"Police Brutality" - UK Style

[agricola]

Unbelievably enough, the following was (up until a Tory MP's innocous comments about the Army) the main national news story in the UK. I thought you would like to see it, given how many US cop arrest videos get shown in the UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,2028548,00.html

And a sample of how it is being reported. See if you can spot the difference!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/08/nbeat08.xml
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2339295.ece
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100...objectid=18726464&siteid=50082-name_page.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/6429569.stm

edit - a guide to the film (Comer is the person with the hood up):

02:17:08-15 - Comer chased up stairs, appears to try and get back in the club.

02:17:15 - 02:18:19 - Comer being talked to on top of the stairs

02:18:19 - 02:18:22 - Comer drags PC down stairs

02:18:22 - Comer aims punch at PC's head, causing his hat to fall off. Both persons fall to ground, struggling.

02:18:23 - 02:18:49 - Comer and the PC struggle on the floor until a doorman intervenes.

02:18:49 - 02:18:59 - Comer and the doorman struggle with her - you at this point cannot see Comer herself but you can see both the PC and the doorman moving around as if they are struggling with her.

02:19:00 - Second Police officer arrives. Comer continues to struggle, albeit less than when there were just two people trying to restrain her.

02:19:38 - 02:19:41 - third and fourth Police officers arrive, Doorman gets off Comer.

02:19:42 - PC aims one punch somewhere on Comer.

02:19:44 - 02:19:46 - PC aims four more punches, apparently at the same place as the first one.

02:19:48 - 02:19:52 - PC puts handcuffs on Comer.

02:19:52 - 02:20:00 - two PCs get off Comer now she is handcuffed.

02:20:16 - the two remaining PCs try and stand Comer up.

02:20:32 - 02:20:42 - Comer struggles in the handcuffs, moving the officers around.

02:20:43 - 02:20:57 - Comer is marched from where she was detained over to the van. Half-way across the camera, her trousers fall down.
Edit/Delete Message

 

[Fosbery]

What I find more disturbing than the punch is that it was all on CCTV

 

[agricola]

It was a private CCTV system, overlooking a private yard / car park, if that makes any difference.

 

[Fosbery]

I guess. Though I wouldn't begrudge a private individual a CCTV system, I still don't like it....

 

[repo]

Now now let's not jump to conclusions without all the facts, for all we know the police officer could have found a picture of an empty .22lr shell casing on her possesion!

 

[Jeff White]

You can't always arrest someone without fighting. You'd like to, but sometimes they just insist on fighting.

Was called to a bar once where the complaint was a woman was chasing a man around the parking lot with a broken beer bottle in her hands. Three officers (including myself) arrived. She dropped the beer bottle when we arrived but stated she wasn't going to jail. We surrounded her and attempted to talk her down. She charged an officer who grabbed her arm as he stepped off line, she jerked away and hit me. I grabbed her arm and swung her into a wrought iron gate that they padlocked over the door to the bar when it was closed. That knocked the wind out of her enough to get her cuffed. As we placed her into the back of the squad, she kicked the officer placing her into the car in the groin. We ended up hog tying her to keep her from kicking the windows out on the way to jail. It can be as hard to arrest a combative woman as it is a man.

I didn't see anything on the tape that looked over the top. Of course I've been where the PC was before. The public has no idea how hard it can be to arrest a combative subject without hurting him/her. What did she expect to come out of a scuffle like that with, mussed up hair?

I'm sorry to hear they are starting to play the race card over there. Did she really think if she had been white, green or purple she wouldn't have been treated the same way?

Jeff

 

[silverlance]

no police brutality here imho. just drunk crazy woman.

on the other hand, jeez... does it take EIGHT guys to subdue one crazy woman? and a dog? and a door man? and two random strangers?

 

[kuroineko]

Sometimes a crazed woman can and will put a hurting on a man. Small or large, does not matter. Also does not matter if that man is the boyfriend she caught looking at another female or the man wearing a badge who came to break things up.

 

[sterling180]

All of this seems suspicious,indeed,but that woman seemed to be the one,who caused the trouble.That type of force,used by that officer,is what we would have expected,from the police in the 60s,70s and 80s.The Flying Squad and The Special Patrol Group were famous,for beating up suspects,with batons,the butts of their pistols or with pickaxe handles,or just simply punching them in the face.Programmes like The Sweeney,Life on Mars and the early series of the then Thames Television series :The Bill.These were realistic programs,depicticing the actions,of realistic cops,during the days of 'old school' policing,in the UK.

