One officer appears to fall from horse at high speed as demonstrators shout that a protester was knocked aside
Mounted police have charged into Black Lives Matter protesters in London amid ‘panic’ among demonstrators after police used force to push the protest away from Parliament and Downing Street.
One officer, riding at high speed along a crowded street, can be seen falling from her horse and crashing to the ground after what appears to be a collision with a traffic light and a man appears to be knocked aside by a horse to howls from shocked protesters :
LBC correspondent Rachael Venables reported on the ‘panic’ created by the charge:
The SKWAWKBOX understands that a woman police officer was injured in the fall but that her injuries are not life-threatening. Right-wing media have already attempted to blame the officer’s fall on protesters.
The condition of the protester knocked to the ground during the charge is not known.
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Policing by consent ?
The photos of mounted police towering over unarmed protesters is reminiscent of the Thatcher era.Boris Johnson is Thatcher’s “child” only worse ( and I never thought it would be possible to say that about anybody)
I just checked out the Sun to see how they covered the incident, and they go with the headline: ‘Female cop left in hospital after bike is thrown at horse during Black Lives Matter protests’.
They appear to be saying that someone threw their bike at the horse (I don’t think they mean ‘threw’ as in picked it up and chucked it at the mounted officer and her horse, but pushed it at the horse so that it careered into it), and THAT led to the horse bolting and, in turn, the officer colliding with the traffic light and being knocked off the horse:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11800535/police-horse-black-lives-matter-protest-london/
Anyway, the horse was unharmed and made it’s own way back to the stables, and at least the Sun is saying that it was just a tiny minority that resorted to violence, and that the vast majority of protesters demonstrated peacefully.
Aha, THIS is very interesting. Check out the video clip that’s already running and repeating at the beginning of the Mail coverage of the incident. It shows someone pushing their bicycle at a mounted officer/horse, and then a horse bolting down the street, but the horse bolting down the street is NOT the horse that the idiot pushed his bike at, which is black, whereas the horse bolting down the road is brown:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
In actual fact, this is what is showing when I clicked on Home at the top of the page, and I’ve just noticed – when I scrolled down a little bit – that what the Mail is saying in a headline to the story is this:
‘Chaos at Black Lives Matter clashes: How men hurled BIKES at horses after a female mounted officer was knocked unconscious when her steed was hit by a missile, bolted into a lamppost and collided with woman’
Yeah, saw the footage on BBC News last night – the bike was propelled into the horse’s hind legs at speed, causing it to unseat its rider and bolt – it wasn’t the fault of the mounted officer but the fact that the horse was placed in such a situation was the fault of the police service and of government.
Using potentially dangerous animals like horses and dogs for crowd control is unacceptable – they lack the human moral imperative not to kill and they have the capacity to kill if they run amok.
If a civilian had been killed the police would likely have escaped sanction.
The moron who launched the bike at the horse (and it was clearly aimed) was criminally reckless for either not predicting or not caring about the consequences of a horse bolting into a crowd – injury to his fellow protesters was almost certain.
It was a different few seconds of footage I saw last night to what’s being screened this morning – but maybe I linked two clips in my head. The clip this morning did show a black horse hit by a bike and not bolting.
Newsnight isn’t on on Saturday’s David, so whatever you saw was either on some other news program last night, or was something you saw on Friday’s edition of Newsnight, and didn’t happen yesterday as such.
I just brought up Friday night’s edition of Newsnight on Iplayer, and most of the program was taken up with CV stuff, but there was a segment towards the end of the program (as Kirsty Wark mentioned at the outset), starting at around 23 mins, that was in relation to George Floyd and the protests. As you probably know David, if you run your cursor along the ‘time bar’ at the bottom of the screen, it shows you on a mini screen what’s happening in the program as you move the cursor along it. So I did that until I came to where the segment about the protests started, and then watched that segment from start to finish, and there wasn’t a horse in sight at any point, so you obviously didn’t see what you saw on Newsnight, and must have seen it on a different news program.
