A police officer has been filmed kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the ground at Manchester Airport.
The uniformed male officer is seen holding a Taser over the man, who is lying face down, before striking him twice while other officers shout at onlookers to stay back in a video shared widely online.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said firearms officers had been attacked while attempting to arrest someone following a fight in the airport’s Terminal 2 on Tuesday. It said it had referred itself to the police watchdog.
Anger has grown over the video and a crowd of what appeared to be several hundred people protested outside the police station in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on Wednesday evening.
How can we fight back against the police, when they never face consequences, but we do?
How can we fight back against the police, when they never face consequences, but we do?
They just have to not reach for pots of boiling water after threatening to use it as a weapon.
That’s eems reasonable…
When she grabs the pot of boiling water, one deputy steps back “away from your hot steaming water,” he says.
“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” she says in response.
“Huh?” the deputy says.
“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” she repeats.
“You better fking not or I swear to God I’ll fking shoot you in the f**king face,” Grayson says to her.
Does it? Is a rebuking a threat with a weapon? Why doesn’t the militaries just have shoot if you’re scared rules but USA police do?
As to your last sentence…because Leavenworth. Soldiers have real rules to follow and if you fuck up it goes from bad to worse for you real quick. Granted the military has its own issues but these pigs took our hand me down MRAPs and none of the ROE.
true
Does it? Is a rebuking a threat with a weapon? Why doesn’t the militaries just have shoot if you’re scared rules but USA police do?
You are starting to get that slippery slope thing. If you give humans power for some purpose, the purpose is washed away after some time, but the power isn’t, and it forms its own interests.
Police casually killing civilians still fulfills the interest of keeping the existing order. Cause somebody has given to the state that “monopoly on violence” thing.
And it’s interesting how other barbaric rules, like “insulting the king gets your tongue cut out”, or “touching royalty gets your hand hewed off”, or “not bowing in time gets you beheaded”, have been abolished, but “the king can kill you any time, but since you are his property, he’ll also kill outsiders trying to hurt you” still persists.
I don’t know if your last sentence was put together enough to be understandable.
Again, I think if a person was 5/6 feet away from a military man with loaded gun, and they threatened the military man, and he raised his weapon and threatened to shoot them if they attempt to throw the boiling water in them… Yeah, I think they would have equally protected themselves.
Rebuking is not a threat. You and the cop do not know what rebuke means.
He overreacted to a word which means “I’m disapproving strongly.”
I was more referring to the ignoring the cops requests as she walked over and picked up a pot of boiling water . . But most importantly, the part where she reaches up for the pot, after being warned at gunpoint that the cops feel unsafe.
She reached up for the pot…
I don’t think her race is responsible for her reaching up for that pot. But that might just be me.
The cop literally noticed the pot and told her to go move it because he didn’t want to deal with a fire when he was there.
She didn’t go to it until she was told to go move it off the flame.
Who is responsible for the complete mismatch between your description and the events if the video?
Not what happened. Go watch the video.
Why is any cop playing judge, jury, an executioner?
Even if she was to throw boiling water his way, which she was clearly trying to protect her head when the gun came up, it doesn’t warrent deadly force. Yes the cop would be in pain and scarred, but that’s the threat he signed up for being an officer.
Anytime the police kill someone it’s a gross overstep of power regardless of race, age, mental capacity, drug use, financial situation, or any other box you want to put a victim in. You can make a case for if there’s actual shots fired at the officers, but still a cops job is to bring people in so that can properly pay for their crimes.
So, again, even if she was about to throw that water 6+ feet over a counter to hurt him, that officer grossly misjudged the situation and made himself look like the biggest coward by not only drawing his gun but firing.
Removed by mod
Did you not watch the video?
Removed by mod
You don’t seem to know what actually happened. The cop TOLD HER to do something about the boiling water, she picked it up and took it to the sink as asked.
Just for context, this is in the UK so the officer WILL be prosecuted and punished accordingly.
It is worth noting that other officers at the scene had a broken nose and other injuries before this happened. It doesn’t excuse what he does but there’s certainly a lot more to the story here.
I’m from the UK, and I can’t agree. Most likely, at worst, he will be dismissed from the police force. It is very rare for police constables to face criminal charges, and even rarer for those charges to actually stick.
Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man, was reading the newspaper on the London Underground. The metropolitan police shot him in the head seven times. No officer was held accountable.
Ian Tomlinson, a newsagent, was walking home past a protest. The metropolitan police beat him to death. A constable lost his job, but was found not guilty by the court.
A little kid with mental health issues went up to a metropolitan police constable to ask for help. The cop pepper sprayed and beat the child 30 times with a baton. He was dismissed from the police force, but did not face criminal charges.
And you claim that the officer responsible for this is “fucked”? Dream on. At worst he’ll have to get a real job like the rest of us.
The only one of those I’m familiar with is Menenez and the officers genuinely believed he had explosives. It was a fucked up situation and I do think they probably should have suffered more consequences. But honestly there’s room for a little nuance.
British cops are not routinely armed so shooting generally is a LOT rarer.
If I shot someone 7 times in the head, it wouldn’t matter how many people agreed with me that we all thought it was the devil himself crawling out of a portal to hell, I’d get charged and sentenced for manslaughter.
The police are able to get away with literal murder and people will come out of the woodwork, wringing their hands about all of the nuances of the situation.
No, fuck that, and fuck the police. They’re a legalised criminal gang that exists to be the fist of the ruling class and nothing more. If I could click my fingers right now and make the entire institution no longer exist I’d do it faster than you could blink.
But then who would who call if someone broke into your home and didn’t even bother shooting your dog?
He had been incorrectly identified as a terrorist and an imminent threat. The fuck up was not the person who fired the gun but whoever gave him the order.
That’d be Dame Cressida Dick, later promoted to Commissioner of the Met.
Afraid that I have to agree. It’s nowhere near as extreme an example, there was a case brought against the West Midlands Police a few years ago where the cops intimidated a bunch of fans from Bristol, detained them, and forced them back on the train to Bristol. It took four years to settle the case, and the only way they were able to be taken seriously at all was because a serving policeman in Bristol felt inclined to back them, despite warnings not to do so by his peers.
It’s the classic “who polices the police” scenario, and sadly the charges are often so painfully low that it feels like the best way to commit a crime and get away with it is to join the police…
that it feels like the best way to commit a crime and get away with it is to join the police…
I think I’ve read recently about a serial rapist and murderer convicted in UK who was a policeman.
Our timeline is generally dark, but I simply admire how my instinct, feeling that there’s truth to the rule “all free people bear arms”, which I couldn’t justify in my childhood where it only had strange connection with dignity and fantasy\heroic stuff I would read, is being justified by life itself.
Same with the rule that one can’t build a legal system that is just, only that is competitive, and even in that evil may win so an honest man, or a group of honest people, or a whole oppressed people may have to fight the whole world indirectly. Well, that part I should have understood even back then, I have family in such a place.
But will they really?
Here in Aus at least, 3 cops assaulted an autistic or downs guy in his yard one day. The court ordered them to apologise to the victim and do some bullshit “training”.
Yes. This is the UK. The officer is fucked. Exactly how fucked depends on the context which we don’t really have yet.
Can any other Brits confirm you actually crack down on cops? Have you followed their trials until the conclusion to see what ‘punishment’ they actually get?
I’m British, and I wouldn’t say so. In some higher profile cases cops might lose their job, and in extreme cases they go to court, but it’s really rare for the charges to stick. There was a recent case with a famous sportsman - a pair of cop tased him, beat him with a baton, and kicked him in the head until he died. That was the first time in over 30 years a cop had actually been found guilty of manslaughter, but the other cop escaped with no charges. The bastard that got sentenced will almost definitely be released within a couple of years.
So, yeah, if it’s high profile enough, maybe, to some extent, but otherwise, no.
This is a soft-left wing newspaper that’s generally quite critical of the police. The numbers of convictions amd sackings are quite interesting. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement but we’re starting from a MUCH better place than the US or even Aus.
The 70% increase in convictions does not mean there’s an increase in Police bad actors. It’s an increase in pursuing convictions against them.
About a third of police officers in England and Wales – 42,854 – received a public complaint about them. About 71% of the allegations made were serious enough that they involved either death or injury, or if proven they may have resulted in criminal or disciplinary proceedings. However, only 1% were assessed to see whether there was a case to answer, 0.3% were found to have a case to answer, and 0.2% were referred to misconduct proceedings
Read your own fucking source.
