Transport police pepper spray maskless man

[ShootsFruitsAndLeaves]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8697125/Shocking-moment-bully-police-officer-PEPPER-SPRAYS-rail-passenger-resisting-arrest.html

We had the police enjoying being fascists with the whole 'going out of your house' thing.

Now it's happening with the pepper spray.

Police need to understand that all of these rules have big holes & exemptions in them. Not really possible for cops to be heavy-handed.

[quote HeIenaDove]link to full video

twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1301844613565743106?s=20[/quote]
It's clearly not the full video though as it starts with the guy saying "you did not have to speak to me like that" and them him and the other guy (his mate?) saying "it's all on camera".

Not justifying the behaviour of the BRP officer at all as it does seem OTT, but we are missing the context of what happened before what we see in that clip...

The merseyrail one was disgusting. The policeman never gave his name either to a member of the public and they are legally required to give name and rank if asked. So the police committed more offences than the passenger did.

I've watched some of the video footage and thought that the man's manner seemed belligerent and confrontational right from the start

I don't disagree but since when is manner an arrestable offence?

come on, a normal person would just have said sorry can’t wear a mask because xyz. His attitude escalated the situation from the start.
According to some reports I’ve seen this afternoon he is not exempt - which is why he couldn’t just have a reasonable conversation about it.

come on, a normal person would just have said sorry can’t wear a mask because xyz. His attitude escalated the situation from the start.

the man seems like a prick, but the police are supposed to be trained in dealing with such creatures, no?

Neither the police officer nor the passenger covered themselves with glory here, both behaved inappropriately really.

It's an inevitable consequence of introducing a 'system' whereby masks are supposedly mandatory but there is no objective way of proving the medical justification for an exemption. A competent government would have introduced certificates issued by doctors (and provided extra payment and resources for doing this). If you can't produce a certificate then you're not exempt. It works pretty well here in Germany.

come on, a normal person would just have said sorry can’t wear a mask because xyz. His attitude escalated the situation from the start.
This, exactly.
And the bugger wasn't actually exempt at all?! So much for all the "how dare they treat this fine upstanding gentleman so roughly" shite 🙄

@nancy75

come on, a normal person would just have said sorry can’t wear a mask because xyz. His attitude escalated the situation from the start. According to some reports I’ve seen this afternoon he is not exempt - which is why he couldn’t just have a reasonable conversation about it.

So he possibly isn't exempt. Maybe it isn't even his first offence, which could explain his defensive and belligerent behaviour.

Potentially the police could handled it differently, but I highly doubt we have the full context so nobody emerges smelling of roses.

Could have handled it differently.

the man seems like a prick, but the police are supposed to be trained in dealing with such creatures, no?
we haven’t seen the full event, we don’t know how long this conversation has been going in for, even police will get fed up dealing with ignorant pricks given enough time.

It’s on Twitter under Mersey transport police

They confirmed he did not spit

They said he coughed twice

How we video shows police only talking about mask

The whole time there’s no mention in video of him coughing it’s all about the fact he didn’t wear mask

Surprised generally they bothered as I got liverpool train yesterday and I was only one wearing one

Guess without being there it's hard to say if he was being an arse and coughing at people on purpose or he has a cough/asthma along with a medical reason for exemption.

@nancy75

the man seems like a prick, but the police are supposed to be trained in dealing with such creatures, no? we haven’t seen the full event, we don’t know how long this conversation has been going in for, even police will get fed up dealing with ignorant pricks given enough time.

This.

I'm reserving judgment until I hear the full story

To me it looks as if the man was defending his personal space rather than resisting arrest. The article says he is due in court, from what can be seen in the video I think that it needs to be the officer that is suspended from duty and investigated.

Police were called in the first place because an unmasked person was coughing at other passengers

metro.co.uk/2020/09/04/police-officer-pepper-sprays-man-refusing-to-wear-mask-on-train-after-coughing-at-passengers-13223133/

It really does sound as if he was being a public nuisance - police simply aren't called just because someone isn't wearing a mask

This sounds bonkers to me.

I've been trying to get my shop Covid-ready to re-open, and while sorting stuff out we could hear alot of kerfuffle and shouting going on next door where there is a shop that is a kind of general store / off-licence that specialises in a variety of exotic foodstuffs too. It is run and staffed by our friends who are of various ethnicities. Lovely people, worked next door to them for four years and they are utterly solid, law-abiding and peaceful people.

A drunk older man was threatening to put in their windows while swinging the carrier bag of bottles in his hand around towards their windows, and in proximity to ours. We intervened when he threatened loudly the female staff member who was trying to move him on. My friend called the police and I lured the guy away from the shop fronts - his big issue was that the card machine had swallowed his card, and he was blaming the shop staff. He was directing racial hatred at staff in the shop and customers trying to go in and out. he called me a c**t and threatened to attack me with a sword. I remained calm and polite as I could, hoping to de-escalate and only when he was particularly vile about my friends next door did I mildly tell him to watch what he was saying because these people are my friends.

When the police arrived, they greeted him by name, made reference to the fact that he had been in their custody twelve hours ago and asked how he was doing. One officer was annoyed with us because they came out to a supposed "attack" but he hadn't really done anything. I explained we were concerned about the level of aggression and the physical and verbal aggression he was displaying. I told them the things he had said, but was kind of dismissed. They told him to go home and went off without any further interaction with us.

I'm only relating this because he was guilty of racial abuse and hate speech, threatening behaviour and IMHO breach of the peace at least. Apparently it's too much bureaucracy to deal with this kind of behaviour, which is sadly becoming uncommon in this part of town.

there seems to be a bizarre lack of consistency in what constitutes criminal or anti-social behaviour these days, and much as I sympathise with the force being over-stretched and underfunded, it does leave one feeling very confused about proportionality when you see a story like this.

Just my anecdote for the day. Ah well, we do live in strange and interesting times after all......

*becoming common

OldQueen1969 I think the policeman here is transport police, he was probably close by when a report came in & would have a lighter work load than other police (Id imagine)

It does sound like the coughing is an ‘add on’ in their defence

They went from assault to spitting then coughing

On camera you can hear others in background saying he did nothing wrong

It was transport police who approached him on train not the regular police - they came later

Transport police are there all time on Liverpool trains so they may not have been called at all

Indeed many on train commented on Twitter that he’d done nothing and that the first officer only went on about him ‘not wearing a mask’, in entire confrontation the officer never mentioned coughing at all which is strange if it was true

At end of day even if he coughed - which seems unlikely by witnesses, the officer cannot use pepper spray for someone just sat there! If that doesn’t worry people about boundary then there’s something amiss

Imagine he had a posh accent or he was black and people wouldn’t be so quick to ‘withhold opinion’

I would taser him if he had a copy of the Daily Mail. Probably just as well I am not in the police, really.

We'll have to hold the incident in our minds until 21 January when we can find out what the magistrates have to say after hearing the evidence.

apparently there were loads not wearing masks on the train why did they target him?

I honestly got train yesterday in Liverpool and in my carriage alone I was only one out of 15 in mask

Of those in other carriages who had one they didn’t have it on their face

Given cases doing ok I’d say anecdotally that masks ain’t worth crap!

Ok in my area I mean