Ian Tomlinson: The Plot Gets Thicker

It seems a second autopsy on Ian Tomlinson has found he had an abdominal haemmorage. See the BBC report here.

The first autopsy has already been criticised for being done in great haste and this second autopsy was done at the behest of the IPCC and Mr Tomlinsons family, so hopefully will be more thorough.

The Police Officer involved quite rightly has been interviewed under caution with a mind to a prosecution for manslaughter.

Although the police officer doesn't strike Mr Tomlinson near the abdomen, you can clearly see that when he is pushed, Mr Tomlinson falls onto his arm. It could well be that this caused the abdominal bleeding. Taking into account reports that he was an alcoholic, then he could have had an enlarged liver and spleen, which could easily have been ruptured by falling onto his arm.

The telling thing was he collapsed only yards away, as I blogged before.

There are a number of points raised by this affair:

First, how come the first autopsy failed to note the internal bleeding?

Why has the result of the autopsy been held for a week before being released?

Why was it stated that there was no CCTV or other video evidence available when there most clearly was other video evidence, as clarified by the IPCC later in the week.

As video elsewhere of the G20 protests shows, why were the Police quite obviously spoiling for a fight on the day?

You could say that the Police got the initial facts wrong (as they did in the DeMenezes case) because they rushed to get information out in the public domain, but it seems unbelievable that they would release official statements that are wrong. It seems that those statements are only corrected after substantial correspondence to the contrary from members of the public.

This whole affair is starting to smell a bit rotten.