In the Mirror coverage of the incident, some way down the page there’s a still of a bicycle just about to career into a mounted officer/horse, and I initially thought that it must be the same one that is shown being pushed towards a horse in the repeating video footage in the Mail, but when I checked the Mail footage again, I’m pretty certain that it was two different bikes – ie two diffent incidents in which imbeciles did that.
What would be interesting to find out is: 1. Was there a reason why the police suddenly decided that the protesters in Whitehall needed to be moved on?; and 2. Did the police ask the demonstrators in a measured and ‘friendly’ manner to disperse prior to bringing in the mounted police? (which was pretty much guaranteed to produce a ‘reaction’ amongst some of the protesters).
I do wonder though why anyone attending a demonstration would think to take flares and/or fire crackers along with them, or why any protester would take a spray can with them (and spray BLM on the plinth of the statue of Winston Churchill….. and if I remember correctly, it also said somewhere that grafitti was spray-painted on the cenotaph. Hmm, makes you wonder if it was legit protesters that did it!
And THIS is very interesting, bearing in mind what Trump said about designating Antifa a terrorist organisation recently (the vid is just over 2 mins):
‘White supremacists pose as Antifa online, call for violence’
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/02/tech/antifa-fake-twitter-account/index.html
NB And what possible reason would Antifa – ie anti-racists – have for rioting and looting and violence anyway, and not only giving THEMSELVES a bad name, but also messing it up for BLM. It doesn’t make sense of course. Unless you’re Trump that is, and want to paint the left in a bad light – ie as violent agitators (when it’s more-than-likely white supremicists and agent provocateurs!)
Allan, I didn’t mention Newsnight – it was BBC News last night.
I already conceded that I may have conflated two events. 🙂
Looks like crowd control @ a Football match. A Covid 19 pandemic & young ‘protesters’ think the lock-down & social distancing doesn’t apply to them. The mayor of Bristol claims that ‘protesters’ who marched in Bristol will now self isolate for 2 weeks…..joke! Lock-down is over? 2nd spike on Merseyside, but Covid 19 doesn’t affect young people……..rave on!
Black Lives Matter, especially when supported by MSM, but not if you’re Palestinian; Yemeni or Kashmiri.
I take it THAT was a put-down of BLM, Steve?
So why not include Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Iraq, or the Rohingya, or the millions of young kids that go blind and/or die from Vitimin A Deficiency every year, or the 1.35 million people who are killed globally on the roads, and the several million more who are permanently crippled and/or brain-damaged or maimed…….
Yes Allan, I would include those & more.
I have taken an interest in the American Civil Rights Movement ever since Medgar Evers’ assassination was mentioned by Bob Dylan in a song in 1964, which is more than I can say for any MSM, except, perhaps, the Groniad; that is until recently. The question now is why now? Why has MSM in USA & GB actively promoted/sponsored ‘Bend the knee’ & ‘Black Lives Matter’ to such an extent that it dominates the MSM agenda. Have journalists suddenly acquired a social conscience or does their hatred of Donald Trump ‘colour’ their ‘new found’ ideology of social justice? May I also suggest that Boris is also disliked by ‘Liberal Elites’.
I don’t know what BLM is, but I can guess. My family are of mixed race; we are neither White, nor Black & prefer to follow Bob Marley’s challenge that ‘Everywhere is War……….until the colour of a man’s skin, is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes’, as opposed to David Lammy’s assertion ‘See me, see my colour’.
I realise that MSM refuse to indulge in ‘the class struggle’ & are using quota systems to address racial representation issues; signal their virtue & shine their Liberal Badges., but ‘Black Lives Matter’ not just when & where MSM says it does, there is a massively unreported world of social injustice ignored. There are few, if any, investigative journalists to shine a light. How come suddenly, they all sing from the same hymn sheet?
5000 young people in Hyde Park demonstrates the power of MSM to organise & promote selective protests during a supposed lock-down, as the Police just watched as MSM actively encouraged young people to defy the law.That is a criminal offence.
