A policeman lashes out. An innocent man dies. So why does no one seem to care?

A newspaper vendor inadvertently gets caught up in a demonstration. A policeman in riot gear hits him from behind with a baton and then pushes him to the ground. The incident is caught on video. within minutes, the newspaper vendor is dead. The policeman in question has never been charged, not even for common assault. There has never been a proper inquiry.

The official line is that the 47-year-old vendor died of a heart attack brought on by coronary artery disease.

A miscarriage of justice in some dodgy foreign country? The sort of thing that goes on in Russia, China or an African hellhole where the rule of law does not apply? No, this happened in Britain.

Ian Tomlinson collapsed and died after he had been hit and pushed by a British policeman.

It is our own legal system that has denied him justice. Perhaps you will think that he was a rioter surreptitiously attacking the police. He wasn't. No one suggests he was.

Mr Tomlinson was wandering home from work on April 1, 2009, when he encountered riot police who were dealing with protesters during the socalled G20 riots in the City of London. He might have had a drink or two, though it would hardly be a crime if he had.

How can it be that no legal action has been taken against the policeman - PC Simon Harwood of Scotland Yard's Territorial support Group - who struck Mr Tomlinson?

The reason has a great deal to do with Dr Freddy Patel, who carried out an initial post mortem on Mr Tomlinson and declared that he had died of a heart attack. This is the same Dr Freddy Patel who was found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council on Tuesday.

The GMC panel found that in three postmortem examinations between 2002 and 2005, Dr Patel had made serious mistakes, and that his fitness to practise was impaired.

In one case, involving a woman in 2005, he decided that she had died from a blood clot in the coronary arteries. A month later, he changed his opinion to a brain haemorrhage after a second postmortem by another pathologist.

He told an inquest that he had made the change 'to satisfy the family'. Anyone can make a mistake, perhaps, but three? I am afraid it gets worse. There is reason to believe that Dr Patel may not have followed proper procedures during his postmortem on Mr Tomlinson. In his first assessment, he said that he had found three litres of 'fluid blood' in Mr Tomlinson's stomach.

Twelve months later, however, he wrote another report in which he said that there had been 'fluid with blood'. Following this change of wording, the Crown Prosecution-Service (CPS) decided that it could no longer prove that Mr Tomlinson had died from internal bleeding.

Two other pathologists had judged that the newspaper vendor died as the result of internal bleeding after 'blunt force' had been applied to his abdomen. They based their findings partly on Dr Patel's description of the fluid. However, when he changed his mind, they were unable to stand by their earlier judgments. Dr Patel had not kept the fluid.

No case has been brought against PC Simon Harwood who, by the way, has been previously investigated on two occasions for allegedly aggressive behaviour. He faces internal disciplinary procedures for gross misconduct, but that is not at all the same thing as having to answer to a court of law.

The CPS has recently announced he will not even be prosecuted for common assault - a crime of which the video evidence alone would appear to convict him - because too much time has elapsed and such a charge must be brought within six months. So that's that, then.

We like to pride ourselves on the workings of British justice but, my goodness, how easily those workings can get furred up. All it takes is one incompetent pathologist - and the three cases just considered by the GMC do testify to exceptional incompetence - and an innocent man can be assaulted, and the act caught on video, without his assailant being prosecuted.

Does no one care? Does Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, toss and turn at night as he considers the CPS's failure to bring a case? I doubt it. Does Sir Paul Stephenson, the seemingly decent and honourable Metropolitan police Commissioner, who declared himself 'concerned' by the video, want to put PC Harwood in the dock? I'm afraid not.

He says that it is entirely a matter for the Independent police Complaints Commission. But, as so often in the past, the IPCC does not seem noticeably robust. In a recent statement, its Deputy Chair, Deborah Glass, said that she understood that 'it is a very difficult time for Mr Tomlinson's family'. You bet it is.

But if you are hoping for a statement from the IPCC denouncing police behaviour, or bemoaning the failure to bring any kind of prosecution, forget it. That is not the way it does business.

Can no one help? Does no one care? Let me suggest one obvious line of inquiry. Did the City of London police, knowing about Dr Patel's weaknesses, approve his selection to carry out the first postmortem on Mr Tomlinson?

Incidentally, we would have never learnt about the assault on him had an American investment fund manager not been present with a camera.

The case bears some resemblance to that of Jean Charles De Menezes, the Brazilian who was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell Underground station in July 2005 by police who mistook him for a terrorist. no one ever had to answer in a court of law for that either.

Horrific though it was, the killing of Mr De Menezes could at least be partly understood as a terrible error by hyped up police officers only two weeks after 56 people had died in terrorist attacks in London.

The death of Mr Tomlinson is open to no such interpretation. He was assaulted for no defensible or, indeed, understandable reason by a police officer who at that moment was not under attack from anyone.

Mr Tomlinson's family have every right to complain about a miscarriage of justice. They have been badly let down by Dr Freddy Patel, the Crown prosecution service, the Independent police Complaints Commission, the City of London police and the whole shooting match. Is there no one with a burning belief in justice who will come to their rescue?

But this is not just a matter for the Tomlinson family, grievously treated though they have been. It has to do with relations between the police and the public. There was a time, I admit, when I believed that a British police officer could not be seen to hit an innocent man in cold blood and be allowed to get away with it. I imagine many took a similar view.

The police, alas, have grown further away from the law abiding people whom they are supposed to protect. Of course, in my heart I still believe they are on our side. But I do not trust them as I once did, and when I see an attack on a blameless newspaper vendor go unpunished, I begin to wonder whether I should trust them at all.

Original report here




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