Policing – Page 19

Want to help get Ian Blair fired?

Published on November 14, 20071 Comment

The Yorkshire Ranter has some ideas on how to achieve this:

The Metropolitan Police Authority meets on the 22nd November to discuss Sir Ian Blair’s case; they cannot be left uninformed.

[…]

We need to get 2 more votes than t’othersiders out of this group. Hockney opposed the HSE prosecution, but is apparently against Blair staying in office. Assuming he votes with the Government, they have a 3 vote lead; we need to get 6 of the remaining indies on board to fire the fucker. I want a full-dress blogswarm on this; think of the Iraqi employees’ campaign and square it. In fact, think of Josh Marshall’s US social security drive.

Read the comments there for more details on how to reach the Metropolitian Policy Authroity members, then get into contact with them and set out your reasons for wanting to get rid of Blair politely.

Comment of The Day, Belated

Published on November 5, 2007

Martin Kettle’s hateful Guardian opinion piece on Saturday has drawn over 192 comments so far, a preponderance of them hearteningly negative. Kettle’s thesis seems to be, in short, that it’s fine for innocent people to be executed on the streets without arrest or trial if it keeps him, Martikn Kettle, personally safe: Reaction was swift:

Outradgie November 3, 2007 5:05 AM

Kettle has here contributed one of the most poorly reasoned and ill-informed articles seen on CiF, and that is quite an achievement. To pick a few of the more egregious errors:

1. “… the conviction of the Met this week was bad news not good news. The tyranny of the insurance-driven risk assessment culture – which ironically the commissioner would now be negligent to ignore – means you and I will be less well-protected in future by the police than we were in July 2005.” The Health & Safety at Work Act gives no right of civil action, such as pursuing compensation, see in particular s.47 of the Act. Compensation is independent of any prosecution under the Act. The penalties imposed upon conviction under the Act are fines. Under UK law it is illegal to provide insurance against criminal penalties. (Simon Jenkins’ attempts to pontificate on H&S law here have also been greatly undermined by his complete ignorance of this distinction. People injured or made ill at work would still be pursuing civil actions if no H&S statute had ever been enacted and no H&S regulating agency existed.)

2. “The police genuinely thought De Menezes was a suicide bomber.” No, they did not. They did not know who he was, or what he was doing. There was total confusion and incompetence, but they killed him anyway.

3. “Ken Livingstone is wholly correct to say that health and safety legislation was never drawn up for such extreme situations as this. And the law is not just an ass but an outright threat to liberty if this week’s judgment means a future armed officer is afraid to fire at a real suicide bomber in similar circumstances.” It is rubbish to say the legislation does not apply in “extreme circumstances”. Was London under martial law that day? It is very common for those who break H&S law to say there were special circumstances. It’s easy to do a job right when there is no pressure. The law is intended to restrain reckless behaviour especially when it’s tempting to cut corners. There is nothing in this court case that need inhibit any police officer from firing at a suicide bomber. What should be inhibited is firing at innocent people, as an outcome of bungled, incompetent, mismanaged, disorganised and reckless policing.

4. “Londoners are at much greater risk after this ruling.” Pure tosh. There are many more armed police than terrorists in London, and it is vital that they are well trained and responsible. Today we read “Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, who was shot in the shoulder during a raid by police on his home in Forest Gate in 2006, says he and his brother Abul Koyair, 20, were stopped by armed police with one officer shouting “shoot him, shoot him”.” Not so very long ago there was the miserable story of how Harry Stanley was shot dead by police for walking home with a repaired chair leg. This was made many times worse by over 120 Metropolitan Police armed officers walking off the job when an attempt was made to hold responsible the two who killed Stanley. How can people feel safe when armed police refuse to be accountable and put themselves above the law? What makes Kettle think safety means armed police should be free to kill anyone with impunity? Benjamin Franklin might have been thinking of fools like Kettle when he remarked “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

5. There is a threat to liberty from terrorists, and there is a threat from lethally stupid police work. These are linked in a way Kettle has missed. The killing of De Menezes was a failure at every level: tactically, operationally and strategically. Tactically, because even if he had been a genuine threat, he was only intercepted when he was on a train. Operationally, because he was nothing to do with the people being pursued, and while killing him and trying to mop up the mess, there was less attention and resource to deal with the real targets. Strategically, because this killing spread fear and discredited the police, doing the terrorists’ job for them, and helping to alienate ordinary people whose support is vital. Fighting terrorism depends above all on keeping community support. This prosecution is the only real demonstration so far that the UK really acknowledges the gravity of the failure that day; it is a small step to recovering the moral standing and respect that is vital if the UK is to prevail.

