Sousveillance notes.
Apr. 9th, 2009 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dennyThis 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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-12 12:40 pm (UTC)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)
Date: 2009-04-12 12:53 pm (UTC)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.