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Police Punch Man

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
The guy doing the Punching seems well out of order... the man's already being held down by two others .. hope the one doing the punching loses his job plus gets done for assault.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7757229.stm

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Police brutality, eh? Well, let's have a look at some past cases of this. From the Independent....
    * CCTV cameras caught a policeman kicking Delbo King, a 33-year-old former paratrooper, and spraying him with gas while trying to arrest him in Manchester in 2003. Mr King admitted resisting arrest, but felt that the beating had been gratuitous. No officers were charged.
    * Christopher Alder, aged 37 and also a former paratrooper, choked to death in Hull police station in 1998. CCTV ishowed five officers dragging him unconscious into the custody suite where they left him face-down in his vomit for 10 minutes. Officers were cleared of manslaughter.
    * Nuur Saeed, a 22-year-old Somali man from Woolwich, London, died two weeks after falling 25 feet from the balcony of a flat at roughly the same time it was raided by police. Officers found him unconscious with head injuries.
    * Michael Powell died after he was detained by police outside his mother's home in the Lozells area of Birmimgham in 2003. Ten officers charged over the 38-year-old's death were aquitted.
    Four cases, and nobody was ever punished because of it. Who's prepared to wager that history is about to repeat itself?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Don't worry they will all have tasers soon.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Yeah this is a suprisingly common thing. Around here the police will often lurk around looking for drunk youngsters, call them names, atagonise them, then when they say something rude back they get busted (often doing that thing where they put your arm up behind your back, which really hurts! or slamming you into a wall or something).

    But saying that I can partly understand, i mean it must be very frustrating, target driven law enforcement, dealing with the darker side of people most of the time and having a shed load of paper work to do! I mean, that is no excuse to abuse your power, but I can imagine it doesnt help when it comes down to doing your job effectively!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'd be interested though to know the full circumstances. The CCTV shows the PC punching the guys arm. This is a legitimate home-office sanctioned strike in order to gain control over someone's arm to get them into handcuffs. If the guy was already in handcuffs then the cop deserves to lose his job. If he wasn't then the cop was doing something that has been held to be lawful.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It looks like he's punching his back/neck to me, not his arm, and it looks like he's already cuffed to me too. Either way, he didn't need to punch him that many times did he?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    Police brutality, eh? Well, let's have a look at some past cases of this. From the Independent.... Four cases, and nobody was ever punished because of it. Who's prepared to wager that history is about to repeat itself?


    no offence but that's ridiculous...the guy "fell" from the balcony at "roughly" the same time. so what it's saying is that it may have been either before or after the police were there...and he may have jumped...if he did it before or after, how is that the fault of the police? if it happened at the same time, then the article would've said so, surely.

    and what difference does it make that two of them were former paratroopers? its very easy to take things out of context. the article claims he was "resisting arrest" without providing any details whatsoever of what he did during this apparently-peaceful process, while the police are passed off as being some kind of assault unit acting against an innocent man (the article also fails to mention why he was arrested...)

    i'm not saying the courts don't favour the police, because of course it's all covered up and biased towards them. they lie and cover eachothers backs and there's nothing anyone can do, but some of the examples people pull out are ludicrous.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm less so worried about the police who do it than the doctors who do it. But c'est la vie. There isn't any public or private sector organisation in the world that doesn't cover up after itself.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Franki wrote: »
    It looks like he's punching his back/neck to me, not his arm, and it looks like he's already cuffed to me too. Either way, he didn't need to punch him that many times did he?



    If he's punching his neck, or punching someone who is cuffed then he needs to be sacked. If he's punching his arms, then no number of times is excessive according to the rules, you keep punching until their arm is sufficiently deadend that you can get the cuffs on.

    This guy is a soldier, and I'd wager quite well built, which would require more than a tickle to the bicep.

    Now, I'm not blindly defending these guys just because they're in the police. If they've hit someone who was defenceless then they should be punished. If they've done a legitimate home office approved technique on someone in order to apply handcuffs or to subdue someone who is kicking off/resisting arrest then they should be exonerated.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    This appeared in today's Daily Mail, says a bit more about the circumstances.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Looks like he is just punching his arm down to make it easier for the other PC to get him in the cuffs, which is totally fine. The bad thing is that it's on CCTV. All that shows is how many times he is hit, not how hard or anything else under the circumstance which makes the matter look a lot worse than it probably is.

    However, there is always the other side of the coin, and the CCTV isn't 100% clear. Having read the above story though I do feel sorry for the guy and think there were other ways of dealing with it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whowhere wrote: »
    I'd be interested though to know the full circumstances. The CCTV shows the PC punching the guys arm. This is a legitimate home-office sanctioned strike in order to gain control over someone's arm to get them into handcuffs. If the guy was already in handcuffs then the cop deserves to lose his job. If he wasn't then the cop was doing something that has been held to be lawful.