That’s just one of many in similarly devastating vein. It’s well worth reading the whole thread, but don’t expect any response from Kettle himself, who’s conspicuous by his absence. Moral cowardice seems to be his bag.

I find iit hard to believe that any thinking person could have written such a fatuous and hollow article and worse, that an editor commissioned it and presumably approved it and paid for it.

Leaving aside his errors of fact, was Kettle trying to provoke, lighting the blue touchpaper and retiring to watch the fireworks? That’s cynical enough with feelings running so high and being deliberately whipped up by politicians.

But if as seems likely he really does think it’s OK for innocent people to be executed ad hoc on the streets by armed squads, on mere suspicion, without arrest or trial, just to keep him personally safe, then he is a disgusting human being.

How’s This for A Comedy Double?

Published on November 2, 2007

The picture the police photoshopped to make an innocent dead man look like a terrorist.

I should be getting on with the comedy double right now- I’m nothing if not a creature of habit – but I just can’t. I’m just too bloody angry.

I missed the de Menezes police health and safety verdict yesterday for the prosaic reason of having gone to IKEA to buy a bed and the first thing I got up to this morning was Ken Livingstone on the Today programme defending overpromoted, self-righteous New Labour blowhard Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan police, who refuses to resign despite having been found guilty (as the personification of the police corporate body) of endangering the citizens he is duty-bound to protect, by a jury at the Old Bailey. (Listen to interview with Livingstone]

This is what Blair said immediatetly after the shooting:

Sir Ian told Sky News: “This is a tragedy. The Metropolitan Police accepts full responsibility. To the family I can only express my deep regrets.”

What Blair says today:

“It’s important to remember that no police officer set out on that day to shoot an innocent man. As the judge noted, the failures alleged were not sustained nor repeated. This case thus provides no evidence at all of systematic failure by the Metropolitan Police, and I therefore intend to continue to lead the Met in its increasingly successful efforts to reduce crime and to deter and disrupt terrorist activities in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom”

But that’s just it: the verdict does provide evidence of systematic failure. ‘Mistakes happen’, Blair says. Was this a mistake?

Police accused of manipulating composite picture of De Menezes

“Scotland Yard was yesterday accused of trying to mislead the jury deciding whether it made catastrophic errors leading up to the shooting dead of Jean Charles de Menezes. The Old Bailey trial heard claims that the force had manipulated a picture presented to the jury which had been intended to illustrate the difficulties officers faced in telling apart the Brazilian victim and the suspected terrorist they were actually looking for.

Last week police produced a composite of one half of Mr De Menezes’s face placed next to one half of the face of suspect Hussain Osman. But Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, told the court that it had been altered “by either stretching or resizing, so the face ceases to have its correct proportions”. The judge, Mr Justice Henriques, told the jury: “A serious allegation has been made that a picture has been manipulated so as to mislead.””

That was no mistake, that was deliberate lying. Even at the trial the Metropolitan Police barrister, Ronald Thwaites QC, continued to smear Jean Charles de Menezes:

… last week, when the Met were in the dock at the Old Bailey, the tone was markedly different. In his closing speech, Ronald Thwaites, QC, the Met’s defence barrister said of De Menezes: “He was shot because, when he was challenged by police, he did not comply with them but reacted precisely as they had been briefed a suicide bomber might react at the point of detonating his bomb.”

Mr Thwaites went on to paint a damning portrait of the dead man: “Not only did he not comply, he moved in an aggressive and threatening manner.” He suggested that De Menezes might have been worried about traces of drugs or a phoney visa. “Did he fear he might have some drugs in his jacket and might want to get them out and throw them away when he was challenged by the police?”

Towards the very end of the trial, Mr Thwaites also tried to make the judge, Mr Justice Henriques, disqualify himself on the grounds that he was “entirely pro-prosecution, unbalanced and totally lacking in objectivity”.

Thwaites also alleged that the victim was a cocaine addict, as though in some way justified his murder.

So much for taking full responsibility.

The murder of Menezes and Blair’s refusal to resign are only the worst in a long list of debacles. The public and the press are calling for Blair’s head, the general consensus being that it’s about time someone took responsibilty for something in public life, and if you can’t take responsibility for sending armed men hyped up on adrenaline to run around on public transport in the rush hour and fire seven bullets into the head, execution-style, of an unarmed, innocent man, on video and in front of witnesses,then lying about it afterwards and smearing the dead man, even going so far as to wphotoshop his picture to make him look more like a terrorist – if you can’t take responsibility for that, then what the hell can you take responsibility for?

But if there has been a defining leitmotif of the Labour years it’s been this, this constant, mulish refusal to take responsibility for incompetence and error , this wilful blindness to one’s own fault and this utter certainty, despite all the evidence to the contrary, of one’s own rectitude. Anything to justify hanging on to power for power’s sake.

