COPS AND CAMERAS!!!

          Cops seem to be the same the world over. In the UK we have recently had a spate of deaths at the hands of the cops and this article from the other side of the world just goes to prove, a cop is a cop is a cop.

          "TAMERA MEDLEY begged the police officer to stop slamming her head - over and over - into the hood of a police cruiser. Thinking they were helping, passers-by Shakir Riley and Melissa Hurling both turned their cellphone video cameras toward the melee that had erupted on Jefferson Street in Wynnefield, they said.

But then the cops turned on them.

        Riley had started to walk away when at least five baton-wielding cops followed him, he said, and they beat him, poured a soda on his face and stomped on his phone, destroying the video he had just taken. Meanwhile, two officers approached Hurling, urged her to leave and, after exchanging a few words, slammed her against a police cruiser, Hurling said. They pulled her by her hair before tossing her into the back of a cop car, she said.

      Although it's legal to record Philadelphia police performing official duties in public, all three were charged with disorderly conduct and related offenses, and officers destroyed Hurling and Riley's cellphones, erasing any record of Medley's violent arrest, the pair said.

     Charges against Hurling and Riley were dismissed, but Medley was found guilty last month of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, harassment and related offenses. She was fined $500 but has filed an appeal. Echoes of the incident, which was corroborated by a half-dozen witnesses, have been reverberating nationwide in recent years as the combination of cellphone video and police officers has simmered into what is an increasingly explosive formula. A growing number of bystanders have been misled, arrested or worse for using their cellphones to record what they perceive as excessive force by cops making arrests, watchdogs say.

"I grew up in the neighborhood and I saw stuff go down but it never happened to me," Riley said recently, adding that he did nothing wrong. "They stomped my phone and said it was a federal offense."

'Relevant for integrity'

      The issue is gaining national attention. The American Civil Liberties Union has civil lawsuits pending in Washington, D.C., Florida, Illinois and Maryland. Last week, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that police had violated the First Amendment rights of a lawyer who was arrested after filming cops arrest a teenager. Suits have been settled in Pennsylvania, and this year, the ACLU plans to file a lawsuit on behalf of several Philadelphians."

ann arky's home.

THE STATES MINDERS.

Guardian.co.uk phot.

       

      Is there anybody in this country accepts the result of the Crown Prosecution Service investigation on the Ian Tomlinson case, that is anybody but the police? An avalanche of photographic evidence of a brutal unprovoked assault on an innocent man and their view is no grounds for charging anyone. It appears that the officer who is seen to violently strike Ian Tomlinson from behind had been investigated on two previous occasions, one for excessive violence during an investigation and once for road rage while off duty. As they say in the "force" he has form. This will be seen by almost everybody as another case of whitewash, another case of a death at the hands of the police and nobody held to account. Ian Tomlinson is not alone, the list of such cases goes back a long way.

     

      1979 saw the death of Blair Peach from a fractured skull when struck on the head by police while attending an anti-nazi demonstration. No officer ever held to account. In 1999 Harry Stanley, a Scot living in London shot dead by police while walking home with a leg for his coffee under his arm. They were acting on a "tip-off" about and Irishman with a gun, again no officer held to account. More recently, in 2005, we had the case of Jean Charles De Menezes a 28 year old Brazilian electrician living in London shot dead on the tube, another case of mistaken identity. The met in this case were found guilty of "breaching health and safety rules". To this list can now be added the name Ian Tomlinson, while walking home brutally assaulted and died the result of an unprovoked attack by a police officer. No officer held to account.

     We are supposed to believe that they are only here for our protection, what crap. The police are here to protect the powers that be, and will always attack those who feel strong enough about the injustice in this system to take to the streets. I have no doubt there will be others names who will be added to this list as more and more people feel the injustice inherent in this capitalist system.

ann arky's home.