Yeah but people complain about police all of the time. Just because only 1% of them were assessed does not mean that the others were legitimate. Sometimes it’s quite obvious that it is legitimate I really don’t think the police are a problem in the UK there’s definitely a few individuals that need their heads examining but mostly people aren’t afraid of them. Stop putting your own biases on everyone else.
Another Brit here, yes cops do get punished in high profile cases with video evidence such as this.
The contradictory examples listed above were quite complex cases from what I remember.
That said, as a teenager a friend of mine was beaten up in a police van in a case of mistaken identity. He was advised by his lawyer to drop the case as there was little chance of proving what happened as the police had smashed up his phone which he had been recording them with.
Due to the context of police officers being injured prior to what’s shown on tape. I expect in this instance, the cop to get a lenient pushiment.
They’re not superheroes…
To be fair, while he will see more consequences than would be likely if this had happened in the US, it’s still pretty rare for police officers to be successfully prosecuted in the UK. More likely we’ll be looking at an IOPC investigation and internal disciplinary procedures rather than criminal prosecution.
I guarantee you that his career in the police is over. It’ll be interesting to find out more about the context, there’s clearly already been a lot of violence happening to the cops before the video starts. I’m certainly expecting criminal prosecution against him.
police prosecutions in the UK are done very quietly, I’m not sure why but you’re lucky to get one small story in the newspapers for even quite horrific crimes. There are perhaps not enough, but they do happen more than people generally think.
Woah there nelly. That be bringing any of that “logic” and “real world understanding” here
Oh we will be. There is video evidence they can’t really get out of this one.
What they never really need to do is stop hiring criminals. And when there are warning signs (there are always warning signs, this is never their first offense), they need to be fired, immediately.
If they lose their job, but otherwise don’t suffer any repercussions, would that shock you? What would you propose that we should do, if we can’t get justice through the system?
What are you talking about. That hasn’t even been a case yet calm down.
I’m asking you, when this inevitably doesn’t go anywhere, will you care?
Will you care? Will anyone care? Nothing ever seems to change no matter how bad it gets.
I already care. I’m desperately trying to get people to change their minds. I’m working hard trying to build working class solidarity and to bring people along with me. Join the IWW, learn about mutual aid and do what you can. We can be the change. We just have to believe that it’s possible and that we can do it. If we work together we are unstoppable, but we need to break out of the prison in our mind.
How can we fight back against the police, when they never face consequences, but we do?
Mavics with homemade grenades.
Molotov cocktails (can be dropped from copters too).
Also longbows and crossbows with arrows, rock-solid time-proven tech.
You just have to drop this part
when they never face consequences, but we do?
because something like this exists in every conflict. The defending side usually gets punished for the resistance alone.
No one can hold you accountable if you overrun all the cops.
Just once, I want to see a video where the cops are beating on someone and the crowd actually intervenes and turns the table on them.
I would love it if we could make the police feel afraid to do this shit. Not scared of losing their job or having to do paperwork, but scared of the actual people there on the street. Scared that they might not have the monopoly on violence that they thought they did.
At least this one deserves consequences… unlike that unfortunate shooting in the states.
Wow, you just cannot help yourself, can you. Did the boiling water lady break your brain or something?
This is the third comment you’ve left under a story that has nothing to do with her.
Maybe actually train them? In Quebec it takes 3½ years in school before you can become a cop and usually you won’t be able to do the last ½ right away, they’ll only let you in once you’re in your mid 20s so you’re more mature and it forces you to acquire related experience to build a better resume for when you send your application.
Yeah, I just googled “police brutality quebec” and it doesn’t sound like that’s really working out for you.
Just like if you do the same search no matter where you’ll find examples, it doesn’t mean there aren’t places where the situation is better than others and that they shouldn’t be used as an example.
You’ll never get rid of it completely, just like you’ll never get rid of bankers committing fraud completely, just like you’ll never get rid of criminals completely, you can still try to improve things. In the UK cops don’t have guns, in Quebec the selection process is much harder to go through, what is the US doing? 6 months of training, take pretty much anyone, militarize the police force… Well buddy, what do you think will happen?
