Heated protests broke out in the heavily Muslim area of Rochdale on Wednesday evening following footage posted on social media showing a police officer kick a detained man in the head at Manchester Airport.
Hundreds of enraged Muslims are said to have descended upon Rochdale’s Greater Manchester divisional police headquarters in the late hours of Wednesday night, with the crowd chanting “Allahu Akbar” [God is great/Our God is the Greatest], “fuck the police,” and “GMP shame on you.”
Speakers at the impromptu demo in Rochdale — now long known internationally as one of England’s child-rape ‘grooming’ gang hot spots — declared that the police were “institutionally racist,” the Daily Mail reports.
The protest was sparked after footage was posted on social media appearing to show a police officer kicking the head of a man who was detained on the ground in Manchester Airport. Other footage showed seemingly police using pepper spray and tasers on several young men.
However, the police assert that the videos online only tell half the story, and that the forceful arrests took place after a brawl, which saw three police officers being assaulted and a female officer having her nose broken.
Reform UK deputy leader and MP Richard Tice said that the reaction from the police was “not distressing” but rather “reassuring” and that officers were responding to a “serious issue” that could have been a potential terrorist situation.
GMP’s Assistant Chief Constable Wasim Chaudhry said: “We know that a film of an incident at Manchester Airport that is circulating widely shows an event that is truly shocking, and that people are rightly extremely concerned about.
“The use of such force in an arrest is an unusual occurrence and one that we understand creates alarm. In advance of what is shown in the footage available, we were called to reports of an assault at Terminal 2, Manchester Airport at 8.25 pm on Tuesday 23 July.
“The alleged suspect was seen on CCTV at a ticket machine in the car park and officers attended the location to arrest him. During our response, three officers were assaulted. One female officer suffered a broken nose and the other officers were forced to the ground and suffered injuries which required hospital treatment.
“One male officer has been removed from operational duties and we are making a voluntary referral of our policing response to the Independent Office of Police Conduct.
“Two men have been arrested on suspicion of assault, assault of emergency worker, affray, and obstructing police. Two other men have also been arrested on suspicion of affray and assault of an emergency worker.”
However, this explanation has done little to calm tensions, one speaker at the protest in Rochdale declared that “tomorrow, if we don’t get justice, these motherfuckers are gonna get it”.
Another said: “We’re no longer going to settle for this police brutality. We put our trust in the police and what do they do instead they inflict violence upon us when we surrender to them. This is supposed to be the police, instead they are gangsters in uniforms. We’re not going to put up with this anymore.”
Comments from a man posted on social media warned that if the police officers involved are not both suspended and jailed, the community will go to “Plan B” and launch demonstrations “like you’ve never seen before.”
Veteran leftist campaigner and the former MP for Rochdale, George Galloway, said: “The politicians in Greater Manchester better get a grip of the Manchester Airport affair fast. Very fast. The atmosphere in the community is boiling with rage and I urge calm upon everyone involved in the justified protests now spreading across the region.”
The present MP for Rochdale, Labour’s Paul Waugh who defeated Galloway at the election earlier this month, called the footage “truly shocking and disturbing”.
The sectarian tensions come just days after there were riots in Leeds after social services removed children from a Roma family in Leeds, which sparked violent riots, in which a double decker bus was burned out, police cars were overturned, and officers were pelted with stones.