If this forum was a real life discussion you would have been killed long before this thread ever started
Don't know if this has already been covered, but I ain't reading the past 8 pages, but; What if it had been a Police officer that had been killed? Would the media still have reacted in the same way?
No, I think he should be treated exactly as the law dictates. I don't think that he should be lynched without investigation and trial, like the majority in this thread seem to think. I also don't think that the victim is an innocent martyr of democracy, but there is no law against being an asshole. When I have a few glasses of wine in a restaurant, I know that my driving is going to be impaired. I do not know how much of a problem that is going to be in driving home. After all, I live fairly close to the restaurant, the roads are wide and well-lit and at night there are not going to be any kids chasing after their ball. As long as I mind my speed I should be OK, right? Then again, some drunken teenager may stagger across the road at the wrong moment without looking. Some Renault Scenic carrying a family of four coming from the opposite side may make a badly judged overtaking manoevre. When I'm drunk, I cannot deal with that to the best of my ability. Moreover, when I'm drunk, I may misjudge situations badly. I don't know what is going to happen on my drive back home. What I do know however is that whatever happens, if I am shitfaced I am in a poor condition to deal with it. So I don't put myself in that situation. I don't drink and drive. I don't get drunk to the extent that it seriously impairs my general judgement to deal with unexpected events. I don't get drunk if I cannot literally walk out of the restaurant into a cab which drops me off right in front of my door. All I know is that if during a protest a riot police officer hits me with a baton --whether reasonably or unreasonably-- I stay clear of riot police officers with batons. I do not find myself within ten yards of them if I can avoid it, let alone casually walking hands in pockets within one yard. All this crap about expecting reasonable force is just crap. It does not take much to read a situation: there's a big protest, riot police are out in force, you've just had two altercations with them already. This is not going to be a rational debate about civil liberties and freedom of expression. It's going to be about crowd control and batons are going to be swinging. Make sure you're not within striking distance.
I was loathed to say it earlier, but you really are clutching at straws. What are you saying? He should have got a cab? There is risk inherent in every action (including getting a cab) but we make judgement calls as to the level of risk. Growing up in Belfast the only bus route to my school had to go through an army checkpoint. These guys weren't dealing with the possibility of getting hit by protestors; They were dealing with the possibility of being shot, or blown up, by a heavily-armed and regimented paramilitary organisation. These guys weren't carrying sticks, they were carrying SA80 Assault Rifles. Do you think I should have walked to school instead, on a route that contained no checkpoints based on the possibility that my motives would be mistaken for that of a terrorist and I may have been riddled with bullets? Would you also say that the civil rights protestors on Bloody Sunday had it coming? Is it your assertion that no resident of the United Kingdom should challenge, or even interact with, armed government-funded law enforcement because of the fear of being illegally assaulted, and possibly killed? You do realise you're essentially advocating fascism?
I'm sorry, but it is you that is clutching at straws. You take an argument to the extreme and when I give a balanced response you jank that response to the other extreme. You asked: How can you blame the man for getting drunk, and thus impairing his judgement, if he could not reasonably predict this improbable situation that would call upon sober judgement? I said: in as far that a lot of unexpected stuff can happen between a pub in the city centre of London and his home somewhere on the outskirts, and the public transport route he has to traverse to get there. He could have got mugged. He could have got caught up in an accident. Anything can happen. Now either he was sober enough to make that journey, in which case he should have been sober enough to assess the risks of confronting riot police; or he was too drunk to properly assess those risks, in which case he arguably was too drunk to go home safely. You reply: Ah! But he could not reasonably avoid any risk! I say: no he couldn't. But he could reasonably avoid being too drunk to deal with any risk. Again; you are arguing about extremes. But I bet your busdriver was not drunk when he drove that bus. You can take reasonable measures to reasonably reduce risk of tragedies happening. Hello Godwin, why don't you take a seat over here... I think it is not only incorrect but also disingenious to try and compare one drunken man who behaved like an asshole to a tragic event in Northern Ireland that can only be interpreted in the context of a long and complex history of the troubles. And firing live rounds into a crowd is a very different thing from giving someone a push which turns out to accidentally kill him. This is what I am talking about with your clutching at straws. You ignore the context of the incident; you ignore my arguments; you attribute statements to me that I did not make; you employ "if you're not for Tomlinson you are for police brutality" reasoning, you invoke Godwin's law and in the case of stuartpb jank the issue of terrorism totally out of the context in which it was mentioned and try and use it as a stick to beat my reasoning with. There is no point in debating this further because I just have to repeat all the facts and arguments again every three posts or so. Have your lynch mob; condemn the police officer without a trial or examination of the facts. If that is your interpretation of democracy and civil rights and liberties then you know nothing at all.