The Campaign for Nuclear disarmament & Stop the War have never enjoyed such publicity & are rendered virtually invisible, but a Sweet 16 year old Swede gave good copy as young people are now ‘Saving the Planet’ with the help of MSM & Rupert Murdoch. No criticism of ‘Capitalism’ nor ‘Neo-Liberalism’ allowed, but we’re all doing our bit!
The murder of George Floyd is yet another disgraceful example of abuse of civil rights, in the Land of the Free. My criticism is how & why it is manipulated & in whose interests?
Steve Richards, I remember it well. Dylan recorded it in early August 1963 – afaik he first sang it in public at the March on Washington about 3 weeks later but didn’t release it until The Times They are a-Changin’ in 1964.
I remember cos it was around my birthday in 1963 and I had the money for a single and couldn’t find it in the shops anywhere.
“Only a Pawn in Their Game” I mean, obviously.
On “Why now?” I think it’s simply that the establishment is scared – this whole thing is unprecedented and there’s no patriotic bullshit to gee us up and con us into ‘doing our duty’ like there always was in wars.
I think it may even have helped that the imbecile Trunt snarlingly attacked the grieving protesters thinking the US would fall in behind him and not them.
His stance was so vilely racist it widened support for BLM I think.
Just my opinion, but that’s all we’ve got – it’s not something that can be proved.
Only just seen your ‘Reply’ Steve, and it’s a bit late in the day to respond (the vast majority of readers of skwawkbox having read this thread and moved on as such), but just for the record…..
It’s funny (not haha), but I was watching The Listening Post (the Aljazeera program) last night, having recorded it, as I always do, and Richard Gizbert, who presents the program, started by saying: “For months here at the Listening Post we’ve been asking ourselves what news story will it take to knock Covid 19 out of the headlines, to supplant, even momentarily, a global pandemic as the top news story. We now know the answer to that” (as I have myself wondered on occasion).
And I think THAT, as much as anything else, is why the media around the world – and especially in the West – have been giving the killing – the murder of George Floyd – AND the subsequent protests – so much coverage – ie because they – the media outlets – know that many people are bored with all the non-stop wall-to-wall coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic every time they watch, or read, or listen to the news.
Tens of millions of people (in the US and Europe and wherever) have ‘overdosed’ on it all, and the media companies etc knew that to be the case, and although tragic, it was for many people like a return to the real world when George Floyd was murdered and the protests began, after weeks and months of lockdown and non-stop 24/7 Coronavirus. And a much desired distraction from it, as such.
Yes, there are many, many other tragic things happening in the world (although the protests about the murder of George Floyd aren’t soley about him of course, and he is just one of many black people – and others – who have died as a consequence of police brutality in the US, and elsewhere), but THAT is where the focus is now and, if the media were to focus on the Palestinian situation in the same way and to the same extent, for example, then I’m sure we would see a similar ‘reaction’. But generally speaking, they don’t (and we know why of course), and they – the media outlets, and especially the big corporate media outlets and so-called public broadcasters like the BBC – know that ‘Out of sight is out of mind’. But then again, I have little doubt that the millions of people out protesting around the world about the murder of George Floyd AND police brutality, are ALSO the people who are much more likely to be aware of the injustices happening around the world as a consequence of the ‘system’ we live in AND the plundering and poisoning and polluting of the planet etc, than the average person (and that’s not to say that there aren’t millions of other people who AREN’T participating in the protests who share the same ‘outlook’ on the world, on our reality, because there obviously ARE of course). But I’m sure you know what I mean.
Allan, I’d guess you’re right, the broadcast media probably did jump at the chance of something to relieve the wall-to-wall Covid coverage.
The shocking nature of the crime and the existence of the video – and the very photogenic scenes of protest make for what they call “good TV” I expect.
Little to do with sympathy for George Floyd or the oppression of black citizens.
New-found determination by luvvies to use the power of the media to change society for the better?
I don’t think so.
Please pipe down with your privilege, Steve.