What if I told you that we can get rid of police brutality? We can get rid of bankers committing fraud. We can get rid of crime.
The main thing that stops us from creating a better world is refusing to believe that it’s possible.
If we work together and dismantle the existing power structures that oppress us, then we can solve all of these problems. They’re fundamentally problems of inequality and capitalism.
Tell me, how do you eliminate nature?
Do you think violence didn’t exist where capitalism wasn’t a thing? You might need a trigger warning if you start reading on first Nations and their pre-European colonization history…
So the first thing you need to do is recognize that nature is a social construct and nothing that happened before the 19th century counts.
Co-operation is in the nature of humankind. Violence will tend to occur when there is competition for resources. We have the technology and philosophy necessary to create a world where everyone can live a comfortable life without any need to compete for food, water, shelter, medicine or education.
If we work together and prevent people from forming unequal hierarchies, then the few people who still try to impose their will on others can be stopped by the rest of us.
It’s in our nature just like fear of strangers is and that means our nature is to see people as being either in or out of our group and wanting to protect our group from the other group.
It’s very nice that you can imagine a utopia but that’s just a dream that will never become true because of our nature.
how do you eliminate nature?
That’s like saying ‘boys will be boys’ to explain away sexual harassment or extreme hazing.
It is not, and never has been, a valid excuse.
No it’s not, accumulating resources is natural (heck, our body does it without us intervening, that’s what fat is!), you’ll never prevent 100% of the population from doing it or trying to do it, we’re animals that are good at throwing rocks.
deleted by creator
As always, ACAB.
The term originates from Britain after all.
All Coppers Are Bastards.
Disgusting… I hope you get to live in a nation with no police some day.
Look, if I need someone to show up to a crime scene the day after it happened and shoot my dog, I know who to call.
Ok.
Removed by mod
Wow. Actually im a performer. Musicians and actor. I’m just not American, although I did live there… If that’s where this is coming from.
I’m Irish. Our police is just one of many public services…
It would be literally retarde d to draw a line at a profession and say any person int his profession… Is… Anything.
My mother works in a Garda station. Although she isn’t police herself. would you like to call her a bastard too?
Right, I’m sure IRA supporters definitely consider the polis a public service…
Are you a boomer? Are you referring to our politics in the early 90s!?
Are you referring to the Ira by name that fought for our independence, of the IRA by name of the terrorist organisation in the north during the troubles?
Do you even realise how rude this question is?
While I appreciate your enthusiasm for the police force in Ireland (an emotion I’m sure isn’t shared by everyone) I feel that it glosses over the intense distrust of other forces, like the PSNI (incorporating the RUC) in Northern Ireland, and the negative effects of state beneficial clique formations. (eg. union constables against anti-union communities)
So while you might see the Garda Síochána as a step in the right direction for a liberated Ireland - I think it’s important to never forget the main purpose of the polis - to maintain monopoly on violence.
So while the Gardaí may appear to work for you right now - I just hope you never have to be on the “wrong” side of the state and have to feel the force of “legitimate” violence used against you, especially when standing with your community against capitalist sponsored state oppression (eg Shell to Sea)
Well, I’ve never even been in Ireland, but my sister has given me some unwanted lectures about the connection between the two.
I’d personally say that through the prism of Armenian issues, the latter was friends with ASALA, while “respectable” Irish politicians from time to time say savage cannibalistic shit on those and specifically on Artsakh.
So of course the latter is better from my PoV and I don’t care about any other, just as everyone else (though pretending not to).
For reference, the first “A” stands for “ALL”.
I live in Russia, people here generally don’t trust police.
“Call us when they actually kill you”, beating out confessions, cooperating with crooks, and, of course, possessing enormous persuasion skills when they need you to throw away your report of a crime which they don’t want to deal with.
There are people good and bad like everywhere else, but the atmosphere while talking to these people is very special.
You live in Russia… your government jails and kills people it disagrees with… Yeah… if course… fuck Russian police. No shit.