Womanising,violence,bad language,(some strong,too.),racism,sexism chain-smoking and alcholism,were all featured in these tv programmes.Jack Reagan from The Sweeney,was as ruthless and as violent as Dirty Harry and Jack Carter.DCI Frank Burnside was almost the same.

Now those days are long since over and a more modern approach to policing is in force,but you will always get those scumbags who try to play the system,to their own ends.I think that that woman has a cheek to say that she would sue the South Yorkshire police force,because at the end of the day,she caused the problem and was violent herself,when she was being restrained,before she was punched.Although racism is rife,with the BNPs offices in Oldham and in other areas too.

Pc Mulhall said in a statement: "She began to kick, spit and made attempts to bite me. As her hands became free she tried to grab handfuls of my genitals, and knee and kick me in the same place. At this point, I struck her as hard as I was able with my right fist in an attempt to subdue her. There was no apparent effect so I did this twice more."

It is not as if she is being roughed up because she is black or mixed race and that the cops are using this as a recreational hobby.If we go back 30 or 40 years ago,the police forces,the police forces,were more violent then then they are now.Where does she think she is,in the Brixton riots,that occured in 1981.

The Sweeney,overview.

Tough, hard-hitting, uncompromising and the show which redefined the quaintly reassuring image of British television police forever, The Sweeney evolved from a play by the prolific Ian Kennedy Martin entitled Regan, which premiered on the ITV network in June 1974 as part of Armchair Theatre.

The show's title was derived from Cockney rhyming slang - Sweeney Todd = Flying Squad, and over the course of four staggeringly successful seasons between 1975-1978 and two spin-off feature films, helped transform experienced lead actors John Thaw and Dennis Waterman from mere household name's into genuine icons of a decade where dubious fashion sense held equal sway with a cynically violent grittiness, formerly unheard of in the genre of the TV police drama.

Unlike their higher budgeted glossy US TV counterparts, Detective Inspector Jack Regan and Detective Sgt George Carter were troubled heroes with feet of clay, as hard drinking, excessively violent and ruthless as the criminals they stalked. So successful was the chemistry between the two stars that the producers saw fit to kill off Carter’s wife early on to enable him to spend more time with his ‘guvnor.’ Following creator Kennedy Martin's stark ‘warts and all’ original format undeviatingly, the series time and again took delight in shattering the cosy illusion of the guardians of law and order as reassuringly avuncular Dixon of Dock Green figures, which had dominated television screens for decades, and instead presented the viewers with police who were forced to fight fire with fire. Although the authorities tried to deny that such characters existed within the police force there were many who acknowledged the series realism, and indeed the series technical advisor was former Flying Squad officer Jack Quarrie.

Adding to the over-all reality of the series was the decision by Thames Television subsidiary, Euston Films, to shoot entirely on film at a modest budget of £40,000 per episode. This basic economy, allied to the imaginative early use of hand held cameras to put the viewers in the middle of the action, gave the series an immediacy and intimacy of action which was almost documentary-like in its illusion of reality. At the height of its popularity the series was attracting a weekly audience of 19 million viewers and attracting guest stars who represented the cream of the British acting profession such as Diana Dors, John Hurt, Brian Blessed, Russell Hunter, George Cole and astonishingly, the beloved and legendary Morecambe and Wise.

Apart from the fact that The Sweeney was a prime example of consistently exciting, expertly produced, written and acted police series at its finest, it was even more important as the catalyst for an entirely new direction in the evolution of dramatic programming in this genre. And that in itself is about as good a definition of the term 'classic' as you're likely to find on this particular manor, squire.

Dialogue was as important to The Sweeney as action and many of Regan's best lines, often delivered through gritted teeth, have become famous. "Get your trousers on, you're nicked" and "Shut it!" have both passed into popular usage, while quotes such as "We're the Sweeney, son, and we've haven't had any dinner yet, so unless you want a kickin'..." and "I am utterly and abjectly pissed off" demonstrate how the show blended humour into the action.

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CAST
DI Jack Regan John Thaw | DS George Carter Dennis Waterman | CI Frank Haskins Garfield Morgan

 

[shield20]

What's the problem? This "young mother-of-one" was subject to the force necessary to make the arrest. Don't want to get hit? Don't start a fight.

 

[Mk VII]

Lot of the comment on the (heavily edited, at least two jumps cuts) film has been from people who have never been in a rough house fight and have no idea what has to be done when you tell someone he/she is going to gaol, and they decide they don't want to go to gaol. If you resist arrest, you're going to get a thumping.
The club where this happened is in one of the toughest areas of Sheffield and it has a bad reputation for violence, having been closed several times.