guess what verdict the cop got

The day after Ian Tomlinson died at the G20 demonstrations, a vigil was held for him. That, too, was the scene of police assaulting protesters.

One piece of footage seemed so stark and unambiguous that it went viral; the peaceful protest that suddenly changed due to cops throwing their weight around, with the big cop smacking the woman in the face and then batoning her to the ground.



The cop, Sergeant Delroy Smellie, had his case come to court last week. No prizes for guessing the verdict.

Sergeant Smellie cast himself as the vulnerable party.

Not one photograph or piece of footage comes close to reflecting the fear as I turned around to see this crowd

Perhaps that's because the footage clearly depicts the event and shows nothing for anyone to be scared of, let alone someone who is armed and armoured, and who additionally has special privileges to use violence.

What the footage does show is a prolonged, boring scene of people standing around and a dense stationary line of police. One of them has a member of the public talking, and when they don't go away they are shoved by several officers. This causes the crowd to remonstrate, at which point Smellie hits Nicola Fisher in the face then, as she stands in front of him, he calmly takes out his baton and hits her twice on the legs, making her fall to the ground.

He said her carton of orange juice and camera looked like weapons. At close range in broad daylight.

Still, he says he was in control and thought

Does it really need a broken jaw, which could easily have happened if I struck her with my left elbow in her face. I thought that the most reasonable level of force would be a flick with the hand as a distraction clearance.

So, because the level of violence wasn't as great as it could have been, it's therefore reasonable.

At the time I thought, this is it: she is deliberately coming from a blind spot. The reason she is coming from a blind spot is to hide her intention so she can approach and attack her target – me.

She moves slightly, slowly, then after she is hit she stands still in front of him, remonstrating. Not a lot that you could call 'coming at' him, let alone from a blind spot. Armed, as she was, with orange juice.

It can't have helped that Nicola Fisher sold her arse to Max Clifford last year and was splattered all over the red-tops, yet - fearing character assassination - refused to testify against Smellie.

But you have to ponder what would have happened if the roles were reversed, if footage existed of two members of the public acting like that, or a civilian assaulting a copper.

Sergeant Smellie, incidentally, is one of the countless cops who had removed their identifying numbers at the G20 protests. The Met's chief promised officers who did that in order to get away with inappropriate behaviour would be sacked. More than a year later, even though we know who many of them were, not one has even been disciplined.