A Policeman Hit Me
That was the answer given by Lee Harvey Oswald shortly after his arrest when asked “How did you hurt your eye?”
Oswald looked morose as he replied “A policeman hit me”.
Police brutality? Not quite! Let us examine the events that up to this sad little man claiming a police officer had hit him.
After shooting President Kennedy and Governor Connally from the sixth floor of the Dallas Book Depository, Oswald abandoned his rifle and fled the scene of the crime taking first a bus then a taxi to his rented room where he retrieved his pistol.
He was stopped by a patrolman who thought he looked suspicious. As Officer Tippit got out of his car, Oswald drew his pistol and shot him three times in the chest, then he stood over him and put a bullet in his head.
There were several witnesses to the murder, and this led to Oswald being pursued to the Texas Theatre - a cinema rather than an actual theatre - where he was arrested by a posse. During the course of this arrest, he drew his pistol again and attempted to fire it but fortunately, it didn’t go off.
But “A policeman hit me”.
The photograph below is not of Oswald but of someone who was equally notorious in his own right. Like him, Donald Neilson was a former serviceman, but he killed five people rather than two. Unlike Oswald, he died in prison aged 75. His bruised face was the result of his spectacular arrest by two police officers and two members of the public who had come to their assistance.
As ever, context matters. Now look at the image below and ask yourself why this police officer was really kneeling on that man’s neck, then ask how on Earth the world went mad over an incident that was at the very worst involuntary manslaughter and most likely a tragic combination of illegal drugs and Covid-19?