Your anecdotal comparison: It's like when I'm deciding whether I'm too drunk to drive home in a Renalut Scenic My anecdotal comparison: It's like when I had not choice but to deal with police to get to my destination The fact that he was drunk is entirely irrelevant. Drunk or not, he had a place to go, and the police prevented him. This leaves your argument resting solely on the fact he was antagonistic towards the officers whose survival instincts were at the fore - You claim he has a responsibility he assault by being antagonistic. Again, whether the decision to be antagonistic or not was influenced by his intoxication is irrelevant. In my experience (as opposed to your academic interpretation) I have been, and I have seen other civilians be, antagonistic towards both police and army for blocking them from their destination - They had to go to work or school, or whatever destination it may have been. I have never witnessed it, but had they, or I, been assaulted, the assault would not in any way be the victim's fault. You cannot blame a victim for the aggressors actions, especially when the aggressor's sole purpose there is to enforce the rules of engagement (the law). It may be extreme to you, it's not to me. This is is what I dealt with from day-to-day for 20+ years. This is normality for me. The bus driver doesn't come in to it. They don't check the outside of the bus, they check the passengers inside, and their belongings. Reasonable measures to stop tragedies from happening, you say? I'm assuming you mean not exhibit appropriate force to invoke a tragic outcome...and not psycically reading the mental disposition of law enforcement you come in to contact with. I never once said "If you're not for Tomlinson you're for police brutality". What I'm saying is that the use of unreasonable and illegal force is not normatice behaviour for law-enforcement officers - be they your local bobby, riot control, or army. Therefore you cannot place any responsibility on Tomlinson for not anticipating a deviation from normative behaviour. If you were performing therapy for a woman, whose experience of her husband had always been pleasant, until one day they were having a disagreement and he hit her...would you tell that woman that she was partly to blame for her assault because she being an uppity bitch and not considering her husbands mental disposition despite his reaction being contrary to all her previous experience?
This is not just some guy who came across some riot police in the street on a normal day and was pushed to the ground. This was a guy in the middle of a potential riot, arguing with and obstructing the police, to the police he is no different to one of the protesters, not some guy walking home. Quite a few of the protesters specifically try to provoke a police response, I'm not suprised one of them snapped and lashed out with an over the top action.
Terrorism has no place within this argument. You are trying to use the fact that there have been recent attacks on policemen in Northern Ireland as some sort of justification or mitigating factor for the policeman's actions at the G20 protest. It really doesn't wash Nexxo, and it is clutching at straws. I am taking what you said in exactly the context you meant and I am NOT janking anything. Would you care to explain how I am supposed to be taking what you said out of context? If you don't like someone challenging what you type here, and are going to cry foul when they do, then there isn't much point posting.
Thugs (Police) controlling thugs (proletarians) problem obviously. [From Latin proletarius, belonging to the lowest class of Roman citizens (viewed as contributing to the state only through having children). I hope that the majority here will not fail to identify themselves.
Dude, I wasn't the one who brought his drunkeness up as a factor in the first place. Here we go again (fourth time). I'm not blaming Tomlinson for the policeman's actions. I said before that the policeman is 100% culpable for his own actions. But I am also saying that Tomlinson was responsible for his own actions: confronting the police twice, getting hit once, and then still walking within a yard of a visibly agitated police crowd. Yes, the police officer should not have pushed him. Yes, he is guilty of manslaughter. But yes, Tomlinson could have done more to keep himself safe. Riot police hits you with a baton at 7.15pm. What do you think may be the general mood of that riot police at 7.20pm? Are we reading minds yet? That's where we have to disagree. Fourth time: he had an altercation with them twice already. He walks within a yard of a marching police cordon. He expects them to play nice now because he keeps his hands in his pockets? I wouldn't bet my life on it. No, but (fifth time) if the woman had been hit twice already in previous recent arguments I would wonder why she did not see the third one coming. That does not in any way mitigate hubby's behaviour, but I would ask her what she can do to start keeping herself safe from his aggression --even if it just means putting some physical distance between them right now. What I am illustrating (in the red text) is the possible mindset of the police. Next time I'll add big quotation marks to make it really obvious. I really would be curious as to why you think that the recent attacks on policemen in N.I. would not be a factor in how the police might have been thinking. Again (fourth time), this is not justifying or mitigating their behaviour, but trying to explain it.
No Nexxo, you are guessing not explaining. Also, there are many more threats to the police that you could have mentioned, like the rise in gun crime etc, but they too would have no part to play in this debate. The only way that these factors would be a valid part of this debate would be if the police perceived the man to be a terrorist, or any other type of genuine threat. Which they didn't, so yet again you are clutching at straws. Regardless of the mindset of the police involved, they overstepped the mark. Now you can try to seek a logic behind this all you want, but the fact remains that the policeman involved acted unlawfully. The courts (if he is prosecuted) are not going to be interested in the events in Northern Ireland, and neither should we be!
