A video shows the aftermath of an African immigrant stabbing a British police officer in Manchester on 8 August.
False. The video shows the aftermath of a reported assault. Greater Manchester Police confirmed there was no such stabbing.
Claims that “an African immigrant stabbed a British police officer” in Manchester last week have been widely circulating on social media alongside a video that claims to show the aftermath. But Greater Manchester Police has confirmed no officers or members of the public were stabbed during an incident near Piccadilly Gardens on 8 August.
One post on X, formerly Twitter, has been viewed more than 2.3 million times and has also spread to Facebook.
The video being shared shows people running and a police officer on the floor. An arrow points to that officer with the caption “police officer stabbed”. Police then run into a building, and a voice can be heard saying “a suspect has been detained”. Several police are seen pinning someone down before a voice behind the camera says “suspect detained, stabbing”.
However, there were no reports of a stabbing of a police officer in Manchester in recent days. The video has been clipped from a longer version posted on YouTube on 8 August 2024 captioned “A bus driver was today the victim of a Acid attack at Piccadilly Bus Station [sic]”.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) tweeted a statement the same day confirming officers had responded to reports of an assault in Piccadilly Gardens that afternoon, but said “it was established that a man had a liquid thrown at him, which was tested and confirmed negative for acid or noxious substances.”
GMP added: “No arrests have been made at this time and enquiries are ongoing.” A spokesperson told Full Fact that the man in the video was not arrested in connection to the reported assault on 8 August.
When Full Fact contacted Greater Manchester Police about the statement and the video a spokesperson said: “Enquiries are still ongoing but there was not a stabbing to an officer or any other member of the public. The substance has also been tested and it’s definitely not acid.”
Full Fact has seen many examples of misinformation circulating on social media since the stabbing attack in Southport and during the subsequent days of disorder.
During breaking news events it’s essential to consider whether what you see online is accurate, so you can avoid sharing misleading information.
We have written a number of relevant guides that should help you to spot misleading images and videos, and created a toolkit to help identify other types of misinformation.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Greater Manchester Police confirmed no such stabbing occurred.
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