The past fortnight hasn’t exactly been the greatest in the police’s history, with the resignation of Britain’s top anti-terror cop and the suspension of several police officers following accusations of brutality during the G20 protests at the start of April.

Bob Quick stepped down as Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner (Specialist Operations) last Thursday after a catastrophic blunder led to a planned raid on twelve terror suspects in north-west England being brought forward several hours, putting public lives at risk.

The operation, codenamed “Pathway”, was compromised when Mr Quick walked along Downing Street for a meeting with the Prime Minister with the briefing notes - marked “SECRET” - under his arm in full view of the world’s press; within hours the story was all over the wires, forcing the police’s hand.

Not that it would have mattered, the police having failed, as has happened too often recently, to find any evidence of terrorist activity. The dozen suspects, eleven Pakistanis and one local man, will in all probability be released without charge.

The far bigger story, however, is the death of Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor who suffered a heart attack moments after being hit by police on the day of the G20 protests in the City of London.

Shortly after 7:20pm on Wednesday, April 1st, a police constable broke from a police line to strike Mr Tomlinson’s leg and then, a second later, shoved him to the ground with both hands in a completely unprovoked attack, sending the 47-year-old sprawling.

He had been walking away from the police when he was attacked, his hands in his pockets, a threat to no one.

It’s not just the attack on Mr Tomlinson that will horrify people, but the perception of a cover-up by the authorities, eerily reminiscent of the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting at Stockwell tube station in 2005.

First, the spinning against and smearing of the victim: he was acting strangely, dressed inappropriately, running away from the police; second, the blanket denial of any wrongdoing, even as the true picture, slowly, shockingly, begins to emerge; then, once the facts are in the public domain, an apology of sorts, like getting blood from a stone, is wrought.

And throughout, the attempted concealment of evidence, the failure of the police to fully reveal all the facts they were aware of, the issuing of misleading statements bordering on downright lies, believing they’d get off scot free.

Only when video evidence was revealed did they even admit that police had any contact with Mr Tomlinson before he died. The official police line that night said he had died of a heart attack totally unconnected with any police action, and even claimed protesters had hampered his treatment by lobbing bottles at officers who had gone to his aid.

Only when The Guardian revealed the damning footage to the world were the officers concerned shamed into coming forward and suspended from duty; had the newspaper not done so it is almost certain the officers involved would have got away with it.

In the city with the greatest concentration of CCTV cameras on the planet, in this the most heavily surveilled country in the free world, it beggars belief that no part of the attack on Mr Tomlinson was captured by any of the thousands of cameras in the square mile.

They must have known what happened before the media did, or are we to believe that such assaults are so common they barely warrant a mention in incident reports nor raise the alarm bells of those scanning CCTV monitors.

The police may have been able to dismiss this as an isolated incident were it not for the many similar reports of thuggery that have since emerged, most dramatic of all the footage uncovered this week of an officer hitting a woman at a vigil for Mr Tomlinson the day after he died.

The mobile phone recording shows an officer from the Territorial Support Group push back the woman, slap her with the back of his hand and then strike her down with his baton before retreating.

In addition to the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into Mr Tomlinson’s death, the Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has ordered an inquiry into the policing of demonstrations, which many people hope will lead to a review of the controversial policy of kettling, the holding of protesters in a confined space for hours on end.

Such tactics lead to raised tempers among those penned in, ratcheting up the tension and making confrontation more likely, often turning peaceful protests into angry riots.

Add to this the arrest and detention of 114 environmental activists in Nottinghamshire on Monday for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass before they actually did anything.

You might expect the Government to be taking a lead, but with the Home Secretary up to her neck in sleaze, bleeding the taxpayer dry with her second home swindle and expenses claims for porn, plasma screen tvs, fireplaces, bath plugs, kitchen re-fits and barbeques, is it any wonder the police feel they have no one to whom they are accountable?!

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