Policeman kicks 15 year old girl in the stomach

[GreekTragedy]

I couldn't see a thread about this so thought I'd start one.

I am completely shocked at this video.

This "officer" came out of nowhere and did a flying kick to a young girl!!

Now I can understand police getting a it violent in the heat of the moment but this? This is outright disgusting.

That officer should be charged.

What the fuck has happened to our police force??

www.aol.co.uk/news/cop-fly-kicks-15-old-123400054.html

Sometime learning consequences can be the best thing that happens to get them back on a good path.

So erm, every child needs to learn that they’ll get a kicking as a consequence of their behaviour and it’s okay because it’s for their own benefit? By that token, what consequence do you think the police officer should face for you know, assaulting a child?What should be a consequence for children at school? Would you agree if a teacher did this? What about parents? Obviously it’s to ‘get them on a good path’. Can you not see where this is leading to? Where does it end? Violence can never, NEVER EVER be the answer.

During the time when there was only one policeman he was struggling to restrain because he's have one restrained and the other would be physically attacking him and dragging him, trying to take things from his belt, and one one point one of the girls ran off but then came back to start on him again.

I think some people who've seen all four clips are saying the force was justified because of their behaviour when it was just one police man but at the point that kick to the hip happened there was three policeman and it just wasn't needed.

Thank fuck they weren't armed police because when she was trying to take things from his belt she could have been shot.

That man recording and egging them on gave me creepy vibes too.

It doesn't matter what went on in the other videos. That 3rd policeman was fresh on the scene and saw a snapshot and decided to take that action

I could go either way on this, based on what we can see on a slow playback.

Policeman 1 seems to be restraining first girl carefully in difficult circs.

Policewoman 2 goes straight to help him because the second girl is standing back at that stage. They know there's been resistance - that's why they arrive with sirens.

Policeman 2 runs in when the second girl has her back to camera and us. We can't quite see what's going on but her arms are at the level of Policewoman's head. Is she holding anything / can Policeman 2 be sure she isn't?

Policeman 2 runs in, but it's not a running / flying kick. He pivots, and kicks / pushes, hard. It's not in the stomach - it's back of pelvis. She's falls away from the rest of the group. She doesn't fall anything like as hard as she would with full force applied. Pulling her back would be slower and give more time to grab hair / pull at and endanger handcuffed friend.

I don't think she had it coming. Hope she's okay and this was the low point in her teenage years. I do think the police can use proportionate force to prevent attacks. This doesn't look wildly disproportionate to me. Another camera angle could persuade me further either way. It's not a great starting point for any argument about police brutality - we can't see enough.

@fandango

You have decided that however that doesn’t make it fact. An urgent investigation is needed.

[quote Leibham]**@chaosrabbitland* @Iheartbaby* pray you never have children, ignorant ignorant people.[/quote]
your praying is in vain in my case im afraid lol,
im afraid its you who are ignorant , he used resonable force to get her away from the other police officer , in many other countries she would have stood a good chance of being shot as the officer might likely have assumed she had a knife concealed . but hey its only here in the uk that we expect our police officer to be complete pussies . the minute they use any kind of force on violent aggressive criminals regardless of their age the whinging starts about brutality
and yet the general theme of a couple of theads on mumsnet today are how unsafe a lot of women feel in the uk , walking alone , failures of the police , go to singapore and its got next to zero crime , you can walk as a woman alone at night and with no fear , its one of the if not the most safest places in the world and this is because they have zero tolerance to crime . those 2 girls would have stood a good chance of a flogging most likely for their actions , but no here its all soft as butter all the way , and yet we want a nice crime and fear free society , wont be having that with your attitude though will we ?

[quote Leibham]@fandango

You have decided that however that doesn’t make it fact. An urgent investigation is needed.[/quote]
No, I haven't decided anything.

I'm saying that based on a really careful viewing of the evidence we are given, I'm not sure the policeman's actions are unreasonable. I'm not sure they aren't, either. It's not open and shut. Yes, agree with you re investigation. I understand that's happening.

yet the general theme of a couple of theads on mumsnet today are how unsafe a lot of women feel in the uk

Hmm. I think that may have something to do with the violent actions of a certain police officer.

I'm fairly sure the UK can aspire to having a safe and secure society without resorting to reckless shooting is potential suspects and officially sanctioned flogging.

