previously admitted to be coordinating breaking police lines. He claims on his blog he is a revolutionary yet spent a BBC interview declaring his innocence and denied live on Sky that he was in fact a revolutionary before going on to claim that the police had no reason to move him out of the way. However he has revelled in, and incited, violence on his website.
His argument is undone when a quick glance at his blog shows that he has been at the forefront of the protests so far at Westminster and managed to walk all the way up to the top of Millbank back in November, blogging that “It was an epic mission to the top. Nine floors; eighteen flights of stairs. Two friends carried my wheelchair, and I walked.” Macintyre can’t hide behind his disability when the police treat him like any other violent trespassing thug. It’s called equality…
Hat-Tip : Phil Taylor
Of course if everybody just meekly accepted the status quo as Dean suggests a good society should there would have been no Magna Carta, no Oliver Cromwell, no 1832 reform act. In actual fact we would all be tilling rigs with a wooden hoe while Richard the XVIII sat in his baronial hall quaffing ale and deflowering wenches safe in his God given rights as total overlord!
ReplyDeleteAnd what is wrong with a good bit of deflowering of wenches? Especially the buxum ones :)
ReplyDeleteDean... he didn't fail in his duties. Twice he dragged a disabled man from his chair.I know Jody is no angel and was probably beibng provocative... but I'd have hoped that the English police had some basic standards.
ReplyDeleteYes Laz. I agree that the police can get carried away with the atmosphere, but we train them to manage to control it.
ReplyDeleteYou're dead right, not matter what the lad has done you don't do what this ass did.
Load of really good comments here, actually most are people answering each others' comments and need nothing extra from me.
ReplyDeleteDefender...welcome to the blog. I've read about the fact that Jody is no angel, but he's allowed to be pro Palestinian, I am too, and surely he's allowed to be radical.
I suspect that there may be an element of bragging on his blog, although some people with CP can walk a bit with help.
Millbank Tower; yes, they went too far, but no one is listening to any of us ... and what do you do when no one listens, when they lie through their teeth and steal like there's no tomorrow, go back on their word and continue to treat bankers, Lords and MPs with kid gloves while peeing on little people who can't get away with theft and deception? What on earth do you do?
We just have to stop them making US pay for THEIR greed and stupidity.
I can’t see any gentleness from the police in that video. I suspect that that is a little story that they have concocted in order to make sure that this pig gets the same treatment as the one who murdered Ian Tomlinson. If you are trying to rescue someone from the front line and he’s in a chair, you might have the wit to rescue his chair at the same time, as he may be even more helpless if they leave him on the ground with no wheels...
Unless I see a file quite clearly showing that it was done for the lad’s good, I will continue to believe what my eyes tell me on this film.
Nothing wrong with deflowering willing wenches Dean... nothing at all, but watch out, for Brownlie's about with his spelling ruler, cracking it over the fingers of those who make orthographical errors. I know. My knuckles are red raw... The word is buxom!!!! ;¬) That’s what happens when you get too excited matey!
ReplyDeleteNiko:
ReplyDeleteI likes your quotes. Burke's in particular struck a chord. Thanks