To much of the public it’s simple. Blair is responsible for the safety of the public. He didn’t do that, he did the opposite. He should go. Like his namesake the forner prime minister, Blair argues he’s not guilty of any personal wringdoing therefore he’s squeaky-clean and should stay in the job.

Anyone who gets up in the morning in a crowded city and gets on a metro or a tram or a tube system will have seen that CCTV footage of Jean Charles de Menezes’ extra-judicial murder and will have seen themselves in that blurry video, on the floor, scared out of their wits, about to have their brains very deliberately blown out on the carriage floor.

But Londoners have real cause to fear; their police chief thinks that the deliberate murder of an innocent man by his subordinates is not a serious matter enough to resign over. ‘Mistakes happen’.

When a man in charge of an organisation which has the power to shoot to kill and a paramilitary armoury bigger then some army units at it’s disposal has an attitude like that Londoners are right to be worried.

But if Ian Blair does not resign it has implications for all of us – because to other police forces it says do ‘what you like, there will be no comeback’. It pushes the boundaries of impunity yet further. The less that is taken responsibility for the more wrongdoing can be committed. Eventually the piublic becomes inured and cynical and that lack of truist extends to the lowliest pc. There is no policing without at least some form of consent and without it the police cannot do their job.

So someone’s got to pay for this. We need metaphorical blood to expiate the actual blood spilt on the floor of that dusty rush-hour tube carriage. If Blair stays the public will be justified in having no confidence in the Metropilitan police. If the Met can’t protect the public from the Met itself, what use is it against terrorists? Why should the public co-operate with a police force that can kill anyone at will on the flimsiest of evidence and then just walk away?

But to get back to Ken Livingstone, the self-described champion of the poor and oppressed and the alleged voice of the the average newt-fanncying Londoner, who spent over 10 minutes defending this man. Jesuitical doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m still fuming and cursing, even though it was over an hour ago.

But then he can defend Blair. Livingstone’s sitting pretty: he may be up for election but his opponent’s that amiable buffoon, Tory Boris Johnson. He thinks he’s secure for life and above accountability in just the same way all of the other New Labour responsibility refuseniks do.

Horribly cynical as I am I do wonder why Livingstone’s sticking his neck out in the face of popular opinion. It’s not like Ken not to go for the populist option whenever available, and the populist option at the moment is that Sir Ian be hung drawn and quartered, or at the very least handed his cards.

So why is he taking the contrarian position and sticking up for this disgrace of a police officer? I have a theory…

Met chief in phone recording row
Sir Ian also recorded calls with senior officials from the IPCC

Britain’s top policeman is being urged to explain why he secretly taped a phone call with the attorney general.

[…]

Sir Ian has also admitted taping calls with senior officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

An IPCC spokesman said the taped conversations came to light as part of its inquiry into the aftermath of the shooting.

I wonder – who else has Ian Blair got on record and which other incidents might the Met may be able to shed light on? It’d certainly be interesting to find out. :

It’s obvious Blair can’t be trusted to keep private conversations private and that may well worry some politicians enough to want to stay on his good side. Who knows; hat Blair knows may just have some bearing on whether he stays in his job in the teeth of a gale of public opposition.

That’s the trouble with unstrustworthy senior cops who refuse to take reponsibility for their own mistakes and malfeasance – once you’ve lost trust in them for one thing, you’ve lost trust in them for everything, and no dishonesty seems impossible.

[Edited slightly to add links]

Evita North and South

Published on October 30, 20073 Comments

Peronist President-elect of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner‘s election might be said to presage the almost inevitable (she has Murdoch money) anointment of Hillary Clinton to succeed her husband in office, in what seems to be becoming rather a trend amongst a certain class of well-off and well-connected women. Mind you, there’s not a lot of sisterhood on display despite the superficial similarities; Kirchner is not happy to be compared to Clinton:

“Hillary (Rodham Clinton) was able to position herself nationally because her husband was president. She didn’t have a political career beforehand and that isn’t my case,” Fernández de Kirchner said in an interview with CNN en Español, referring to her 30-year career in Argentine politics.

That doesn’t bode well for future US/Argentine relations, does it?

But less flippantly, how did Argentina get to the political point where Peronism is once again in fashion? What happened to the people’s movements born out of the 2001 economic collapse? Bring yourself up to basic speed on the politics of the greater American continent and the contnuing malign influence of US foreign policy with John Pilger’s documentary, The War On Democracy. It’s now up on YouTube in ten parts here: if you have an acccount, load them all into ‘playlist’ and play back to back. Here’s part one to start you off:

Award-winning documentary maker John Pilger suggests that, far from bringing democracy to the world as it claims, the US is doing its best to stifle its progress. Talking exclusively to American government officials, including agents who reveal for the first time on film how the CIA ran its war in Latin America in the 80s, Pilger argues that true popular democracy is more likely to be found among the poorest in Latin America, whose movements are often
ignored in the West.