I do think that a better funded police force would be part of the solution.

Would say too - policeman 2 has the unstable sounding camera man close behind him. Girl still standing looks as likely to kick her friend in the head as anything at this point. I'd prioritise getting her away from both and from colleagues in his position.

It's definitely not a kick to the stomach, and she falls into a sitting position, away from the direction of the kick. She's not smashed to the ground - she's toppled. Could well have been safer than chasing or wrestling with her around broken glass with her shoes falling off all the time. Can't assume he knows she's unarmed, or even that she was unarmed.

Don't know why anyone is relying on the eejit behind the camera for facts about the story either - not fellow posters but in media. Cruel of him to wind the two girls up like that.

Covid: Children's mental health has not improved since lockdown - survey www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58741536

My nearly 14 year old ds has Sen and anxiety disorders .
As a result , despite the often well intentioned but equally often jaded, box ticking utterly inadequate involvement of cahms and social services , the police have been involved on more than one occasion .

Most recently he was arrested as he ran away from his “specialist” school after an altercation with a teacher . I was in touch by phone with the police, explained his condition to them and was out looking for him . He hadn’t taken his medication.
Upshot was 2 police officers picked him up in response, he lashed out at the officers as a result of his anxiety .
Ds was handcuffed , spit hooded ( covid ) and put in an “incident room “ alone ( covid ) . When interviewed he was chastised by the duty solicitor and the police for “ not looking them in the eye “
Am autistic person under such pressure is highly unlikely to look anybody in the eye .

In my view as his parent watching this video I would say based on my own experience there was a clear failure to defuse the situation on the part of the police in this video . This young woman is clearly under the influence of alcohol , would it not have made more sense for this officer to have followed the old as the hills ideas of

1. Humour a drunk
2. Employ physcology rather than physical force in the first instance .

No it is not ok for a male officer to kick a teenage girl half his size in the stomach. As a single mother to a teen with special needs I have encountered horrible mysogyny , racism and a prolific level of ignorance about mental health challenges amongst the state education system, police and social services .

Oh and agree with others the “ narrator “ really not helping and yes goading

@Blubellsarehere

Covid: Children's mental health has not improved since lockdown - survey www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58741536

My nearly 14 year old ds has Sen and anxiety disorders .
As a result , despite the often well intentioned but equally often jaded, box ticking utterly inadequate involvement of cahms and social services , the police have been involved on more than one occasion .

Most recently he was arrested as he ran away from his “specialist” school after an altercation with a teacher . I was in touch by phone with the police, explained his condition to them and was out looking for him . He hadn’t taken his medication.
Upshot was 2 police officers picked him up in response, he lashed out at the officers as a result of his anxiety .
Ds was handcuffed , spit hooded ( covid ) and put in an “incident room “ alone ( covid ) . When interviewed he was chastised by the duty solicitor and the police for “ not looking them in the eye “
Am autistic person under such pressure is highly unlikely to look anybody in the eye .

In my view as his parent watching this video I would say based on my own experience there was a clear failure to defuse the situation on the part of the police in this video . This young woman is clearly under the influence of alcohol , would it not have made more sense for this officer to have followed the old as the hills ideas of

1. Humour a drunk
2. Employ physcology rather than physical force in the first instance .

No it is not ok for a male officer to kick a teenage girl half his size in the stomach. As a single mother to a teen with special needs I have encountered horrible mysogyny , racism and a prolific level of ignorance about mental health challenges amongst the state education system, police and social services .

Your son was treated really badly - I'm sorry to hear that.

To me, there has to be room for proportionate force in a situation where there's an immediate threat. That girl was a threat to his colleagues' - and it could easily seem, her friend's - safety. Pushing her away from that group with a forceful kick - and it's really not to the stomach - made the whole group safer.

Mistreating your son once he was no threat to anyone was dreadful behaviour. I've no doubt there's lots of bad behaviour amongst police. I just don't think this video is a clear cut example.

@fandango

Here you go again excusing the kick.

I found it interesting you said before he toppled her so that if her shoes fell off she wouldn’t cut her feet on the glass. So her body falling to the ground was better on the glass yes?

Why are you so intent on proving she wasn’t kicked in the abdomen and that the kick was appropriate. You’re convincing no one.

