19 July 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Eric Garner and the plague of US police brutality against black men

source: VICE United States
published: Jul 18 2014

If you haven’t heard about Eric Garner yet, let me fill you in. He was a 43-year-old father of six who lived in Staten Island, and he died in the street on Thursday after as many as four New York police officers choked him and slammed his head on the ground.

The NYPD told the Associated Press that they stopped Garner because he was selling untaxed cigarettes, something he’d been arrested for before. However, witnesses who spoke with local news website Staten Island Live have basically said that’s bullshit.

24 June 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

CCTV captures violent arrest which left man with shattered eye-socket

source: Birmingham Mail
published: 24 June 2014

A West Midlands Police officer is facing a misconduct hearing after shattering the eye-socket of a man during a violent arrest. Mohaib Qurban was told by medics that he was lucky not to have lost his sight after he was seriously injured by the officer in Dean Street, city centre.

Some of the shocking incident was captured on CCTV cameras near Birmingham Markets and appears to show the officer punching down towards Mohaib as he lies prone beside the wheels of a parked car.

The footage, which has been obtained by the Birmingham Mail, then zooms in and shows him lifted into view before the same officer is clearly seen delivering two violent knees to his head whilst his arms and legs are pinned by a further three police.

22 June 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Water cannon: policing by consent?

source: The Justice Gap
published: June 2014

On 10 June, the Mayor of London’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) announced that it had given the Metropolitan Police Service permission to purchase three second-hand water cannons, pre-empting the Home Secretary’s authority for the weapons to be used on the British mainland.

Since that announcement, debate has raged about the safety of the weapons and their capacity to kill or to maim, culminating in Boris Johnson’s offer to be ‘blasted’ by water cannon to ‘prove’ their safety.

This is the wrong debate.