She may be female but Kirchner is no Michelle Bachelet. I’ll have no truck with the brand of feminsim that says any woman elected is better than none – a woman can govern just as badly and undemocratically as any man and that goes for Hillary Clinton as well as Kirchner. The Democrats and the Peronists both purport to be the champions of the poor, the little guys, the blue-collar and the dispossessed, but both actually work to advance neoliberal economic policy and corporate profit. It’s no coincidence that like the Peronistas both Clintons have adopted the Third Wayas their defining political stance, along with Tony Blair.

Kirchner may have more elected political experience than Clinton but just like Clinton there’s no denying she’s used her husband’s reflected popularity to boost her own quest for presidential power. Both are so firmly wedded to the notion of a corporate state they married it. That’s dedication to a cause, the cause of Evita Peronism.

By the time Nestor Kirchner announced he was stepping down to let his wife run, observers said she had fuller lips, tighter skin and a more lustrous auburn mane, prompting speculation about surgery and hair extensions.

It remains an open question whether this was a personal decision to offset the effects of age, a political strategy to court votes in an aesthetic-obsessed era, or both.

Newspapers gleefully reported that on foreign trips she brought large trunks of clothes and fashion helpers, and changed her outfit up to four times a day. Critics said the makeover was an effort to evoke the magic of Eva Peron, the icon who died in 1952 aged just 33.

Just like Evita, Kirchner’s clothes, shoes, handbags and hair are the stuff of gossip magazines and like Clinton she’s alleged to not be a stranger to Botox. It’s described as vanity but it’s something more insidious. It’s all about the image. masking state corporatism with an attractive, warm and fuzzy media-friendly facade. Don’t look at the policies, look at the hair!

To my mind Clinton’s at the very least a quasi-Evita Peronist. Trading on reflected glory? Check. Image management? Check. Cult of personality? Third Way-ist? Check. Corporately funded? Check. Hawkish on the military and defence? Soft on neofascism and torture? Check…

If the ascendance of Kirchner and Clinton tells women anything at all, it’s that we can only succeed to high office a] by marrying advantageously b] putting a softer, feminine face on the perpetuation of a political and economic system which keeps other women down and c] pandering to the corporate media’s trivialisation of politics. This is no big step foward for women.

This is how The Times described the Argentinian election – ‘Fatty’ v the new Evita in all-girl fight for Argentina” Murdoch himself may be bankrolling a woman for US president but that says it all about what the global press really thinks of women in presidential politics, doesn’t it?

The election of a woman in Argentina and the potential election of another in the US is not a sudden blossoming of equality, it’s the corporate status quo donning a velvet Prada glove over the hand holding the cattleprod.

Because to get back to my original point, that US and Argentinian politics are beginning to echo one another, the ironic thing about all this is that while the US (as Pilger shows) has been meddling in Argentinian politics for years in the cause of corporate world hegemony it’s rebounded and now both countries’ politics seem to be converging. Both have a politicised military, a greedy plutocracy, entrenched and growing social inequality and a fatal taste for the firm smack of authoritarian government. They’re more alike than they’d admit.

The US now has also a falling currency and an economy that’s could nosedive and has the potential to cause untold social disorder and chaos, just as Argentina did six years ago. What’s Hillary’s plan for that, if any? Will we see disposessed Americans selling their all on the streets like the residents of Buenos Aires had to? Americans north and south may find they have much more in common than they think.

Oh well, never mind. Let’s look on the bright side – at least their potential misery‘ll be misery with a kinder, gentler, less wrinkled face.

Draw Your Own Mental Picture

Published on October 29, 2007

The Telegraph:

Man who had sex with bike in court

It does seem harsh, not to mention horribly unjust, that this man’s labelled a sex offender for doing something that hurt no-one. In using an inanimate object (an odd-shaped object, admittedly) as an aid to personal fulfilment, he did something thousands upon thousands of others do perfectly legally every day, (or more often if they’re energetic).

Not only that, he was doing it in what should have been a reasonable expectation of privacy, since he’d taken the trouble to lock the bloody door so as not to offend.

Where was the outraging of public decency? Where’s the contnuing threat to the public? If he was a raper of other people’s bikes that would be a different matter, as he’d have to attack them in the street and disturb the peace. But no, he lusts after bikes in decent privacy. Even if you find it personally distasteful, what is actually illegal about that?