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July 29, 2024 - 7:00am
What follows is a tale of two video clips. Last Wednesday, the first of the two emerged on social media, appearing to show an officer from Greater Manchester Police kick a helpless young man in the head.
In a statement, GMP explained that its officers had attempted to arrest a suspect only to find themselves subject to “violent assault”, thus requiring an aggressive response. But as the backlash grew, the force changed its tone, trying to placate the rising public anger at what was shown in the video. It admitted the footage was “truly shocking” and that “people are rightly extremely concerned.”
Various public figures made similar statements of their own. Among them were local Labour MP Paul Waugh, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
On Friday, the BBC weighed in with a BBC Verify analysis of the video. This was mostly a description of the actions of the police, specifically the kicking, hitting, pushing and use of pepper spray. The reporter, Richard Irvine-Brown, stated the BBC had “not been able to find footage that shows what led up to the incident” — which was unfortunate, because this turned out to be of crucial importance.
The very next day, a second video emerged, providing the missing context for BBC Verify’s blow-by-blow account. What it seems to show is a full-on brawl — in which, as per the GMP’s original statement, police officers suffered multiple attacks. In contrast, the first clip only showed us the outcome of the struggle.
Even with this second clip, it must be stressed that we still don’t know the whole story, which may not exonerate the police of all blame. Nevertheless, it was enough to change the narrative overnight. In a Sunday morning interview, Burnham warned about “a phenomenon of our time”: that is, the perils of social media. “Video will emerge from whichever source”, he observed. “Everyone then becomes an expert on it.” Public order can be threatened by this “rush to judgement”, which “politicians really shouldn’t be part of”. Wise words — it’s just a shame they came too late.
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SubscribeThe BBC tends to work to an agenda. The analysis of an incomplete video which satisfies this agenda will get broadcast. This where the mistake has occurred as Peter Franklin has pointed out. The lesson for the BBC should be that it is better to say or broadcast nothing rather than become the story in fog. Or just say there is fog. It behaves like a common you-tuber.
I would say the BBC tends to cover whoever is having a moan, provided whoever is moaning is ‘appropriate’.
It did at least publish the second video when it came to light – not all media outlets would have done so – which this article itself falls to mention.
I knew (as I imagine everyone did) that there must be more video of the incident, and that it would be radically different from the BBC’s narrative.
But I found the second video on other sources well before the BBC put it out.
So wait….yes the lads and police were fighting n yes looks like the lads attacked the police officer.BUT the lad on the floor had been tazed n was just about knocked out n he was subdued.Further more his hands were behind his bk.Yes a crime was commited an attack on the officers happend BUT for godsake the guy was subdued n in a prone position not grappling for anything he was SUBDUED! Then the police officer comes and kicks him stamps on his head like its a school or public fight.He came for afters!!! What does it matter that the police were attacked 1st? They subdued them n done their job.What u idiots are saying because the lads started the fight that the police officer was within his rights to go for afters? If this was a street fight n it came to court that the last blow was a running kick to the head and a stomp to the head how would that fair? Typicaly a lot of this is fueled by race,left this oh its asians they deserve to be treated this way by the police!
Thank you for your contribution to the discussion.
You may also care to consider my other points (above), beginning ‘This is a reply to Martin M’s ‘kicking and stomping’ post‘.
The young pakistani is sure happy it wasn’t in Pakistan. There he really would get a deserved punishment. Why did he attack the police in the first place.
Absolutely, the police do not simply physically attack people in an official capacity without reason. Even if in the odd case they were of a mind to they are not stupid. They would know that that an airport will be full of cctv cameras. I have some experience of interacting with the police in a demonstration environment in my youth (before cctv etc) and it was immediately clear to me that there was a pre-history to the initial video. Yet I find it astonishing the number of supposedly respectable, law-abiding and intelligent people who honestly believed that this was a case of wicked police attacking innocent, law-abiding family.
“the police do not simply physically attack people in an official capacity without reason”…..”they are not stupid”
Sweet!
The BBC is still showing the kick part of the video significantly more than the lead up video.
The ‘Israel bombs hospital, 500 dead’ story comes to mind. Since demonstrated that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket exploding in the car park and possibly 50 dead.
Yes, remarkably little playtime for that
Richard Irvine-Brown you say? Say no more. Richard treats facts like flowers: picked and rearranged to please. His Gaza coverage has been so partial he’s even been using Qatari government representatives – sponsors of Hamas – as independent sources. But then Richard isn’t unique at the BBC. He is just another Beeboid wearing the same left wing politics on his sleave. His and his BBC colleagues’ output is so boringly predictable and robotic they would struggle to convince reCAPTCHA to publish.
BBC Verify is a complete sham. All it does it try to further support the Corporations biases without intelligent analysis. Yet another reason to defund it.
Hear! Hear!
It should be a lesson for the BBC, but will it? It’s not the first time that this sort of thing has happened.
BBC will no doubt double down on their sloppy journalism.
