FREED: ‘THUG IN POLICE UNIFORM’
What jury weren’t told about the PC they cleared of G20 killing
A riot squad officer was denounced as a ‘ thug in uniform’ yesterday as he was cleared of killing an innocent bystander.
Ian Tomlinson died after PC Simon Harwood lashed him with a baton and shoved him to the ground.
The 45-year-old officer had an appalling record of complaints against him for violence in the years before the incident.
Yet such ‘prejudicial’ details were kept from the jury, who cleared him of manslaughter in a verdict described as a ‘joke’.
Last night the dead man’s family vowed to sue as it was revealed that staggering vetting lapses allowed the PC to be on the front line at the G20 protest in April 2009.
Mr Tomlinson, 47, a father of nine and an alcoholic, was accidentally caught up in the protest as he walked home drunk from work as a newspaper seller in the City of London. After the incident with PC Harwood, caught on film, he staggered away from police lines before collapsing and dying of massive internal bleeding.
The officer was cleared by a majority verdict at Southwark Crown Court, just 14 months after an inquest jury said Mr Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed. Neither of those juries were told about the shameful career of the PC who managed to avoid no fewer than ten complaints by simply moving between two forces.
The allegations include a road- rage attack; racially abusing and punching a 14year-old girl repeatedly in the back of the neck and threatening to burn down her father’s home; punching, throttling, kneeing or threatening suspects in heavyhanded arrests; and unlawfully accessing the police national computer database. Yet PC Harwood, who admitted he was
liable to go into ‘red mist mode’, kept his job after retiring from the Met on medical grounds on the eve of a disciplinary hearing. He rejoined the same force on its civilian staff three days later and subsequently moved on to Surrey Police, before returning to serve with the Met in 200 .
The revelations raise serious questions about the practice of officers going off sick and changing forces to sidestep disciplinary proceedings.
Yesterday the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it was simply ‘staggering’ that he had been able to remain a police officer and called for an overhaul of Scotland Yard’s vetting procedures.
Mr Tomlinson’s widow Julia and nine children sobbed as the jury delivered their verdict after almost 19 hours of deliberation.
His stepson Paul King said: ‘It’s a joke. In April 2009, along with everyone else, we saw the shocking video of Ian being violently assaulted by PC Harwood, just minutes before he died.
‘After the unlawful killing verdict at the inquest last year we expected to hear a guilty verdict. This really hurts. But it’s not the end. We are not giving up on justice for Ian.
‘There has to be one more formal and final answer to the question of who
killed Ian Tomlinson and that we will now pursue in the civil courts.’
The family have launched a civil suit in the High Court, although their solicitor indicated that all they wanted was an apology from the Met for allowing PC Harwood to remain in uniform and an admission that he killed Mr Tomlinson.
Yesterday London Assembly member Jenny Jones said: ‘The family have got to feel that they have been cheated by this verdict.
‘It’s hard to see how it is fair. Quite honestly, looking at his record, he comes across as a thug in uniform.
‘It’s time that the Commissioner looked at procedures for re-entry and took more care in examining potential officer’s records.’
PC Harwood will now face a disciplinary hearing in public, set to last four weeks, after which he is expected to be sacked.
Deborah Glass, deputy chairman of the IPCC, said: ‘PC Harwood was able to retire from the Metropolitan Police while facing disciplinary proceedings for previous alleged misconduct towards a member of the public. That he was then reemployed by the force is simply staggering and raises considerable concerns about vetting procedures.’
The case began when previously unseen footage of Mr Tomlinson being shoved to the ground was released to a newspaper.
In May last year an inquest concluded that he was unlawfully killed after jurors decided he died of abdominal haemorrhage due to blunt force trauma to the abdomen, in association with alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.
The ruling paved the way for a criminal trial in which prosecutor Mark Dennis QC said of PC Harwood: ‘It was a rush of blood to the head. It was unnecessary aggression more akin to thuggish behaviour than proper reasonable policing.
‘The display of force has all the hallmarks of a gratuitous act of aggression by a lone officer whose blood was up having lost the self-control to be expected of a police officer in such circumstances and who was going to stand no truck from anyone who appeared to him to be a protester and to be getting in his way.’
But the officer, part of the Met’s elite public order unit, the Territorial Support Group, said he believed Mr Tomlinson, who was drunk, was being obstructive and that his use of force was reasonable.
Earlier that day, PC Harwood had abandoned his post as a riot squad van driver to tackle a yob scrawling ‘All cops are bastards’ on a police van. After the graffiti artist managed to get away, in the space of 20 minutes PC Harwood pulled a cameraman to the floor, pushed a demonstrator and attacked Mr Tomlinson.
He told the jury he was ‘absolutely terrified’ and trying to protect himself and other officers.
Yesterday the father of two wept silently in the dock as he was cleared. His wife Helen, a GP surgery manager, burst into tears and threw her arms around him as they left court together without comment.
Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Maxine de Brunner admitted that the force had got it wrong when it re-employed him and said it was reviewing vetting procedures.