No, you are just being deliberately obtuse. As I pointed out in the text that you helpfully marked in red, the police probably saw him as a drunken ****. The hostility that they might have been feeling towards him would have been amplified to unreasonable proportions by their general mindset (they are tooled up and psyched up for a fight), the events of the day and possibly the background paranoia about terrorism, highlighted for them in a very personal way by the death of a colleague in N.I. There will indeed have been otehr contributing factors as well. I mean, do you actually read my posts, like, comprehensively, or do you just skim them to cherry-pick phrases that you can frame your a priori arguments around? That the police officer acted unlawfully and should be prosecuted we already agree on. What we do not agree on is whether Tomlinson could have done something different to keep himself reasonably safe. I think he could have.
Crying foul again I am not being obtuse, I am basing my opinions on the evidence you are presenting. We all know you were out of line with your terrorist mindset theory, so stop getting on your high horse.
This from a Clinical Psychologist. Where are the times, when professors kicked out of the University people with a mob background?? The patients in hospitals are many times very aggresive; so, why not hit them; if you hit them enough times they will learn, right? If they yell at a doctor this will slap them, brake their noise, teeth,... Or is such a privilege reserved just for Policeman in a democratic society? (doctors are a lot more endangered (statistic) that a trained policeman with 20 other around him). They should have taken him and put him in a cell till he gets over his drinking state; already the first time and not kill him on the third. This is professional, everthing else is just a fantasy (a sick one). End of discussion.
I could ask the same question of you, as you failed to comment on my statement below: Stop with the apportioning of blame Nexxo, because it will not work. There are clearly defined laws by which the population of the UK have to live by. Having a warrant card does NOT indemnify the owner from having to observe and act within these laws. You say that you accept the officer in question was wrong, but in another breath, you are trying to apportion blame. The police officer's mindset at the time of the event was not, and is not, any kind of defense. We could all speculate as to what the officer was thinking at the time, but as the law stands, provocation or an offender's mindset at the time of offending is NOT a defense. It can be entered as a mitigating factor when sentencing an offender.
Nexxo, where do you propose he should go? He's kettled in with the protestors, and the perimiter is contracting. What the police are pissed about is that they've lumped him in with the protestors, and he is impeding their efforts to close in. He is surrounded and has nowhere to go except further towards the protestors he is not associated with. If he did go hang out with the protestors it would confirm the polices insistence that he, in fact, is a protestor. If he was a protestor, who is to say he wouldn't get caught up in a riot. The police put him in a catch-22 situation: If he retreated he would be assumed to be one of the protestors, and put himself in potentially worse danger. If he confronted them he atleast had a chance to talk his way out of the situation.
If that works for you. Interesting point, that. First, there is the issue of capacity: does the patient know what they are doing when they are being aggressive? Do they have reasonable self-control? Not when they are learning disabled, psychotic or severely brain injured (interestingly, "drunk" is not included). When they are considered to have capacity however, they are considered responsible for their actions and can be restrained and even refused treatment. There is even a zero-tolerance policy in the NHS. There is also a rule that if a patient hits a staff member and they hit back in the first three seconds, that can be mitigated as an instinctual defensive reaction. If the staff member hits them after three seconds they are in deep trouble. Because by then they had time to think about it, and stop themselves. In Italy there was an interesting experiment in one psychiatric hospital (in the 80's I believe) of "matching aggression". The logic was that patients have to learn that aggressive behaviour will generally meet with an aggressive response in the real world outside. It did not work out too well and was abandoned as a technique because violence was as likely to escalate as to cease. In any case, that is all a bit academic because... Thanks for that. Again (sixth?), I consider the policeman 100% culpable for his actions. Yes, he crossed the line. No, there are no mitigating factors --but the policeman did not intend to kill him so no, it is not murder but manslaughter. And yes, I think that the victim could have done more to keep himself safe. See, the thing about a clinical psychologist is that we like to analyse human events from all angles. We like to look at the beaviour of all contributing parties. We like to get through the messy bit of understanding first, before we get to the fun part of judging.
And you do your job well, but you also talk a lot of nonsense. Straight to the point is the best in these kinds of situations.
Again (seventh); I consider the policeman 100% culpable for his actions. Yes, he crossed the line. No, there are no mitigating factors. Yes, he should be tried for manslaughter. But yes, I think that the victim could have done more to keep himself safe. I'm not sure I can get any clearer than that. Beyond that, you are reading whatever you want to read. Where should he have gone? How about at least more than one yard from the police cordon? That's all. How hard is that? Well, that worked then. Next time I want to reason with a police officer I'll stand in front of a moving patrol car and resist attempts to remove me.
