G20 Case Study

1565 Words4 Pages

This essay will critically evaluate how the death of Ian Tomlinson in 2009 has impacted upon British policing. This essay will first start off with a brief summary of the G20 Demonstration and the death of Ian Tomlinson, followed by the Human Rights Act and how this has linked to the death of Tomlinson. This essay will also explain the outcome of the investigation made by the IPCC and explain the issues which aroose.
On 23rd March 2009, the days leading up to the G20 demonstration The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights published their report on Human Rights and their approach to policing protests. The report recommended that police should focus on improving dialogue with protesters and regular and relevant human rights training …show more content…

At one point he had been admitted into “red mist mode” for being caught red handed trying to access the Police National Computer because his wife was involved in a road traffic accident. (Ward, 2012). Due to PC Harwood having a previous background of allegations made against him and how he was able to leave a previous force and join the Metropolitan Police it affects British Policing. The reason for this is because when applying for a role as a Police Officer, every person has their vetting done. The metropolitan Police should have looked into his previous jobs and checked if PC Harwood had any previous allegations as he worked in a different force. This has caused a huge impact on British Policing and has caused trust issues with the public. The reason for this is because, the Metropolitan Police had no investigated his previous pasted before and the vetting procedure is meant to check a persons previous past. This not only impact British Policing but also raises concern on how the Metropolitan Police consider people through the vetting procedures. PC Harwood had a previous background history of being a “dirty” officer and a previous past. On Thursday 19th July 2009, Constable Simon Harwood was cleared of manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson which occurred on the 1st April 2009. The verdict came to a conclusion after a four week …show more content…

This has cost Metropolitan Police hundred and thousands of pounds to investigate what actually happened to Ian Tomlinson. Due to the amount of money which was spent dealing with this case. On the 9th April 2009, the Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Nick Hardwick wanted to have a national debate over how police deal with public order. He demanded that police officers were trained up to date when dealing with protests.(Syal, 2009) On 19th April 2009 in the Independent Newspaper, Shami Chakrabarti said a review of policing was required. The reason for this was because of the way police dealt with the G20 protest and overall protests which occurred. (Ipcc.gov.uk, 2009). This shows that police which are not up to date with public order training causes an impact on policing. (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010) Another reason why this has impacted British Policing is because the Independent Police Complaints Commission wanted to have a debate about the way the police should deal with public order. This shows that the IPCC are aware and officers must make sure their training is up to date. This means that linking back to the death of Ian Tomlinson, if officers had been properly trained for public order, the likelihood for his death could have been

Open Document