Inquest Faults London Officer in 2009 Death During Protests

 

Now, two years later, a jury in an official inquest has reached a damning conclusion. After hearing five weeks of evidence contradicting the original account, it determined on Tuesday that Mr. Tomlinson had in fact been “unlawfully killed” by the “excessive and unreasonable” behavior of the police officer who hit him, Police Constable Simon Harwood.

As a result of Constable Harwood’s attack, the jury said, “Mr. Tomlinson suffered internal bleeding, which led to his collapse within a few minutes and his subsequent death.”

The case has been a cause célèbre since the death of Mr. Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor whose fatal encounter with an angry army of police officers took place as he tried to make his way home during the sometimes-violent protests against a Group of 20 meeting on April 1, 2009. The verdict was a huge embarrassment for the police, which have been repeatedly accused of using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators and of being unable to control violent protesters, and who seemed to be doing their best to avoid taking responsibility for Mr. Tomlinson’s death.

Mr. Tomlinson, an alcoholic who had liver disease, had a number of peaceful encounters that evening with the police, who stopped him repeatedly as he walked, slowly and not very steadily, through London’s financial district.

One officer, Police Constable Andrew Brown, said that he encountered Mr. Tomlinson “shuffling” toward a police cordon against a backdrop of fires, smoke and rocks being thrown by the protesters. “He was staring vacantly towards the demonstration,” Constable Brown told the inquest. “I explained why he could not get through. He said he needed to get to West Smithfield where he lived — he needed to work in the morning.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Tomlinson was standing with his hands in his pockets when a line of police officers clearing the area of protesters told him to get back. It was then that Constable Harwood, who told the inquest that he was panicking at the mounting violence and who had already had several altercations with people in the crowd, ran forward.

Mr. Tomlinson had already begun to move away when Constable Harwood hit him in the left thigh with his baton and then pushed him hard on his shoulder. Mr. Tomlinson fell to the ground. He got up and wandered unsteadily for a short time before collapsing again, unconscious. He died soon afterward.

The police at first said that their only contact with Mr. Tomlinson involved trying to help him. But the push was captured on video by a bystander, Chris La Jaunie, an investment banker in New York. Six days later, he released the video to The Guardian, which posted it online.

A police pathologist — who has been suspended twice for failings in other postmortem examinations — concluded that Mr. Tomlinson had had a fatal heart attack. But several experts testified at the inquest that he had in fact died from internal bleeding.

Rose Fitzpatrick, deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, called the verdict a “matter of deep regret” and said the department would begin misconduct proceedings against Constable Harwood. But Mr. Tomlinson’s family said the officer should face criminal prosecution.

“We’ve been let down for two years,” Paul King, one of Mr. Tomlinson’s nine children, said after the verdict. He said that the verdict was “a bit of closure,” but that “we’d like to go to court and continue with the manslaughter charges.”

The Crown Prosecution Service, which originally declined to prosecute anyone in the case, said Tuesday that it would review its decision in light of the inquest.

Constable Harwood denied that he had intended to harm Mr. Tomlinson. The officer “did not intend, or foresee at the time, that his push would cause Mr. Tomlinson to fall over, let alone that it would result in any injury,” Constable Harwood’s lawyer said in a statement.

Jenny Jones, a member of the London Assembly from the Green Party, referred to several cases in which unarmed civilians were killed by police officers, including that of Jean Charles de Menezes. Mr. Menezes, a Brazilian man, was shot dead days after the subway bombings of July 2005 by officers who mistook him for a terrorist after a series of blunders. No officer was prosecuted in the case.

“Ian Tomlinson’s death must not join that list,” she said.