Police possibly caused G20 death

[wally1]

If walked out on to market street and pushed over an elderly man, who then went on to have a heart attack shortly after, I would certainly face a criminal prosecution for assualt or even manslaughter. Although the situation is obviously different, I still feel that the police should not be above the law and the officer in question should be prosecuted just like anyone else.

[Guest]

It is amazing isn't it how the small clip of footage that the Guardian has made available to the public, to support their slanted story, is being viewed as THE WHOLE STORY!!! MURDERING COPS!!!!

To play devils advocate, because there is always two sides to these things is that the guy was obstructing the police. Who in their normal mind walks slowly away from a line of riot police?! No, he had his hands in his pockets because he was being an arse and wanting to hold up the movement of the police line, which moves as a line and is in riot gear because there is a riot going on. Beautifully demonstrated shortly later when they get pelted with bottles when trying to pick the guy off the floor. The walking slowly away with hands in pockets is an oft used tactic by those less inclined towards the police, because when an officers reacts to it they look overly aggressive to the waiting cameras. Happens all the time at major football matches with the crowd control.

The police needed to reclaim the streets, because it had started to get violent and ugly. The riot gear doesn't come out before violence, only once it has become sufficiently bad that the commanders far away from the lines notice. So quick everyone is to forget the video of officers without helmets being battered with metal poles. You don't want someone in that situation walking just in front of you holding up the progress. The guy was obstructing the police (an offence) and got shoved forward, as someone else pointed out if you have you hands in your pocket your balance is less good so you'll fall.

If you have a line of riot police bearing down on you, and I highly doubt they're doing so in silence, obviously wanting to move up the street what would any normal person do? Move as quickly as possible away, because between riot police and protesters is not normally a sensible place to be.

[Anon Commentor]

Some of the opinions on this thread are ridiculous IMO.

Firstly, I don't think you can say that the guy is deliberately obstructing police. He's clearly verbally altercating with them before the push, and maybe he said something offensive to one of the officers, but he IS walking away from the scene.(admittedly not rapidly but it didn't seem like there was anything serious happening in that immediate vicinity)

Whether he has his hands in his pockets or not is completely irrelevant - if he's not allowed to have his hands in his pockets and walk away then we're living in a much more restrictive society than I believed. The only time I think you can justifiably say that 'he could have saved a bad fall if he didn't have his hands in his pockets' is if he tripped - not if he was firstly hit across the legs with a baton then shoved (not pushed, there's a difference) hard, from behind, with no warning.

I do agree that the police were probably quite 'fired up' (testosterone pumping, high heartbeat, etc) because of all the trouble and action around them, but let's get things in perspective - it wasn't a major riot and it definitely seems from the coverage that there wasn't serious trouble in that immediate area at the time. If there was protestors attacking those officers and they shoved them back then this is different as well.

How you can think about justifying the actions of that particular officer is beyond me. He clearly took a cheap shot at someone, and directly/indirectly contributed/caused his death. His actions were not reasonable force - and I think this would be backed up by the Sinner's own legal expert, bdw. (as I think it already has been?)

It's all very well playing devil's advocate etc, but I don't think there's really a defence for the officer other than he lost his temper in the heat of the moment - a situation that would find anyone else facing a manslaughter or ABH/GBH charge. Sacking should be the least of his worries.

Also, to the people suggesting he should be re-trained. There's a massive backlog of applications for the Met Police, why should someone who is waiting to join have their potential place taken by an officer who has broken the law (to the degree of directly causing a death). It's not like we're short of people to fill the role - the officer has already been trained extremely highly and he has shown that he can't keep his cool in that situation. If he can't do it there, what offences might he have committed in the past, or what might he do in the future?

Anon. (because I'm not a St Andrews student, just a reader of the board)

[munchingfoo]

Anon. - if you read the boards regularly you can use the contact tab at the top right to contact the admins to get an account.

