![Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show UK Police Chasing One Of '100 Far-Right' Protesters In 2024](https://leadstories.com/assets_c/2024/08/screenshot_3492611-thumb-352xauto-3142469.jpg)
Does a social media video show police apprehending a elderly man on a scooter who was involved in a "far-right" riot in the United Kingdom in 2024? No, that's not true: At least two media organizations have reported that this video shows a police incident in Amsterdam in 2022. This video footage does not show a participant in one of the violent, anti-migrant protests in the U.K. that started in late July 2024.
The claim about the man on the scooter appeared in a post (archived here) on X by Concerned Citizen on August 8, 2024. Above a video, the caption read:
Police move in quickly to quash one of the '100 Far Right' riots that didn't happen in the UK last night....
The claim referred to a series of riots by anti-migrant protestors throughout the United Kingdom following the death of three girls from a July 19, 2024, knife attack on a dance class in Southport, England. The suspect is a British-born male whose parents are Rwandan.
This is what the claim looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Aug 8 16:51:59 2024 UTC)
The credit in the video's top lefthand corner and the graphic at the video's bottom refer to the unverified X account @MindsetOfTheRic (archived here), which reposts content from various other media platforms.
Using keywords about the video, Lead Stories searched on Google News, finding a report from 2022 that contained the same video. The results of that search can be seen here.
The video appeared in a June 9, 2022, article (archived here) from Daily Star, a British tabloid, titled, "Half-naked pensioner wielding knife tries escaping from cops - on a mobility scooter."
(Source: dailystar.co.uk screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 23:02:00 2024)
The Daily Star article reported that this happened in a neighborhood of Amsterdam. Nothing was said about the United Kingdom or far-right protests:
The pursuit, which has been compared to a gaming scene in Grand Theft Auto, happened in Maassluisstraat in the Nieuw-West region of Amsterdam.
Video first posted on TikTok shows a 64-year-old pensioner fleeing from police on a mobility scooter while wearing just underwear.
He is seen carrying a knife as police officers chase after him on foot on an empty road.
One officer is seen holding up a Taser gun and aiming at him while his colleagues order the pensioner to stop the vehicle.
When this fact check was written, Logically Facts, a British tech firm that investigates disinformation, had reviewed the same claim.
This fact check located a June 8, 2022, YouTube video posted by Amsterdam's local TV station AT5, the exact video seen in the claim on X. AT5's video description read, "the 64-year-old man was tasered by the police after refusing to stop while armed with a knife." The article does not report that the video said the man was a protester involved with a "far right" group.
A screenshot from the AT5 video can be seen below.
(Source: AT5 YouTube screenshot taken on Fri Aug 9 23:21:05 2024)
This is not the first time Lead Stories has fact checked the Concerned Citizen's X account for posting false information and false headlines. Additional Lead Stories fact checks mentioning this user can be read here.