Serpo
5th September 2010, 04:20 PM
Captured on film, a burly police sergeant flings an innocent 5ft 2in woman on to a concrete floor, knocking her unconscious.
By the time the then 57-year-old market researcher Pamela Somerville comes round several minutes later, blood is streaming from a wound above her left eye.
Disorientated and bewildered, she manages to lift herself off the floor, but can only stagger around the room.
Blood forms in small pools at her feet. Then she presses an intercom and cries: ‘I’m hurt, please, please help me.’
The incident, in the sleepy Wiltshire market town of Melksham, will inevitably stoke debate about the deteriorating relationship between the public and the police following the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, pushed to the ground by a police officer during last year’s G20 protests.
Unlike that case, however, the officer involved – 6ft 3in, powerfully built former soldier Mark Andrews – was brought before a court.
Earlier this summer, Sergeant Andrews, 37, was convicted of assaulting Ms Somerville on a July morning two years ago.
He had denied the charge, but was found guilty at Oxford Magistrates’ Court after a five-day trial. He will be sentenced on Tuesday when he faces up to six months in jail.
It was, she says, the first time she had been inside a police station. Not having had ‘so much as a parking ticket before’ it was also her first encounter of any kind with the police.
‘I am just an ordinary, middle-aged, middle-class Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I had done absolutely nothing wrong,’ she said.
‘What happened to me was extraordinary, terrifying, and no one should ever be treated in the same way again, no matter what they are said to have done.
'It’s the kind of thing that might go on in a tin-pot dictatorship in Latin America, maybe, but not in rural Wiltshire.’
Police took Ms Somerville into custody after she spent the night asleep in her car in a rural lane. They say she was arrested because she refused to
provide a breath sample – something she strongly denies. Although she was later charged, the police dropped the case against her.
It should be stated that despite her harrowing experience, privately educated Ms Somerville, who has a degree in microbiology from Warwick University, is not consumed with hatred of the police.
‘There are good and bad apples everywhere,’ she offers magnanimously.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1309136/Lifted-like-rag-doll-hurled-cell-Shocking-video-police-brutality--5ft-2in-tall-59-year-woman.html
By the time the then 57-year-old market researcher Pamela Somerville comes round several minutes later, blood is streaming from a wound above her left eye.
Disorientated and bewildered, she manages to lift herself off the floor, but can only stagger around the room.
Blood forms in small pools at her feet. Then she presses an intercom and cries: ‘I’m hurt, please, please help me.’
The incident, in the sleepy Wiltshire market town of Melksham, will inevitably stoke debate about the deteriorating relationship between the public and the police following the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, pushed to the ground by a police officer during last year’s G20 protests.
Unlike that case, however, the officer involved – 6ft 3in, powerfully built former soldier Mark Andrews – was brought before a court.
Earlier this summer, Sergeant Andrews, 37, was convicted of assaulting Ms Somerville on a July morning two years ago.
He had denied the charge, but was found guilty at Oxford Magistrates’ Court after a five-day trial. He will be sentenced on Tuesday when he faces up to six months in jail.
It was, she says, the first time she had been inside a police station. Not having had ‘so much as a parking ticket before’ it was also her first encounter of any kind with the police.
‘I am just an ordinary, middle-aged, middle-class Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I had done absolutely nothing wrong,’ she said.
‘What happened to me was extraordinary, terrifying, and no one should ever be treated in the same way again, no matter what they are said to have done.
'It’s the kind of thing that might go on in a tin-pot dictatorship in Latin America, maybe, but not in rural Wiltshire.’
Police took Ms Somerville into custody after she spent the night asleep in her car in a rural lane. They say she was arrested because she refused to
provide a breath sample – something she strongly denies. Although she was later charged, the police dropped the case against her.
It should be stated that despite her harrowing experience, privately educated Ms Somerville, who has a degree in microbiology from Warwick University, is not consumed with hatred of the police.
‘There are good and bad apples everywhere,’ she offers magnanimously.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1309136/Lifted-like-rag-doll-hurled-cell-Shocking-video-police-brutality--5ft-2in-tall-59-year-woman.html