Get orf moi lahhhnd!

This entry was posted on
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
at
2:41 pm and is filed
under Consume!.

Police ‘escorted’ off climate camp by protesters. Watch it right until the end to see a police officer deliver a somewhat embellished version of events into his radio. They don’t like it up ’em, do they?

UPDATE – Someone raised a very good point under the comments of this video. They said; “This should be shown on the news with the policeman talking into his radio.”

And it bloody well should and all… but it probably won’t, because because left isn’t on the only bias that fucks with our media feed.

UPDATE (20 Aug) – Sometimes Dizzy can be genuinely amusing. This morning he has his knickers in a twist about what he describes as witting/unwitting intellectual dishonesty… the ‘death’ of objective knowledge.

And yet in the very next post he refers to the print edition of an article he does not link to and artfully mashes his cherry-picked point about activists trying to break a police cordon with footage of activists repelling a police incursion.

But that’s not intellectual dishonesty, is it? Neither is passing off as satire propaganda-laden claptrap about all climate change activists wanting us to “(live in the) stone age washing ourselves with cold water and pumice”.

Dizzy also has this to say about my post:

I did however particularly like this intellectually vacuous statement. Apparently, the officer at the end of the video gives “a somewhat embellished version of events into his radio.” This is based on the fact that because he said something that you don’t see in the video it can’t possibly have happened.

Below is the policeman’s version of events as delivered into his radio:

“To reiterate…officers came under sustained attack… punches were thrown… and were kicked repeatedly. Officers on the floor were kicked after they tripped over guy ropes and tents and [muffled]”

As I’ve already pointed out under comments, if the police were under *sustained* attack… and were kicked *repeatedly* these actions would have been visible in *all* of the footage available to the editor and this video simply wouldn’t exist in its current state, because there would be no usable raw footage to work with.

I completely stand by my assertion that the officer’s version of events has been embellished.

Of course, there is the slim possibility that the creator has done a near-to-impossible editing job and/or filmed an entirely different event and tacked this police officer’s report onto the end, but I doubt it for one very good reason that also makes me doubt that this video has been massaged at all; I think that the creator is unlikely to take this risk because he must know that the police have been photographing and video-taping everything as well. You see, unlike Dizzy, I’ve been paying attention. I’ve read eyewitness reports and have even been down to the camp to witness it and the police/media presence for myself. But even you can have one over on Dizzy without going through any of that nonsense; all you have to do is actually watch the video (at about 01:14 to 01:16 you’ll see at least five cameramen, at least one of which is a policeman… the easiest one to identify is on the top right wearing a hat and carrying what is most likely a digicam above his head).

If there were a grand unseen event of sustained attack and repeated kicking (on a ‘floor’ somewhere in that field) then the police would have some footage of it. Or at least some photographs of officers with boo-boos that need to be kissed better. If this film were a fake, we would have heard about it almost immediately, and we quite likely would have seen alternative footage within a day. But, no, all I’ve seen so far is a few sock-puppets disputing the presence of CS gas canisters.

Incidentally, I’ve discussed some of this briefly with Dizzy via email. He’s of the view that the eyewitness reports I mention here are compromised because Indymedia has “a political agenda”. He even seemingly rejects the notion that this was a repelled incursion – not an attacked cordon – on the same basis. Remember, this comes to you from a man with no political agenda who won’t hear a disparaging word about 18DoughtyStreet because it too has no political agenda.

Anyway, let’s get back to that police officer and this segment of his embellished report:

“To reiterate…officers came under sustained attack… punches were thrown… and were kicked repeatedly.”

The structure of this statement amuses me. If it ever came to court, the officer would quite likely get away with saying that he meant punches were thrown by their side or both sides, but he was too out of breath to include that vital bit of information in his sentence.

(*cough*)

Indymedia: During the attempted raid, an officer, (UC3666) completely unprovoked, punched one of the people forming the human barrier. The officer was immediately removed from the site by a senior colleague.

Dumb things I gotta do today:

1. Request raw footage from the creator of this video.

2. Request a statement from the police; not least about the claim made above.

[EDIT: Quote fixed. Still chasing ecilops.]

UPDATE (5:30pm) – I have a statement from the police about the ‘UC3666’ claim made above, and will happily repeat it here in full:

At approximately 19.15 on 14.8.07 officers from the Forward Intelligence Team who were patroling the camp were confronted by demonstators who attempted to physically remove them from the site. Colleagues were called in to support them and maintain public order.

The policing team was re-established on site shortly afterwards.

The MPS has stated from the outset that we wish to facilitate lawful protest. Our police presence continues on site at the request of the land owner.

No complaint has been received about the alleged incident.








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