@chaosrabbitland the crime rate in Singapore is much the same as the U.K. They tank 74 and 75 in international charts.

[quote Leibham]@fandango

Here you go again excusing the kick.

I found it interesting you said before he toppled her so that if her shoes fell off she wouldn’t cut her feet on the glass. So her body falling to the ground was better on the glass yes?

Why are you so intent on proving she wasn’t kicked in the abdomen and that the kick was appropriate. You’re convincing no one.[/quote]
I'm interested in the fact that she wasn't kicked in the abdomen because the title of the thread, and many posts in it, refer to her being kicked in the stomach.

It's not clear on full speed, but on slow play it seems beyond doubt to me that she's kicked from behind, left side, around the pelvis.

That interests me for two reasons:

People seem to seeing what they expect to see in that video. They're told it's a brutal assault on a teenage girl, kicking her in the stomach, and that's what they see. I've no personal investment in this - if there's a screenshot proving me wrong, I'd like to know. But it suggests to me there's some observer bias in the way we see this video.

My gut feeling is that a kick to that area would be less risky than to the groin / stomach. Does that move the policeman's actions to the "perfectly reasonable" end of the scale? I haven't claimed so. But if we are discussing what's a reasonable use of force, we need to start from what actually happened.

Re the glass. Can't see it clearly. Looks like it's further back. It's adding risk to a situation where two colleagues and girl on ground are in some danger, and second girl and man in background are volatile or at best unknown quantities. That girl, on her feet interceding, is making the situation more dangerous. I don't have a clear enough view to make a five second assessment of the safest way to get her away from them fast, avoiding a struggle where she gets hurt by glass or anything else.

What I'm suggesting is that we have limited evidence, and that the video is not being described accurately in this thread. I wouldn't be astounded if the policeman was found to have over reacted but I can also see that this could have been one of his least worst options, weighing up everyone's safety.

@MrsRobbieHart

The bottom line is that police officer absolutely will have received training in how to remove that girl from his colleagues with several methods that are designed to reduce risk of injury to both the girl and himself. He will have practised these methods repeatedly with his colleagues. He will have been assessed on his competence at carrying out these methods. He will also have been assessed on his ability to correctly assess a situation and on his IQ to ensure he has the mental competence to put all his training into place at the appropriate times. Those methods absolutely will not have involved fly kicking.

Quite.

I've only had a small amount of boxing training, and a kick to the stomach absolutely wouldn't be an instinctive move. It's a deliberately violent one - and dangerous to execute because it throws one off natural balance.

In fact, we used to play mob football contests at school, which is pretty much a free for all, and you're allowed to exert force, but not be violent. None of us as teens without any training would have been daft enough to try a move like that. We grabbed, pushed and restrained each other without being deliberately violent.

There's a huge difference in mindset, and if a bunch of teens can manage it, a trained officer can too.

The kick was not appropriate

People can blether on about the video as much as they want

Our police are highly trained to defuse situations and to restrain if necessary….kicking is not part of the training

Think that’s exactly the point @RufustheBadgeringReindeer - our police are extremely well trained. Which is why it’s astonishing that this copper resorted to kicking. There just wasn’t any need

@RIPIgglePiggle thank you so much for responding, I know this can’t have been an easy thing to do

[quote ILoveJamaica]**@chaosrabbitland he could have de-escalated it?

This will have been tried, believe you me. Those girls will have been asked repeatedly to go home, before things escalated. You don't see any of that, because it's not shown in the film.[/quote]
Bullshit. We saw him get out of the van, and run, and fly kick her stomach.

There's no fly kick, she's not kicked in the stomach, he doesn't run up to her and kick her with force from the run. He comes tearing up and stretches his leg to kick her away from his colleagues.

Why?

She ran back onto the scene about ten seconds before he kicked her. He's just arrived and is still off camera.

Ten seconds before he kicked her

Eight seconds before he kicked her

@Fangdango

There's no fly kick, she's not kicked in the stomach, he doesn't run up to her and kick her with force from the run. He comes tearing up and stretches his leg to kick her away from his colleagues.

Why?

She ran back onto the scene about ten seconds before he kicked her. He's just arrived and is still off camera.

Stretching his leg... Going for a nice walk..

Stretching to get to her fast I think

Eight seconds before he kicks her