Whatever may have happened before the “kicking and stomping” incident, it cannot excuse the incident itself. If the person who was the victim of the incident had committed a criminal offence, the cop should arrest him, not “put the boot into” him.
I think he was out numbered, plus two colleagues were already out of action.
Well, maybe he should have dealt with some of the other perpetrators who weren’t lying unconscious on the ground, instead of putting a gratuitous boot in the face.
Agreed…but in former times such events weren’t recorded so were easy to deny. I believe “fell down the cell steps” was the usual explanation…
At least it was just a kick. In Australia (where I live) and the US, cops gun down unarmed black people all the time.
I think it’s a fair point but, having seen the lead up, some level of ‘losing it’ is an entirely human reaction. Should there be some leeway given to those who have to deal with indiscriminate violence on our behalf?
No, not if you are a cop. Your job is to apply the law, and that is it. If you have a problem with that, there are many other jobs available.
You are correct of course, but police are people and with him and his colleague having just fought off two attackers, his adrenaline and testosterone will be sky high. You can’t just ignore that – there’d have been no kick if they hadn’t been attacked in the first place.
I get annoyed sometimes too, and on some of those occasions, I might even feel like kicking someone in the gob. However, were I to do it, I would fully expect to be arrested and charged.
Surely the BBC chose to put out a partial account of the incident in spite of having a very good idea what preceded it? The story was all over Twitter (and the earlier rough handling of the men’s mother, which will be the next “revelation”, I’m sure).
Of course you are right but this is far from just the BBC, it is the modus operandi of much of the media, particularly in relation to this particular demographic.
[This is a reply to Martin M’s ‘kicking and stomping’ post, which the UnHerd system will not allow me to reply to.]
Please think about this a little more.
It can be seen from the second video that the police were attacked with determined violence. The police officer in question was carrying a firearm. Surely he must have been concerned – above all other considerations – that his firearm might be wrested from him.
So, what is he to do? Just hope his attacker won’t get hold of the gun? Or make sure he doesn’t?
If you had been there yourself, which would you have preferred to see: a violent attacker now in possession of a gun that he could use on you? Or that violent attacker being kept down?
Your choice.
There was zero chance of the guy lying face down and essentially unconscious grabbing any cop’s gun. If the cop had been doing his job, it would have been a simple matter of cuffing the guy on the ground, but instead, he took the opportunity to “put the boot in”. I live in Australia, and am used to cops who are brutal, violent thugs. There was a time I would have thought of British cops as somewhat better, but I guess they aren’t.
“I live in Australia,”
Ah, so you may be missing out on the point of the article and comments. In a true English fashion (a mix of coded language and tabloid frenzy), the airport violence is only relevant in so far that it helps one to kick the BBC in the head; and you are being a party pooper.
I don’t know how many of the bits of video you will have been able to see, but amongst those that I have seen, the man in question looks to me as if pretending to be unconscious (it is hard to see what could have knocked him out in the first place).
He goes down and then straightens up into a strangely neat ‘standing to attention face down’ posture. Then he is seen to look up to the left and to the right. I am not medically trained, but I think all of those things are quite difficult to do when unconscious.
Does anyone still watch or pay for the BBC? Astonishing if so.
I am that licence-fee payer.
Apart from the Euro football finals, I can’t remember when I last watched it.
I live in Australia, but I am an avid watcher of it on satellite.
“But as the backlash grew, the force changed its tone,……”
The “backlash” was very loud and aggressive but mainly from the forever-offended minority – especially that part from Rochdale (say no more). I guess also from Guardian readers and the like. Lee Anderson spoke for very many when he suggested the policeman wasn’t the prime guilty party.
There may be even more to come out into the about this story- what was the initial problem on board the plane with the returning matriarch (and A N Other) and what was the altercation (at the baggage collection) preceding the police approaching the brother who felt free to punch policemen and (especially) women?
“Lee Anderson spoke for very many when he suggested the policeman wasn’t the prime guilty party“. A policeman who kicks a barely conscious man who is lying face down on the ground is an extremely guilty party, irrespective of what might have gone before. He should be sacked from the force and charged.
The BBC is stuffed full of swivelled eyed far-left activists. They played the first clip without context deliberately, an attempt to whip up as much hatred and anger possible towards the police and Britain itself.
Lessons won’t be learned because there is no one to hold them accountable. Until ‘conservatives’ or the ‘non-woke’ grow a pair and start making loud noises over this sort of thing, nothing will change.
The first article, which contained the kick clip only, did have some context –
“It said while trying to arrest a suspect, three of its officers were violently attacked and punched to the ground. One officer suffered a broken nose and all three needed hospital treatment.”
The later video wasn’t avaialable at the time. They were reporting it as news, as crowds were gathering outside a Rochdale police station. Are you expecting them to just ignore that?
What they could do without is the following, from the article with the fuller clip –
‘Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar told BBC Newsnight he was disappointed that leading politicians, including Mr Burnham, had asked people to consider the context to the incident.
There was “no justification” for a police officer to act this way, he said, adding that the context was “irrelevant”.’
