Everyone was scared and some had guns.

About how the Metropolitan Police in London rather plays CSI and the media deliberately asking the wrong questions.

📽 Please contact me for further info or footage on the incident here 📽

🌍 Updates at the bottom of page. Latest update 13.05.23, 10:54am 🌍

On Sunday the 07.05.23 at about 5:15pm in Limehouse along the canal, a situation escalated and two dogs have been killed, a man has been tasered. Why were the police misusing their power to unnecessarily escalate a situation in the middle of the day, on a residential road, while plenty of people were watching?

What happened

⚠️ WARNING: VERY DISTRESSFUL FOOTAGE HERE AND HERE ⚠️

On Sunday the 07.05.23 at about 5:15pm, six police officers follow a man (update 11.05.23: now known to be Louie Turnbull and charged with two offences) with two dogs along the canal towards Poplar in Limehouse, east London. The police officers are asking the man to stop so they can “assess the dogs” (later saying to investigate the dogs for injuries). The man does not comply, the dogs are barking. Judging from past experience with dogs, I personally would argue that it is normal for dogs to bark if their owner is threatened, especially when it is 6 people wearing protective gear and weapons.

The situation escalated. Police were screaming, the man was screaming, the dogs were barking.

Instead of trying to calm the man down, the officers become louder and more aggressive quickly. A seventh (7) police officer carrying a shotgun or rifle, comes running in from the street. At this time, people in the area watching are starting to get scared. We could feel in the air what is about to happen.

The man starts to calm down his dogs, they stop barking. For a second, it felt like the situation could have been resolved in a peaceful way. Then one of the police officers starts to scream at the man again: “Shut your dogs up”, whilst the dogs were calm and not barking. The man with the shotgun screams “I’m gonna shoot your fucking dogs”. The situation escalates again.

At this point, everything is out of control, the police have already failed at resolving a situation peacefully and therefor doing their job, one dog steps towards the police officer, still being on a leash connected to the other dog and the owner’s shoe still stepped on it.

Shot fired.

The dog collapses. The man is distressed. People all around are screaming. He’s holding his dog. The second dog is grieving. Not barking, just standing behind the man, quiet.

The man starts to scream at the police “you killed my dog” and in this moment, the taser gun fires its first shot in the man’s left leg. The other dog starts to bark again and goes between the man and the police. The officer catches him with a noose. He has him safe, the man walks away. They go after him, violently bring him to the ground, even though he clearly couldn’t defend himself anymore. The dog is caught on the floor. The retaining officer removes one of his hands off the handle, and somehow twists the noose, the dog comes free, runs after his owner, the officer with the shotgun right behind him.

Second shot fired.

In the back of the dogs head. Both dogs are dead.

Policemen are covering their faces. Everyone around is under intense distress, shouting, crying, hiding in their flats. The police has successfully resolved the situation.

Police’s reaction afterwards

It felt unreal. It felt like we’re watching a crime show. The crazier, the better.

Right after they shot the dogs, a few of the police officers, including the shooter, were putting on their masks, presumably to protect their identity. The feeling we had got though was that they knew they were doing a shit job and were being filmed.

The police then stood there as if nothing had happened. One after another, about 25-30 police officers arrived at the scene to handle the situation. Some of them were chatting, then laughing. One officer looked up to us, smiling at us.

Forensics arrived, analysing the scene. One officer re-placed an item, before photos were being taken.

A young kid, ~13 years and on a bike, who had seen what was going on, insulted a police car when they were leaving. The police car reversed, the officers got out, grabbed the kid violently and pulled him off his bike. Four police officers then kept him for about 15 minutes and grabbed him one more time rather harshly. They then let him go, but without his bike.

We went down there to speak to them. All we got was a nasty smile from one of the officers still at the scene and another one explaining to us “you don’t know the full story, a woman has been hurt and is in the hospital”. When asking him about more details about the woman all he said was “I don’t have any details about this”. It turned out later that “Officers located a woman who reported two dogs had attacked her dog. She had also suffered an injury to her leg during the incident. She did not require hospital treatment.” (source)

We were very clearly distressed about what just had happened. But instead of being supportive, all remaining police were defensive, annoyed, aggressive and dismissive.

Excerpts from the statement by the police:

This is never an easy decision for any officer to take […]

and

[…] satisfied that there are no concerns around officer conduct.

The BBC’s (and other media’s) “impartial” observations

The entire narrative has been pushed in a single direction. Only one main question is asked: whether or not the dogs have misbehaved, posed a threat in the situation and attacked someone beforehand. How is this the main question, while seven police officers, watched by 20+ citizens, were pointing shotguns at a single man with two dogs who was cornered on a narrow canal pathway?

• Why is no one asking why the police is, instead of calming the man and his dogs down and therefore bringing the situation under control, constantly shouting at the man?

• Why is no one asking if all seven police officers have apparently never in their live interacted with two dogs, or a mentally distressed person?

• Why is no one asking why the seemingly leading police officer shouts at the man to “calm his dogs down”, when he literally just did a second ago?

• Why is no one asking why the second dog, that had clearly been caught and been put to the ground got free again a minute later?

• Why is no one asking why a man with a shotgun screams at someone “I’m gonna kill your dogs”?

We have been interviewed afterwards by the BBC along the canal when we were putting down flowers for the dogs. Although scared about the fact that the BBC is not an impartial media outlet (why?) and raising our concerns to the reporters, we took the chance to portray what we saw. Liz Jackson of the BBC has then done a good job at cherry-picking and adjusting our words to make it seem like we are some random dog lovers that simply felt the dogs had not been treated in a fair manner. (Link to the article on the BBC)

People across the internet are obviously split. But why? Because we are talking about the wrong thing.

Find some heated discussions here

https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1655628359521513479?s=20

https://twitter.com/eclipsethis2003/status/1655647871624962052

https://twitter.com/broseph_stalin/status/1655609584378163212?s=20

Opinion

I’ve seen the man and I’ve met the dogs. I’ve never seen the dogs being aggressive towards anyone on the street. The man is homeless, next to ~271,000 (source) other people in England. Is this how you treat someone who already is suffering from the way life is going in this country (world)? All this hatred is fucked up. First we’re scared, then we hate, then we hurt. It repeats.

We should be there to help, not to destroy.

If you can’t (don’t want to) help, please stay out of it.

Collecting further material from across social media and and media outlets

People talking about the man and his dogs: The Shadeborrow on Instagram

This instagram post shows the woman calling the police. The police later had said this woman was injured and hospitalised, and then later again said she was not hospitalised: Allegedly injured woman on instagram

Louie live explaining that one of the dogs was a 9 year old puppy that wasn’t even his: Louie live instagram video on facebook

Shooting Discussion board on Facebook

tbc.