WORLD WIDE EPIDEMIC.

          It just goes on and on like a world wide epidemic, across the world we get the picture that the police can kill with impunity, a government issued gun kills and it is law and order, protest the killing and it is violence to be crushed. This from Democracy Now:

            Police in the California city of Anaheim are facing allegations of murder and brutality after fatally shooting two Latino men over the weekend and firing rubber bullets at crowds of protesters. On Saturday, Anaheim police shot and killed 24-year-old Manuel Diaz after he reportedly ran away from a group of officers who confronted him in the street. Diaz was unarmed. Hours after his death, a chaotic scene broke out when police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at a crowd of local residents protesting the shooting. Another Latino resident, Joel Acevedo, was shot dead by police the following day. Police say Acevedo was suspected in a car robbery, but the circumstances around his death remain unconfirmed. From Theresa Smith, who has worked with families to call for police accountability in Anaheim since 2009, when officers shot and killed her son, Cesar Cruz, a 35-year-old father of five. "Given the fact that this is the eighth officer-involved shooting within one year in the city of Anaheim ... the community is going to be very upset," Arellano says. "There’s a lot of angry residents, and rightfully so."

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LET JUSTICE BE SEEN TO BE DONE!

    So PC Harwood was found not guilty, well he joins a long list of police officers who have got away with what any reasonable person can only describe as murder. While death after contact with the police is not a rare event, a police officer being prosecuted is a very rare thing, to be found guilty is even more rare. It is 42 years since a police officer has been prosecuted regarding death in police custody, this despite innumerable unlawful killing verdicts and the fact that there have been more than 3,000 such deaths since 1969. Deaths in police custody and deaths from direct contact with the police, it doesn't seem to make much difference, if there ever is a prosecution we should expect a not guilty verdict to come up.

      How far back do we go? Blair Peach 1979, killed by a baton blow to the head, Stephen Waldorf, 1983, shot by police officers, James Ashley, 1998, shot, Harry Stanley, 1999, shot, Jean Charles De Menezes, 2005, shot making his way to work, Abdul Kahar, 2006, shot, Mark Duggan, 2011, shot, and of course the 2009 assault and death of Ian Tomlinson. From that list, one prosecution and a not guilty verdict.

      Ian Tomlinson's death at the hands of a police officer must be the first where there was clear video evidence of the assault and dozens of eyewitnesses but that didn't make any difference, the verdict was still not guilty, and now we get the full story, PC Harwood, it seems, had a record of violence with 10 formal complaints against him. Ten complaints, one videoed assault and death, one prosecution, one not guilty verdict. The British judicial system at work.

     Of course the police are the police the world over, from recent figures it appears that in America, an African American dies in an extra-judicial killing every 36 hours. Who are they protecting?

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