Obviously the context is relevant. Context is always relevant.
Yes, but the video was decontextualised. It was as inflammatory as possible, basically starting it where the racist Muslim extremists wanted it to be started with no questions asked. Either everyone has an IQ of 1 in the editorial offices, or it was an act of racist ( anti-white, anti-police, anti-British ) malice to run the decontextualised video.
The only person involved in this who has an IQ of 1 in this matter is the cop who thought he could get away with kicking an unconscious guy lying face down on the ground in the face in this era of mobile phone cameras.
Excellent. Also the assault on police and the broken nose was already known, but without a video it didnt exist.
The same could probably be said of the “kicking and stomping”.
Cops mostly do not assault persons for no reason. And those who engage in inappropriate behavior should expect a severe response.
They mostly don’t indeed, but sadly plenty enough do.
I will not add to the ample, justifiable criticism of the BBC and its coverage, which as usual is eager to jump to its (pre-conceived) conclusions and avoid any awkward other information.
Instead, I want to emphasise the appalling eagerness with which various police mouth-pieces jumped onto the “police brutality” bandwagon. Their prompt and supine abandonment of any effort to understand what really happened is inexcusable and simply disgusting; one such high police source even pitched in to assert, without any evidence, that it was a case of police racism. But even though the second video was not yet out, the text descriptions of the event already made it clear that the police were there in response to dangerous rioting and were themselves deliberate targets of physical attack and abuse; this reality was simply ignored.
This shows, for the umpteenth time, the rot which has settled into the higher reaches of the police bureaucracy. The road to very well paid senior posts is to suck up to the noisy politicians and civil servants who push the “woke” agenda so hard. That’s why instead of teaching policing techniques, the training of police focuses on how to be uber politically correct; they are trained by sociologists rather than criminal justice professionals.
Finally, how would you feel, as one of the police on the firing line (like those attacked in Manchester), to see how quickly the big bosses abandon you and throw you to the wolves. Great for morale to know that nobody’s watching your back when they send you into potentially dangerous situations.
So wait….yes the lads and police were fighting n yes looks like the lads attacked the police officer.BUT the lad on the floor had been tazed n was just about knocked out n he was subdued.Further more his hands were behind his bk.Yes a crime was commited an attack on the officers happend BUT for godsake the guy was subdued n in a prone position not grappling for anything he was SUBDUED! Then the police officer comes and kicks him stamps on his head like its a school or public fight.He came for afters!!! What does it matter that the police were attacked 1st? They subdued them n done their job.What u idiots are saying because the lads started the fight that the police officer was within his rights to go for afters? If this was a street fight n it came to court that the last blow was a running kick to the head and a stomp to the head how would that fair? Typicaly a lot of this is fueled by race,left this oh its asians they deserve to be treated this way by the police!
Maybe if you are one of those police, and fear abandonment by the “big bosses”, not kicking a barely conscious guy who is lying face down on the ground might be a good idea.
There is another dimension to this. The person on the ground had already attacked the police. He was not hand cuffed and he could get up at any time.
No one knows if he was armed. No one knows if he would try to get a police gun.
Given that the police’s first duty was to protect the public was incapacitating him justified ?
It is significant that the very enthusiastic lawyer who turned up to act for his “aggrieved clients” -has disappeared .
The guy who was kicked could not get up any time as he was already incapacitated – he had been tasered.
He looked barely conscious, to be honest, and he was lying face down. Hardly an aggressive posture.
Yes, it is a lesson for the Beeb, which they will ignore or consider for 54 minutes, then into the memory hole it goes!
They have accepted the new norms of American MSM, will no longer apologize, recant or improve processes,
I’d like to support the police… lord knows they have to deal with some awful people.
However, I don’t believe a police officer should ever kick someone in the head, no matter what the circumstances.
I am inclined to believe, pending a complete description of the incident, that the policeman overreacted. However, I can readily imagine circumstances in which an armed policeman, his hands occupied by his weapon, decides to deal with an aggressive assailant, raising himself up from the floor with malevolent intent, by a swift kick to the face/head. The alternative, other than abject surrender which seems to be popular in Leeds and elsewhere, might be to shoot him which, even if thoroughly justified under the circumstances, will lead to his being stabbed in the back, not by the assailant of course, but by his senior officers and a myriad of local MPs seeking to curry favour with the local populace. Never mind, Diversity is Strength!
“Raising himself up from the floor with malevolent intent”? You think a kick in the face is the right way to deal with that?
In most countries it would have been dealt with using a couple of bullets so I’d say he was lucky to get away with just a kick to the head.
Good work, I watched the second video not knowing what it contained and the blurred but discernible moment when the WPC went down was disgusting. Then again perhaps there is a third video, or a fourth, showing something else. A camera is always selective, and an edit is an expression of a decided opinion.
Got to keep the prolefeed coming!
Bbc would have hated the 2nd video being released as it undermined their toxic narrative. Police bad, violent migrant thugs good.