As widely reported elsewhere, the Guardian’s published a video that shows Ian Tomlinson, with his hands in his pockets and back to police officers being shoved to the ground. It raises serious questions about the policing of the protests.

It looks like manslaughter, although I’ll be stunned if there’s a provable link between the shove and the man’s heart attack, and more so if anyone faces prosecution. We also do not see much of what happened before the shove. What’s clear is that particular unit was trying to block access to the street, and Ian looked like he was hoping the police would pass him by so that he could continue on his way. They didn’t. They hit him with a baton and shoved him out of the way, and he fell flat on his face.

(Update: Of course the wide range of interpretations of this video from the blogs shows how little is unarguably true, and therefore how open to interpretation the police action is.)

That’s what the video shows. This is not the same as the Rodney King video. This is not evidence of institutional police brutality. It does, however, support the eye-witness accounts of heavy-handed policing and force being used as a means of indiscriminate crowd control. 

It remains to be seen whether or not this latest abuse of state power has a real impact. The Public, in their wisdom, have largely accepted the shooting of Jean Charles De Menenzes – a complete innocent who absolutely was murdered by police. 

I fear this will be accepted too – just one more senseless tragedy and unfortunate mistake to add to the list.

When something this bad happens, it’s far more comfortable and easy to pretend it was a terrible accident and a mistake “in stressful circumstances, with police officers under a lot of pressure and strain” rather than believe the alternative.