looking the other way

I really tried, you know.

I tried not to be cynical about the 'Independent' Police Complaints Commission in my last post, but they received witness statements saying Ian Tomlinson had been assaulted by police yet took five days to decide the police shouldn't investigate the case themselves, and their reaction to the Guardian footage was to go with police (which one of them instigated it, I wonder?) to the paper's offices and demand the footage be taken down.

So I couldn't help it. But I was hopeful that the publicity meant the case would have to be taken seriously and force them to do a proper investigation, not the kind of cover-up that they did for De Menezes.

In the De Menezes case, crucial CCTV cameras on the station platform and the train 'weren't working'. The company operating the cameras and London Underground staff were reported to contradict this, but didn't have chance to check the tapes before police took them away, and certainly blank tapes were all that was returned to them.

But still, it was possible. When you consider the millions of CCTV cameras installed in the UK, it's a good bet that lots of them aren't working at any given time.

This excuse surely couldn't apply for the G20. More than 100 officers were deployed to monitor over 3,000 CCTV cameras. Unlike Stockwell tube, the area concerned was well known weeks in advance. There is simply no way that they didn't ensure the system was in full working order. So then, there must be footage of Ian Tomlinson's assault.

Last night the chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission said

There is no CCTV footage, there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted.

Here we go.

Curiouser, Channel 4 say this was amended by the IPCC in a later bulletin to say that the CCTV cameras overlooking the incident were not working.