It’s generally not the usual police doing that stuff. Mostly RG.
bro takes an array of arrays of floats, collapses the floats into booleans, the arrays of booleans into a single boolean each and then collapses the array of booleans into a single boolean
the amount of data lost in your thought process is crazy, this kinda shit is the real brainrot
also isn’t “all [type of person] are x” what brought us racism lmao
Bootlick much?
i know you tried to sound smart there but your first paragraph is nonsensical, jsyk
“type of person” is too broad to make your question valid. depends on what “type” means.
if by type you mean facial features and color of skin, eh sure, why not… even though it’s less that and more about justifying oppression for power and resources.
but you used it in the context of acab, in which case type means what you do for a living which is entirely different from skin color… so no. you can make such judgments, and it wouldn’t be racism or even have remotely similar thought process (say, as you could point to sexism, homophobia, etc as at least having some parallels in the way of thinking).
so yes, i can say all cops are bastards, all vulture capitalists are monsters, all landlords are leeches, all billionaires are immoral, all republican politicians are demons…
Is being a cop an unchanging characteristic that you’re born with?
Can someone choose to just change their ethnicity on a whim?
Well, I’d say holding a specific occupation that has harmful effects on the people around you and choosing to maintain it makes you a bastard, since you can just stop being a cop, and therefore stop being a problem. People aren’t born being a cop. They choose to become one. And that choice makes them a damn rotten bastard.
I don’t think any data was lost in girlfreddy’s thought process, I think you disagreed and tried to form a logical line of thought to disprove theirs while sounding smart, and ended up making some false equivalences and oversimplifications in the process
In short, acab
In a tragic lack of manners
a person taped a cop to the chair, beat the hell out of them, shocked them with a tazer and repeatedly stomped on their head
and got called a psycho, and sentenced to death.
This cop on the other hand
got punished
for being recorded doing so.
Let me make light of this horrible reason why I dislike travel. It’s the fucking peanuts! Isn’t it? We’ve been pushed from having a very small but still nice meal to 3 peanuts and you can’t bring water. WTF! I rather watch 10 people puke than not have a choice of drinking something when I feel like it… not when they bring me a tiny cup of whatever. So my carry-on is always some water and lots of snacks.
I bet that’s what started all this. I hate flying. I hate having to undress for the TSA to count my balls and to see if there’s only one on each side. I don’t do that for driving my car. And I drive my car around all sorts of places. Why do we care about flying safety so much? Specially safety with respect to other passengers vs safety with respect to emergency door rapid disassembly? I rather watch a cop beat the shit out of the CEO of Boeing when a screw is missing. That would make flying a whole lot safer.
This isn’t a copypasta, meaning it’s an original one.
Thanks! So, you in? LOL.
Good lord this gave me a fucking stroke
I thought this was a trump quote, but more coherent.
Specially safety with respect to other passengers vs safety with respect to emergency door rapid disassembly?
Law&order vs freedom&evolution compromise in a nutshell.
I wonder if some people carrying guns see every confrontation as a matter of life and death since they are carrying a deadly weapon that could be used against them if they temporarily lose control in a struggle.
When you have got a hammer everything looks like a nail.
I could be wrong but i believe british police dont routinely carry guns
No, but they don’t see those unarmed (uniform counts as “arms” here too) as equal to them. It’s human psychology. Also you may read up on psychology of war crimes and what makes a combatant shoot up a civilian car.
If you’ve done fencing (be it with rapiers or with carolingian swords as LARPers do), you know the feeling, it’s a very basic instinct.
The hammer and nail saying also rings right, if you take a hammer and weigh it in your hand, you’ll feel differently. Or an axe. Or a dog’s lead with roulette, try to hold it half a meter from the roulette itself and weigh it, it too feels like a weapon.
It’s such a cool thought I’ve had this morning. Basic human instincts tell us that for a sane society all free people should bear arms. Not necessarily something fitting to shoot up a school. But means to fight for yourself and resist.
I’d like to know more context about this whole situation, apparently there was a big kerfuffle and another police officer had to be treated for a broken nose.
This guy looks like some dumbass kid who got himself over-excited after being given a gun and a badge though. He’s probably set his career back by 10 years after this dumbass move.
That shouldn’t be a setback of ten years, it should be an automatic attempted manslaughter charge and exclusion from any job that gives immediate power over strangers.
What is with internet comments being obsessed with attempted manslaughter?
No this is ABH/GBH at best depending on injuries which should go with an immediate suspension. Attempted manslaughter is not possible to convict
Attempted manslaughter is not possible to convict
Convicting is not the point. Bullshit charges and intimidating maximum sentences are there to force a plea deal and rob defendants of their rights.
