The photo is not stock photo. From the day it was taken on 23rd Feb 2008 until the 7th July 2010 very few people other than members of St Peters Neighbourhood Monitoring , a few local police officers and one school teacher had ever seen it. It sat on the hard drive of a computer in a council flat in Leicester belonging to myself St Peters NM member Albert Berer.
Its context is as follows..
I was cooking dinner in my home on an upper floor is 17 storey Gordon House here in St Peters Leicester when I noticed out of my kitchen window in Taurus Close below an elderly old man on his way through our Leicester neighbourhood surrounded by a group of youths and being repeatedly attacked from behind. Later on I discovered they had been filming it on their mobile phones.
Not believing quite what I had just seen I grabbed a small HD video camera and started filming. No sooner did the record light illuminate when the elderly man took a particularly savage and thundering flying kick from one of the youths. He drops his bag and steadies himself against a fence.
Passersby on foot and in cars ignore what they see. They don’t want to get involved, they don’t want trouble.
Via a speed dial on a preset button on the phone I call the Police and report an assault in progress. Whilst giving Leicestershire Police the details I continue filming as the youths walk up the road 200 metres and are met by a local PCSO who not having seen their activities asks them where they have been and where they are going.
They barely stop to answer and brush past him. The PCSO has few powers and they seemed to know it.
The old man recovers himself and staggers up the road.
Days later we followed up the incident and are informed that the police identified the old man who did not wish to make a complaint. I believe them. Very few assaults here are ever reported which makes a mockery of crime stats every man and his dog knows.
Weeks later we are asking the Police to pursue the case for affray or something, anything, even to identify the youths and have a word with them in front of their parents.
After getting nowhere we take the video and the photograph to a local school to see if anyone there could identify the youths.
A local policeman unexpectedly turns up and sits in on the meeting. We leave a copy with them along with stills from the video. I get the feeling they are just going through the motions to fob me off.
Weeks further on still we are told that none of the youths could be identified.
I want to bring the image around other local schools nearby but don’t have time. I have my life to lead and work to do. What can “little people” possibly do? Leicestershire Police should be dealing with all this.
What could a ‘little people’ do...
Reluctantly I relented pursuing the matter. But the image sits there on my hard drive, every now and then I come across it and it nags at me for doing not enough with it to get justice for the old man
2 yrs roll by and on 5th July 2010 our high profile campaign to drive out drug dealing from our neighbourhood along with other crime and ASB by publishing images of these issues online gets ramped up and hits the local press. They don’t ask for a photo.
Next day on the 6th July we prepare a new release for a news agency News Team International who also ask for a photo.
Could only think of one photo...
Although we have 3 TB and 3 years of crime and ASB and photos but I can only think of one photo that drowns out all else in my mind. And so it was that we passed the picture of the man taking a flying kick from a hooded lout to the news agency.
The next day this photo was in every major British national newspaper astonishing people in every village, town and city, in the United Kingdom. It was on all their websites nice and big.
Days later it hit the New Zealand Herald, the Seattle Times and then the famous Washington Post... the news paper that brought down Nixon.
Every single major British newspaper...
It was shown on every major UK TV news network including Sky, ITN, BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, regional and national. People who had seen the image eating breakfast in the news paper or whilst at work at lunchtime online were now seeing it on every evening news program on British television.
Major radio news programs referred to it. Suddenly through their statements we hear that Leicestershire Police did identify one of the youths and had words with him in front of his parents.
Now then. That was newwwwwwws to us.
Had they have told us that, we would not have selected that image to give to the press and would have chosen another one that we knew to be pending satisfactory outcome.
The photo gave the story velocity
Maybe the whole story though gained momentum from that photo. So had Leicestershire Police have kept St Peters NM properly informed and updated this story might not have got the velocity it did.
Anyway... I have grave doubts about whether the youth was identified or not. If he was then why didn’t the Police tell us especially as we were so persistent in our request for updates on this case.
Either way.. we now feel we took the image at last as far as ‘little people’ can these days... all around the world and into almost every home and business, train boat and plane in the British Isles. We feel we got some sort of closure on this incident for this old man at last.
Albert Berer
St Peters Neighbourhood Monitoring
stpetersnm.com
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