The responsibility for this lies with the way the investigating authorities seem to have colluded in attempts by the police to muddy the ground so as to ensure that an acquittal could be ensured.

For example the job of carrying out a initial post-morten was given to a very dodgy pathologist (since struck off) who came up with a finding of "heart attack" and destroyed the evidence which would have proved whether this was the case, when a more competent pathologist carried out a second post-mortem.

This meant that the jury was faced with having to decide between two contradictory findings of the cause of death. It is not surprising that the jury found it impossible to exclude a "reasonable doubt" that the death of Ian Tomlinson was caused by the violent assault carried out on him by Harwood, which was not even denied.

It seems pretty certain that Harwood will be driven out from the police, and very likely a civil case against him will result in large fines which he will be unable to pay. But it seems very unlikely that the people who tried to shut the whole case down will be punished in any way, or even inconvenienced in their careers. And the same goes for those who failed to spot (or even covered) up his career of violence in the police, and so enabled him to be re-employed.