Political

Police change their tune on G20 CCTV coverage

Regarding the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests, reading this from Channel 4:

Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, gives the first interview about the death of Ian Tomlinson to Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

Hardwick said of the assault:

“We don’t have CCTV footage of the incident… there is no CCTV footage, there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted.”

Speaking to More 4 News, the IPCC confirmed Hardwick’s comment, saying that the CCTV cameras overlooking the incident were not working.

reminds me of how, before the story of the police’s connect to Ian Tomlinson’s death came out, the police were talking about how good their CCTV coverage had been:

Commander Simon O’Brien, of the Met, said small pockets of criminals among the 4,000-strong crowd were to blame for the trouble yesterday…

“There were small groups charging forwards and backwards into police lines. It did seem to us, from CCTV and police on the scene, that they tried to find a way to ramp up the protest and hijack it into violence.”

O’Brien said police had collected footage from helitelly, the force’s nickname for CCTV from powerful helicopter cameras, adding that those identified should expect a “knock on the door”.

Ah well.

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