[Zanbato]

If I were in the middle of a roit, sure as hell I would not be sauntering about with my hands in my pockets after being previously shifted on (which you can clearly see in the seconds prior to the shove).

IMO, blame rests in both parties. If he wasn't arsing about in front of a police riot line during a riot then it likely wouldn't have happened. I can't see any other reason for his appearent complete relaxation other than a want to slow the police line and disrupt activity.

[bdw]

Frankly, we are all rather spinning our wheels on this topic until a greater level of CCTV and witness evidence is collated. This is certainly not my area but the CPS may be thinking along the following lines (bear with me - even by my high standards this is a long and boring post):

(1) Charge the officer with battery. The actus reus part of the offence is committed by unlawfully touching the victim. The shove on the victim would satisfy this limb (I either have not seen the correct clip or am too myopic to be able to make out any baton strike). Proving that the officer intended to unlawfully touch the victim or was reckless as to whether he unlawfully touched the victim would satisfy the mens rea aspect. This should not be overly complicated. The key point here is whether the shove was unlawful.

A battery charge would be defeated if the officer was to show that he had used reasonable force in the circumstances. If successful, this would make lawful the contact with the victim. The question of whether the force used is reasonable turns on the specific circumstances of each case (here, the victim walking away from the police with his hands in his pockets and the lack of similar aggression by the other officers vs the question of provocation and the inevitable physical contact associated with crowd management). It is precisely to answer this question that further evidence must be collated. While there is an element of objective perspective in determining whether the circumstances demanded the use of such level of force, greater weight is attached to the subjective views of the defendant in his reaction to the circumstances as he perceived them (cf Menezes, Gibraltar shooting of IRA suspects). The prosecution would need a strong case to pass such subjective test. If the contact was deemed to represent reasonable force, the prosecution would likely fail. If the contact was deemed unlawful, a battery conviction would be probable.

(2) If the CPS were confident that they could prove battery, they may seek conviction instead for unlawful act manslaughter, using battery as the base offence. Unlawful act manslaughter requires the commission of an unlawful act which was dangerous (objective test) in its subjection of the victim to the risk of physical harm and which results in the death of the victim. If intention is shown at the level of the battery, the primary mens rea threshold for unlawful act manslaughter is satisfied. The actus reus requires that the unlawful act risked physical harm to the victim and resulted in the victim's death.

As mentioned before, in order to bring a successful unlawful act manslaughter charge a causative link between the unlawful contact and the death would have to be proven, for which expert medical evidence would need to be adduced. Relevant principles include the "but for" and the "egg-shell skull" principles mentioned previously and that espoused in R v Church [1966] 1 QB 59 (a person may be guilty of manslaughter where only a slight injury is inflicted on the victim, where such injury unforeseeably results in the victim's death, provided that there is a likelihood of some harm occurring as a result of the act). Fundamentally, however, a clear causative line must be drawn between the unlawful act and the death. The recent cases of R v Carey [2006] EWCA Crim 17 and R v DJ and others [2007] EWCA Crim 3133 demonstrate the legal difficulties of proving causation in unlawful act manslaughter cases where death is caused by a heart attack subsequent to the alleged unlawful act.

(3) If the view is taken that a lack of a causative link between the unlawful act and the death will prevent a successful claim being brought for unlawful act manslaughter but the victim did sustain bodily harm of a character that is neither trivial nor trifling (ie more than a graze or bruise), then the CPS might consider the offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Though the physical and mental elements of the offence are similar to those for assault or battery, the tariff carried by the offence is more severe than those for battery.

Absent the full suite of evidence, I suspect (2) would fail on causation and there was insufficient bodily harm to permit a successful prosecution under (3). Unless the officer's subjective view of the reasonableness of the force used prevails, a successful battery charge could be possible. However this will probably only result in a slap on the wrist rather than incarceration so I imagine that this case will spend rather more time trawling its way through the civil courts and HSE and IPCC tribunals. As mentioned above, this is really not my area of expertise but the above is hopefully not too wildly inaccurate...