He has his back to his attacker, his hands in his pockets, offering no threat whatsoever, not interacting with the police at all. If the report is correct, the evidence is that he was proceeding about his lawful business on a public highway. Hes about as far from taking the piss as its legally possible to be in public; you dont have to obey police orders at all in such circumstances whatever your average uniformed mouthbreather might think.

Now, heres one of the few bits of common law I still have memorised: "Whosoever shall, with malice aforethought inflict grievous bodily harm upon a reasonable creature under the kings peace whereof he shall die [ within a time limit removed by recent law reforms] commits murder."

That video, showing as it does evidence of or reasonable grounds to suspect the presence of every element of that definition, is sufficient evidence for the officer who commited that assault to be arrested by a constable under Part 1 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 on suspicion of murder. And hell have to have something pretty convincing to say about his motives, in the face of the video evidence, to avoid getting charged.

I should be very shocked (not necessarily surprised, alas) if this doesnt end up in front of a jury eventually.

Quote from: Beaker

you dont have to obey police orders at all in such circumstances whatever your average uniformed mouthbreather might think.

So a protestor can decide hes had enough, walk up to the police and say "Im done for today, you can let me through now!" and you can ignore them when they tell you to go away, and walk through the barrier?

I dont think Id like to give that a try somehow.

Quote from: zpyder

Quote from: Beaker

you dont have to obey police orders at all in such circumstances whatever your average uniformed mouthbreather might think.

So a protestor can decide hes had enough, walk up to the police and say "Im done for today, you can let me through now!" and you can ignore them when they tell you to go away, and walk through the barrier?

I dont think Id like to give that a try somehow.

As said in the post, wasnt me, was actually a former Criminal Lawyer with over 10 years of practice in the courtroom.  I would suggest he does actually know what hes talking about.  

Tbh to me it looks like he could have been being awkward. As the video and others say, dont know the sequence of events and what happened before and afterwards.

It looks to me like the police were in a line trying to clear the street behind them, pushing everyone forward. The way tomlinson was walking (IE pretty slowly and right in front of them) looks like he was deliberately going slow. The paranoia inside of me even goes so far as to think that he could have deliberately been trying to get some kind of reaction, like protestors do, to further the cause.

I mean, if you were out walking innocently, and get stuck in the mob of protestors, or are even a protestor yourself, do you seriously expect nothing to happen if people are yelling abuse and the police are trying to keep an area clear, and you are in said area? Any innocent person would vacate the area sharpish, it doesnt look like he was trapped there, as people seem pretty able to freely move out the way.

From the polices point of view, its a tricky situation. On the one hand excessive force is bad, but then what can they do? They need to keep an area clear, and so when protestors decide to move in the area, do the police just stand back? They could arrest everyone, but thats just as impractical, pushing people back is logical. The batton to the leg looks like nothing more than a nudge to say "move on" if you ask me. If they wanted to hurt him it would have been much harder and somewhere else surely.

The plot thickens by the look of things:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8004222.stm