    It's quite clear from the Video that the other two officers have the man pinned down already .. and what was the man's crime in the first place? He fell over all by himself and the police rush at him for what reason?

    You make it sound like it was one on one - not three on one. The man is already face down and has he weight of two grown men on him, there's no need for the third policeman to punch him 7 times.

    If the idea is to get his arm down into handcuffs then punching him is not the way to do it - the 3rd policeman only needs to push his arms down with his own body weight, but I doubt that was the reason for punching him.

    Looks like the policeman wanted to give someone a good kicking that night and got caught on camera doing it.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    stargalaxy wrote: »
    This appeared in today's Daily Mail, says a bit more about the circumstances.

    They have more of a video there, it's pretty obvious it's a police assault. Including grabbing his head and bashing it against the ground, swinging a fist into his face, grinding his face deliberately on the road...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    They have more of a video there, it's pretty obvious it's a police assault. Including grabbing his head and bashing it against the ground, swinging a fist into his face, grinding his face deliberately on the road...
    Too right. Yet we're not allowed to know what happened to the coppers in question. And people wonder why confidence in the police is at rock bottom?

    On a side note, the Daily Mash suspects that all is not as it seems with this story...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    They have more of a video there, it's pretty obvious it's a police assault. Including grabbing his head and bashing it against the ground, swinging a fist into his face, grinding his face deliberately on the road...


    That video is horrifying, the full video shows the policeman banging the man's head into the concrete and scrapping his head back and forth against the hard ground.

    If they keep men like him on the force then no wonder people lose respect for the police, from the previous video I'd have said he should be serious demoted or even lose his job, but from that particular video I think the police man should be the one facing ABH / GBH charges.

    The man was no where near the policemen in the very first place and they charged him. The whole incident was badly handled by all three officer and the third officer just pounded the guy for no reason.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    DG wrote: »

    If the idea is to get his arm down into handcuffs then punching him is not the way to do it - the 3rd policeman only needs to push his arms down with his own body weight, but I doubt that was the reason for punching him.
    .



    From what's emerged it does seem now that the cops were in the wrong, and if that's the case then I hope they're swiftly sacked.

    But, the above is, the opinion of someone who is ill-informed. It often takes more than one police officer to arrest someone, and pushing their arm down isn't as easy as it sounds if that person is resisting arrest. Like I said before, punching someone in the arm is a home-office approved technique for gaining compliance.

    In this case they've gone well beyond that and it is disgusting. But we're taught techniques like that for a reason, and just because a bunch of people don't like the look of it, doesn't mean it'll stop.

    The alternative is that we start gassing, tasering and shooting people who resist arrest like they do in the USA and other countries.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Stuff like this makes the law look like a joke

    Not only was the man beaten, punched, had his head banged into the ground and scraped and had to do community service but he had to pay the guy that punched him £100 in compensation, which he's since gotten back.

    http://itn.co.uk/news/65b0a31b588d1e992836bd62b3eab03a.html

    If the judge that sentenced him in the first instance saw this tape and still sentenced him like that then he also needs to be retired.

    The guy that was attacked by the police also lost out on the chance to apply for the Fire service because of his conviction

    http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1082940_punch_cop_investigated_before
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    looks like someone needs to remind UK cops that CCTV cameras don't just catch the rest of us...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Idiots, I've had my fair share of police brutality - it's more common than you think !

    I'm about 4 stone heavier than last time they beat me up so I reckon I'll give as good as I get lol
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Shows how fucked up the UK is, obvious attacks from men in power, and yet it gets denied when the evidence is there. :mad:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    To be fair, they didn't rough him up too bad. You usually get worse in the average bar fight.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    To be fair, they didn't rough him up too bad. You usually get worse in the average bar fight.

    It wasn't a bar fight though was it ?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I know a couple of people who claim to have been beaten up in police custody. Both assulted a police officer, one was a woman.

    The video doesn't surprise me at all. There are a lot of people in the police who are aggressive and who cannot be trusted, hence we have appropriate adults for interviews... So they don't hurt or take advantage of young people or vulnerable individuals.

    I often feel CCTV is snooping... However, as somebody who goes to a fair few demonstrations I am glad that we have it, as well as handheld cameras and camera phones because it makes the police less likely to beat you up.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    More proof that the police are just glorified gangsters
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It wasn't a bar fight though was it ?

    nope, just saying it could have been worse.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Lucid-Life wrote: »
    More proof that the police are just glorified gangsters



    er no. All it's proof of is that these THREE officers are arseholes.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Anyone seen any updates to this story?

    Any long term action been taken against the officers?
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