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Sousveillance notes.
This afternoon I spent quite a while trying to re-find the footage which I knew I'd seen, of riot police baton-charging seated protesters. I did eventually find it:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/apr/02/g20-protest
The segment in question is between 05:38 and 05:44, although it's worth seeing the context from about 05:20 which shows you that the crowd were already sat down peacefully before the charge began - they didn't sit down during a push. The police are just laying into people who were sat down doing nothing more threatening than singing badly.
When I gave the link to Helen (who'd also been looking for it), she spotted video evidence of something else that we'd seen people blogging about - police medics taking advantage of their protected position just behind the front-line to lean over that line and inflict repeated full-arm baton swings on the protesters. See 02:09 - see the guy in the black uniform rear of the line, swinging away enthusiastically - note the green 'white cross' patch on the right of his chest.
That man's job is to help the injured.
I thought my cynicism was fully up to the job of being unsurprised by the police-instigated violence at these protests, but the sight of a medic laying into protesters who are absolutely no danger to him at all? That's really quite upsetting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/apr/02/g20-protest
The segment in question is between 05:38 and 05:44, although it's worth seeing the context from about 05:20 which shows you that the crowd were already sat down peacefully before the charge began - they didn't sit down during a push. The police are just laying into people who were sat down doing nothing more threatening than singing badly.
When I gave the link to Helen (who'd also been looking for it), she spotted video evidence of something else that we'd seen people blogging about - police medics taking advantage of their protected position just behind the front-line to lean over that line and inflict repeated full-arm baton swings on the protesters. See 02:09 - see the guy in the black uniform rear of the line, swinging away enthusiastically - note the green 'white cross' patch on the right of his chest.
That man's job is to help the injured.
I thought my cynicism was fully up to the job of being unsurprised by the police-instigated violence at these protests, but the sight of a medic laying into protesters who are absolutely no danger to him at all? That's really quite upsetting.
no subject
It's going to be interesting to see how much compensation the police have to pay out after this, and how many are kicked out of the force.
no subject
My guess is that exactly one police officer will be kicked out - the one who was caught on camera giving Tomlinson a shove. Which is quite annoying, given that hundreds if not thousands of similar incidents took place through the day, luckily with slightly less serious consequences.