Things are not always as they appear.

It's the kind of CCTV footage we have all seen before. A policeman grabs a suspect, this time a 19 year old black girl named Toni Comer, and as the camera rolls the two of them fall, wrestling down a fire escape steps. As they hit the ground three more officers are seen rushing to assist. They try to grab the girl while the arresting officer, seen clearly on the CCTV footage punches the girl four or five times as hard as he can. After that the melee clears and the girl is seen being dragged to a police van with her trousers down around her knees. An obvious case of horrendous police violence, that is clear!

Or is it?

It transpires that the girl has committed £3000 of damage to a car in a nightclub car park and then storms back into the club fuelled with anger, drink and drugs to confront , presumably, the car owner. Police are called and the arresting officer tries to escort Miss Comer out of the club. She is furiously angry and resists arrest violently, to the extent that a slightly built girl wrestles and hurls a six foot policeman down a flight of fire escape steps as he hangs on to her and they both tumble down.

As they hit the ground she kicks, bites and scratches like a tigress trying to claw at the policeman's genitals so, remembering his training he aims four or five hard punches at the muscle of her arm in order to deaden it.

As his colleagues arrive, Miss Comer starts to kick out at their genitals and, again following disarming procedure in these circumstances, the police unfasten her trousers and pull them down to her knees, rendering her unable to kick out.

Then finally she is arrested. When they arrive at the station, the arresting officer volunteers a statement to the duty officer that he has punched Miss Comer quite hard on the arm and that a doctor should check whether she requires medical attention.

As I write, the officer PC Anthony Mulhall has been put on desk duties but NOT suspended while a police enquiry continues.

It is clear though from the evidence thus presented and the unblemished appearance of Miss Comer that first impressions are so often misleading and that the police have an ever more thankless job in arresting people, particularly when they are high on a lethal cocktail of fury and alcohol.