Video highlights PSNI violence

The Police Ombudsman is to be asked to investigate an incident in Derry at the weekend in which a group of PSNI police were caught on video punching and kicking members of the public.

The video recording appears to show one PSNI man push and kick a young girl to the ground.

Other PSNI men used batons and threw punches in the arrest operation in the Waterside area of Derry during the early hours of Sunday morning.

One sequence shows a young girl being beaten to the ground by a PSNI man after she confronted him. The girl was not arrested.

One man, Richard Adams, was arrested and charged with assault and resisting arrest. The accused man’s father, a member of the Labour Party, said his family and others would launch civil actions against police.

Video footage was shown to several journalists in the offices of Derry’s Social Environmental Alliance (SEA) party on Monday.

SEA spokesman Eamonn McCann said “it was clear” that the footage showed PSNI members behaving in “an improper and totally unacceptable” way.

“Pending a full investigation, we call for the suspension of the PSNI officers shown on the tape,” he added.

Around 25 of the defendant’s family, friends and SEA members held a protest outside the courthouse about the police handling of the operation.

Sinn Féin’s Mitchel McLaughlin said: “This is evidence that nothing has changed.

“This police force has been a haven for human rights abusers and these actions prove that.

“What we have is a heavily armed group of people who act without redress.

“It underlines the need for a fully accountable police service in the north of Ireland.”

Urgent Appeal