The release of video showing that Ian Tomlinson was assaulted shortly before he died on April 1st is not at all surprising. The routine aggression, nastiness and assault by almost all officers when policing protests makes it almost certain that anyone on the streets that day would receive such treatment.
Very few of these officers are 'riot cops' these are almost all 'ordinary coppers' who seem to be given some kind of switch that they gladly throw when facing 'protesters' rather than 'real people' that allows this constant disdain and regular assault, even when not actually trying to move people on. It's political policing at the most petty and routine level.
Add to this that those giving the orders clearly have no patience for peaceful protest - at around 7pm on that day they gave the order to violently move the climate camp that had been not just peaceful, but positively carnivalesque. I'm sure these commanders spend loads of time playing 'war games' of violent public order situations facing other coppers dressed up in black hoodies & masks (I bet that's one job where they don't struggle for volunteers) but very little time facing peaceful protesters - after all, where's the fun in that? They must have been so excited in the run-up to April 1st of a chance to try out tactics and scenarios learned at Hendon with impunity and so disappointed with what actually faced them on he day.
In the police it seems that protests are taken as a safe opportunity for junior officers to indulge a, mostly repressed, desire for violence and conflict and senior officers to practice para-military tactics - a dangerous cocktail
