Handling of Protestors

A police sergeant with the tabloid-tempting surname of Smellie is to be charged with assaulting a woman during last spring's remarkable success for law, order and public surveillance.

Smellie was filmed "apparently hitting [Nicola] Fisher, 35, with the back of his arm" and also "appearing to strike her on her legs with a baton", in footage which eventually obtruded itself upon the attention of the mainstream news media.

Fisher was allegedly taking part in a vigil for a newspaper seller who at the time was waiting to enjoy the first and most politically convenient of his various autopsies.

The trial will seek to determine whether Smellie is a brave and noble man who was doing a difficult job in difficult circumstances, a well-meaning but headstrong lad who deserves a slap on the wrist, or a rotten apple whose indiscretion has calamitously diminished the barrel of derelictions which the Metropolitan Police can get away with.

If it is found expedient to utilise Smellie as a scapegoat for those who authorised the bash-'em-and-boil-'em tactics at the G20, the sergeant could face up to six months in prison.

Part of the prosecution's task will be to show that the allegedly incriminating footage was not faked by militant YouTube fanatics and that Fisher was not, in the words of the Met's standard operational manual, "fucking gagging for a bitch-slap".