The Telegraph reports:
Earlier today an MPS officer identified himself to his team leader as being potentially involved in the incident shown on the video footage.
A total of four MPS officers, inclusive of this officer, have now come forward with potentially relevant information in relation to the investigation into the death of Mr Ian Tomlinson on 1/4/09.
…The camera footage shows Mr Tomlinson being hit and pushed over by a partially-masked police officer, who has now come forward, as he walks away from a police line with his hands in his pockets…
See also The Guardian, etc.
As Ed rightly points out in a comment on the Bone blog:
The vicious attack on Mr Tomlinson was only one of series of assaults propagated by the police last Wednesday. This could have been any of us dead – and the number of people injured last week is almost certainly in three figures.
If any of us were to be killed by the filth, we now know the sort of black arts they’d use to justify their actions and to demonise our comrades. While we currently see a number of unusual forces ranged against the police, from the Lib Dems to the Evening Standard, be under no illusions that they would be onside were it one of us on the mortuary slab.
These police officers thought they could get away with it. They thought they could get away with it one week ago, when the Evening Standard was being briefed that protesters were hurling bricks, when initial police claims that brave police medics had come under a barrage of missiles as they tried to help a dying Ian Tomlinson.
These police officers thought they could get away with it because one week ago they thought Ian Tomlinson was just another protester, a hippie, an anarchist, a Student Grant, a dirty, stinking leftie.
These officers thought they could get away with it because they felt that they had the power to go around intimidating witnesses, demanding that demonstrators delete pictures from their cameras, threatening journalists, slinging people who tried to note down their numbers into the back of police vans on dubious pretexts.
These officers thought they could get away with it because the person standing to their right was a cop, the person to their left was a cop, the person behind them was a cop.
These officers thought they could get away with it because this is the job they are trained to do; this is the job their bosses told them to get on with; this is the job their bosses were briefed for by their own political masters.
This is not “a tragic accident”.
These are not “rotten apples”.
There will be no “justice”.
This is simply the logical consequence of the enclosure of public discourse, the disenfranchisement of civil society, the impoverishment of governance.
The year is 2009. Welcome to Britain.
