The Tragedy of Ian Tomlinson

I’ve posted before about the death of Ian Tomlinson, the man who died during the G20 protests in London.

The doctor who performed a second post-mortem on Mr Tomlinson believes that the cause of death was not, as initially reported, a heart attack; he believes it was an abdominal haemorrhage, the cause of which is presently unknown.

We are now faced with the very real possibility that an officer of the Met has killed an innocent man. Not just contributed to Tomlinson’s death through stress on a weak heart, but that the officer’s violent assault caused this haemorrhage.

I’m sickened, I’m appalled, I’m angry. I’ve asked this before and I’m sure I’ll ask it again: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The IPCC is proving to be totally incompetent in these matters, apparently taking the police forces in question at their word! Are we really to believe that there is no CCTV footage? I’m very, very disturbed by how easily all of this could have lain unnoticed had it not been for the amateur video of the event; an act that may well now be illegal, or at least subject to a severe chilling effect, making it very difficult for us, the citizenry, to keep an eye on the police.

It’s too early to say if this is a deliberate cover-up or just incompetence – they do say never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity – but this is raising some pretty ugly questions.

There is something deeply rotten in the Met.