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polly7

(20,582 posts)
Fri May 22, 2015, 01:52 PM May 2015

From Belfast to Baltimore Bad Police Tactics Spread. So can Justice.

By Laura Flanders
Source: GRITtv
May 22, 2015

It’s an old adage but it’s true, especially when it comes to policing: an injury to one really is an injury to all. That’s because like a bad movie, bad police tactics spread the globe. Accountability can go global too, but as in a recent case out of Ireland, justice moves more slowly.

Shortly after the death of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, a leaked police document claimed that a prisoner transported with Gray heard him “banging against the walls” of the vehicle as if he “was intentionally trying to injure himself.”

That prisoner quickly refuted the story, but not before it brought to my mind very similar claims from police in Northern Ireland.

“Throwing oneself down stairs…punching own face and poking own eyes…injury to the neck by attempted self-strangulation.”

That’s how investigators explained injuries sustained in police custody in Ireland according to documents recently dug up by human rights investigators. They’ve spent years getting beneath the spin, and now we know that while they fed the public guff about “self inflicted” harm, internally British ministers sanctioned torture .


Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/from-belfast-to-baltimore-bad-police-tactics-spread-so-can-justice/
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