Yet another example of these constant propaganda and media manipulations. Here’s a clip supposedly showing the incompetence of the British police, being completely incapable of handling a knifeman. Comments revolve around immigration, muslims and broken society with coward and weak UK police, and suggesting arming the cops so they can shoot his head off.
What isn’t said is that the short 15 second video was clipped a second before the man is in fact tasered and apprehended without any injuries to anyone. It also doesn’t mention that the man was pepper sprayed before being tasered… And the 15s are shown twice, to make it less apparent that just a tiny bit of the incident is shown. As a result, many perceive it as longer than it really is.
This clip has currently had 1.1 million views on Facebook and has been shared 12,464 times. The same soundless clip is here on YouTube with “funny” music added to it.
The number of police has been criticized, but it seems like this happened fast and was over in minutes, and happened quite central, close to the police station less than 1.8km away, so a lot of cops went out to make sure he couldn’t escape and hurt civilians. Initially we see 10 cops at the scene of an attempted break in that probably has lasted for a bunch of minutes. The police had chased the perpetrator from a nearby garden to this location.
And a bit later, even more cops, unclear when they arrived, join in. At least one car appears to arrive during the incident. This represents about a 25th of the total number of police officers in the Hackney borough, a borough with a population of 269,000 and near 600 officers.
The policemen knew this guy well, knew of his history of mental illness and tried their best in avoiding injuring him, while also keeping the public safe. The perpetrator never really actually attacks anyone and doesn’t even properly stab in the air. He is basically just running towards the policemen several times, while holding the knife back. For a brief moment he looks like he intends to stab towards the police, but changes his mind and turns to another.
Since the area had five routes of escape, the cops tried to trap him by surrounding him. Their first choice was to apply pepper spray, although with batons ready, and then, when that didn’t work, 15 seconds later tasering him and apprehending him. Outside of a bit of stepping in each other’s way, I don’t see any tactical problems here.
I’d rather see too much resources in place than too few, and maybe it was a slow day… And while they weren’t necessarily all needed, it is always easier to judge a situation after it has happened… As bad as the guy with the knife is, he is someone’s son, brother, father or partner. The judging and sentencing comes later and shouldn’t be done by the policemen. Their function is different, to serve and protect, and all…
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Finding all this out took no more than a handful of minutes, while finding a full clip of the actual event just took seconds. Don’t trust what you are shown! Always dig deeper than the surface!
And here is the full incident, without cuts.