And then there was this, as reported by The Intercept:
‘White House Forced to Retract Claim Viral Videos Prove Antifa Is Plotting Violence’
The White House engaged in an extraordinary act of rumor-mongering on Wednesday, releasing a compilation of viral video clips posted on social media recently by people who believed, wrongly, that the piles of bricks they came across had been planted there by anti-fascist activists, known as antifa, to inspire violence at protests.
“Antifa and professional anarchists are invading our communities, staging bricks and weapons to instigate violence,” a caption for the video posted on the official White House Twitter feed claimed. “These are acts of domestic terror.”
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/04/white-house-forced-retract-claim-viral-videos-prove-antifa-plotting-violence/?comments=1#comments
Trumps Dirty Tricks Department HAS been busy (and I have little doubt that it was agent provocateurs that started the fire in the basement of St John’s Church, across from the White House, where trump did his photo op on Monday……. But more about THAT another time!
PS And my apologies for so many posts.
…… started the fire in the basement of St John’s Church….. on the Sunday night, that is (THAT’s the reason Trump and his entourage ambulated over there the following evening after he did his stint in the Rose Garden).
Of course, we’ll soon be seeing the usual ‘Death penalty calls for cop killers’ again.
Nothing about coppers what kill civilians, though. No death penalty for them. Oh, no. Not even a prison sentence because they’re NEVER convicted.
And by ‘never’ I mean NEVER. And that’s in the instances that actually make it to court.
And why is it that in the rare event a copper’s up for someone’s death it’s always manslaughter or a lesser charge; yet when a civvy’s up for a copper’s death it’s ALWAYS murder and nothing less – There’s never any mitigation going the other way?
Further evidence of plod fuckwittery and petty vindictiveness.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/woman-stopped-police-officer-wearing-22145575
Pricks think they can make laws up on the spot. Well they can’t. And they can’t tell you what’s offensive and what’s not, nor can they stifle freedom of expression.
It’s exactly that sort of behaviour that makes people dislike and distrust them. And that was – by plod standards – a misdemeanour.
Had there been no camera on that gobshite he’d have no doubt made up a tale to the magistrate (She’d have been nicked on a section 4 or 5 held overnight [depending on which section nicked under] and up before the beak next morning) of how he was ‘threatened and caused to be alarmed by the ‘offensive’ word on the t-shirt and how he was ‘intimidated by the confrontational’ attitude of the woman in it.’
It’s not just about deaths at their hands – it’s about their perpetual lies and abuse of power.
And saying: ‘but it’s just a few bad apples’ is total bollocks. They’ll nick anyone for anything; and when their mates stay schtum when knowing someone’s been unlawfully and unfairly nicked then they’re complicit, too.
Yeah, the “Blue wall” protecting its own, right or wrong, is the opposite of what we should expect from law enforcement. Setting them targets corrupts them.
Some entrants sadly join to gain an authority their lack of intellect would normally deprive them of – but authority demands a full awareness of its limits and of the holder’s duty of restraint.
Anybody throwing items is an absolute scumbag.
Dear Skwawkbox ,
I think it’s an open and shut case that the horse was NOT observing ‘social distancing’ , still it’s encouraging that at least the police have appropriate PPE
Derek
Tolerant & Liberal? ………..but if anyone dares voice an opinion that the bourgeois Guardian readers dislike…….name calling. So much for Diversity of Opinion & Freedom of Expression..Preaching to the converted is boring & no fun….like listening to Radio 4.
There’s so much shit going on in the world. Sure, focusing so heavily on the BLM protests have allowed the public to fall back into some sense of normality ( I hate this phrasing but it is unfortunately true ) that the pandemic has pushed back for months now.
But in another way, these global protests have allowed bias media outlets the chance to once again manipulate the story. 90% of the reports on the matter have somehow been twisted by central and right wing corporations. In this way, I think that it is easier to manipulate these stories compared to the terrible things outside of the western hemisphere. Western news has a notoriety for completely ignoring anything that occurs outside of the lives that their usual viewers experience. There has been a limited amount of stories on the crisis in Yemen, or the containment camps for minorities in China, and that’s because those reports are simply reports. There is no hidden messages that the news outlets can imbed.