“Dramatic footage obtained by the Guardian shows that the man who died at last week’s G20 protests in London was attacked from behind and thrown to the ground by a baton-wielding police officer in riot gear. Moments after the assault on Ian Tomlinson was captured on video, he suffered a heart attack abdominal haemorrhaging and died”.

Much has been written all over the blogosphere today about the outrage of this assault by a brutal policeman in the cause of ‘maintaining order’ causing the death of an innocent member of the public. Even had Ian Tomlinson been a protester throwing bricks at the police line, his death would have outrageous – we don’t have the death penalty in this country, not even for riot. But the fact that he had had nothing to do with the protests on the day and was simply going home after his day’s work compounds that outrage by orders of magnitude. Apart from anything else, would he have been assaulted by the policeman had he been dressed as a banker?

Nobody who believes in Civilised Society denies the need for police, and indeed nobody with any sense denies the police do a difficult job in difficult circumstances, in which mistakes will inevitably be made – and in many of those difficult circumstances, the police are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. And whatever one’s personal opinion might be of the Jean Charles de Menezes case and its outcome, it does remain the fact that it was a tragic accident caused by a failure of intelligence and poor training, rather than a wilful attempt to kill an individual.

As can be seen in this video, however, the assault on Tomlinson was wilful – he was behaving perfectly compliantly, walking along, not resisting, not rioting, not protesting. There was absolutely no need for the police officer in question to whack him with his riot stick or throw him to the ground. Obviously the police officer in question wasn’t to know – or reasonably predict – that his actions would result in Tomlinson’s death, but were anybody else to hit somebody with a stick and push them to the ground causing a fatal heart attack internal bleeding, a charge of manslaughter would almost certainly ensue. A failure to bring such a criminal charge against this police officer would be nothing short of a travesty of justice.

Ironically, this case also highlights another aspect of our increasing V-for-Vendetta society – strictly speaking, the people videoing and photographing this incident were in breach of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which since 16 February has made it a potentially criminal offence – with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison – for taking a picture of a police officer on active duty.

Never has there been such a clear example of how wrong – and damaging to a free democratic state – that law is. It deserves to be repealed immediately.