The cops taught us that.
This happened in the UK where plea deals aren’t really a thing.
Got my manchesters mixed up, sorry about that.
Lol
In fairness… regardless of what the guy did before this.
The officer deserves to absolutely lose his job. Without doubt.
The target.tis face down int be ground… not moving… and he stomps his head.
I heard the guy boiled a pot of water earlier in the day, so, you know, clearly it’s justified…
/s
although this video is definitely cut early to make the police officer look especially bad I have to completely agree with you. This isn’t warranted even if the perpetrator was a child rapist, let the courts do the punishing.
I don’t think there any such thing as attempted manslaughter in UK…… mainly because manslaughter is when someone is killed as a result of violence, where there was no intent to kill.
A kick to the head can be attempted murder, if you can prove the intent was to kill - which is often difficult and especially based on this footage. Its GBH for any man on the street.
My guess is he’s toast, but won’t see a jail.
Attempted manslaughter isn’t really a thing anywhere
As a poster above said it is in Germany.
And a quick look for my country shows it at least is in one state of Australia
http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/sa/consol_act/clca1935262/s270ab.html
Manslaughter is absolutely valid in Canada as well.
https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0042061/2019-04-01 eh, yes it is? NL “Poging tot Doodslag” would like a word.
Idk about where you live, but “versuchter Totschlag” is very much a thing in Germany. Translates to attempted manslaughter and is in essence an extension to aggravated assault for cases where it should be obvious to the perpetrator, that their actions are significantly likely to cause death.
Specifically kicking the head of a person who is already on the ground is one of the things that is basically guaranteed to get you charged with that .
Yeah sorry I got bubbled. I live in UK, this video is shot in the UK and I did the American thing where I forget other countries exist
Don’t worry, I did the same. Just assuming that legislature would be the same and all…
Hitting someone’s head with effort repeatedly is in general attempted manslaughter, no?
Humans are not battle droids. This action has a sufficiently big probability to result in death.
Do you believe the guy that punched the cop on her head should be charged with attempted manslaughter as well?
Depends.
Attempted manslaughter not convictable in the country this crime was committed. Attempted murder you must prove intent to kill, which is difficult to do but entirely possible. Manslaughter you must not have intent to kill but still actually kill them. Attempted manslaughter is no death and no intent to kill, so in the UK this would be grevious bodily harm or attempted murder
“Set his career back by 10 years”
Nah. I’d rather he rots in jail 10 years. I don’t want that guy walking freely around, let alone with a fucking gun and authority.
What context could possibly make brutally kicking and stomping a man lying on the floor acceptable? It doesn’t matter what happened before, this is supposedly a trained officer in an intervention, not a drunken street brawl.
Cop should immediately get fired and charged for aggravated bodily assault if there was any justice.
Context is everything. Police officers are police officers but they’re also humans and they get stressed and do things that they wouldn’t do if they were thinking clearly. For all we know this guy might otherwise be an upstanding officer who immediately regret what he did.
It’s the UK, not the US. They don’t just let all the police walk around with guns. This guy’s a firearms officer and if they’re called to an incident at an airport then something pretty serious is kicking off.
If you got really stressed at work and made a split second decision that you immediately knew was a bad idea you’d want people to know the context.
I’m not defending kicking the guy in the head, I’m just wondering what it takes for someone to get to that point where they think that’s a good idea.
According to an article in the Guardian, the guy and a couple of his friends were called by one of their moms who had an argument on a plane, so they went to the airport to beat up some people. Cops arrive to arrest them and they start fighting the cops.
Sure he’ll be fired and charged. But it’s a bit of a stretch to expect someone who’s just had to fight off a group of lunatics to just flip the adrenaline switch and turn into an office clerk in two seconds
Setting his career back 10 years?! I’d expect him to be booted from the force at the very least.
JFC that video looked brutal
Cops doing cops things.
Ah it’s nice to see pushback, but bro went too far for the uk for sure
No doubt it’s because he was presumably Muslim, or at least the cops would think he was being that the woman he was with is wearing a hijab.
Mate in the back sat on the bench just chilling.
Anybody who thinks this cop is behaving better than the one in the states that shot in self defense is an idiot imho.