Metropolitan Police said in a statement:
'We are aware of a video circulating showing a female being handcuffed by police.
'Officers from the Roads and Transport Policing Command were conducting a joint revenue protection operation with Transport for London inspectors in Whitehorse Road, Croydon, on Friday July 21.
'One woman left the bus after not complying with a revenue inspector's request to check that she has paid her fare. When asked to stop by police she attempted to walk off and became abusive. As a result she was arrested on suspicion of fare evasion and detained.
'When it was later established that the woman had paid she was de-arrested and allowed to go on her way.
'The woman was with her child and we appreciate that the video and circumstances look concerning. However, it is a snapshot of a wider incident. The video from this incident and the officers body worn video, which was active for a longer period than the social media clip, has been reviewed’.
Why didn't she just show that she had paid? If she had done that this would not have happened.
Why become abusive and start kicking off, after you've not complied with a ticket inspector, which led to the police coming?
What are the police meant to do if she's kicking off at them, just stand there and take it, and not deal with the reported incident?
Why do the public get involved with everything, which escalates the situation?
The way I see it the cops have a harder job now, with a lack of funding, lack of numbers and their job no doubt becoming harder by every other random person on the street thinking they have a right to be the judge with zero information, training or knowledge of the law.
It's made even worse as everything goes on social media, all nicely cut to frame a specific narrative, and even if it wasn't cut, it wouldn't show the full context.
Of course, there will still be instances where the police get things wrong, but this will be a lot less than previously I expect. They have a lot less power and a lot more accountability with the body cameras and people recording them etc. Bad apples likely won't last anywhere near as long. The problem is, when they do get something wrong (even innocently) everyone in the UK knows about it instantly. The small things which nobody heard of 30 years ago were still happening, but only 30 people heard of them, now it's 30 million.
The above then becomes a feedback loop of one bad video interpretation affecting the judgement and bias of 10 other members of the public, and this then snowballs on to 100 and 1000 etc. Each time it does this the job of the police gets harder and harder.
Every cop I know is sound and their job sounds completely ****. I wouldn't do it for twice the money, fair play on them sticking it out.