Policing – Page 24

Fire and Rain

Published on July 2, 2007

More devastating than any carbomb

I haven’t blogged over the past weekend because, as have most other Britons, I’ve been following the news about the attempted bombings in London and the incendiary attack on Glasgow airport. From a media junkie’s perspective alone it was an event of note – the photos, posted almost as it was happening, were incredible. And it made a change from the endless rain and floods.

But setting sheer news value aside for the moment I’m sure I can’t be the only one whose first reaction was “How very convenient for Gordon Brown – bloody typical Labour PR stunt, an ‘attack’ in his first week so he can act the calm, resolute leader.” In the light of so many scandals bubbling under, these latest outrages seems all too horribly convenient. Or something very like that.

Two remarkable things happened in the last two days within half a mile of each other, at either end of Piccadilly. One, the car bomb, you have probably heard of. The second you probably haven’t.

This is a straight reproduction of a small article from The Metro newspaper, Friday June 29, 2007
“Mossad Spy” Found Dead

An Egyptian financier accused of spying for Israel has been found dead outside his London home in mysterious circumstances. Ashraf Marwan was alleged to have worked for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad during the 1973 Yom Kippur war with Egypt and Syria. He was accused of tipping Israel off about the war. Police said “He appears to have fallen from a balcony. The death is being treated as unexplained.” The 62 year old son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was found on Wednesday in St James’s, Central London.

The fact that these two incidents are less than ten minutes walk apart does not make them connected. They may or may not be. But I note this, and the list above, to help those who have difficulty imagining that there is any need to consider any possibility other than Islamic terrorism to explain the apparent Haymarket car bomb. Astonishing things do happen in London.
More…

Even the fact that there were (mercifully) no fataiities seems to support conspiracy, such are the depths of cynicism to which New Labour has brought us, with its exaggerations, lies and ridiculous security theatre.

So I fully expected the usual flurry of hyperbolic government press releases and a rash of pointless security crackdowns – No cars within 5 miles of an airport! Exclusion zones around London nightclubs! Round up the usual suspects!- but surprisingly. it hasn’t happened, although the tabloids have been doing their best to whip up public panic. On the whole the government’s response has been unexpectedly rational.So my initial reaction was tempered somewhat by the lack of hoohah.

But now I just don’t know what to think; the pendulum is swinging wildly as new facts emerge.

Peiple have been arrested already, which is good, well done police – but isn’t that speed of arrest in itself suspicious? Then it turns out the arrestees are not British and several are on the run – one is a middle-eastern doctor – and the pendulum swings the other way.

Could this be Saudi money funding terror plots as payback for BAE? Who knows? The policing of terrorism is an area where truth has historically been a shifting thing, construed according to the political expediency of the moment. Consider Lockerbie, for instance.

I will give the new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith credit, though and not just because she’s female. She has managed to come over as calm and competent in stark contrast to her predecessor John Reid, who took trouble to be as threatening and unpleasant in demeanour as possible to mask his essential incompetence and weakness.

(But if you think she’s a real change, don’t – as Chief Labour whip, Smith has been responsible for enforcing MP’s compliance in voting for all Blair’s plans. When it comes to Iraq, she’s up to it in her neck, just like her new boss.)

I just don’t know what those attacks were all about, and neither does anyone else except those involved. Conspiracy or actual attack? Does it really matter? It’s all distraction. It’s the effect that aimed at that’s important, whoever’s responsible, and the anticipated response to the attacks was fear. So I am glad to see that people don’t seem to be giving into it, despite ridiculous headlines like ‘Britain Under Seige’ from rightwing redtops like the Daily Mail.

I mean bloody hell, we’re the generation that grew up under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and IRA violence, when there was a bomb a week and you couldn’t go to a city centre pub without fear of immolation, when planes were regularly hijacked and an Olympic team was massacred. Remember the coach full of military families blown up on the motorway? The IRA, ETA. Red Brigade, Fatah – those were household names. Oh, we took precautions: remember when the streets became a public rubbish dump when all the bins were sealed after Bishopsgate to stop bombs being hidden in them? But life went on. This is nothing. We will not succumb to US-style pissypants crybabyism.

Gordion Brown’s certainly been trying to make the most of it: you could see him yesterday being given the solemn-faced, dramatically-lit interview by Andrew Marr, heavily powdered to hide his 5 o’ clock shadow, three-quarter-posed for the camera so as to look statesmanlike, jowls wobbling with suppressed ’emotion’, doing his best to come over as the solid rock of sanity in a crisis. (Haha. Ahahhahahahaha.)

When I see him do that, the pendulum swngs back towards conspiracy again. But then I remind myself, these attacks are nothings. They’re mere squibs. Whoever’s responsible for this latest bit of terrorist agitprop, a few mad individuals or a grand organised conspiracy, it really doesn’t matter. We need to treat the ‘war on terror’ as the sideshow it is. We’ve got a real threat facing us and it’s bigger than any government plot or terrorist outrage.

The UK in 2050, projected

Europe

To fly from the UK to Italy last week was like crossing continents: Britain’s cold rain gave way to suffocating heat and a ferocious scirocco, the hot Saharan wind, in Sicily. The Fiat car plant was closed after employees refused to work in the heat. Fires were burning in southern Italy, with Calabria (24 blazes) and Puglia (22) worst affected. In Greece, seven people have died. Firefighters and soldiers are battling a fire which has destroyed much of Mt Arnitha National Park, and threatens Athens. Peter Popham

Australia

From the worst drought in a century to the worst floods in decades, Australians are wondering what will come next. Severe storms have battered the east coast, causing major flooding in New South Wales. In the low-lying Gippsland region of Victoria, hundreds of people had to abandon homes and businesses at the weekend after rivers burst their banks. Helicopters rescued residents as floods engulfed houses, barns and paddocks, leaving cattle stranded. Floods have also hit the Newcastle area, north of Sydney, leaving nine people dead. Another attempt is being made to refloat the Pasha Bulker, a coal freighter swept on to a sandbank just off a Newcastle beach three weeks ago.Kathy Marks

Americas

The first days of summer in the United States have seen fire and water combine with devastating effect. Wildfires around Lake Tahoe, California, have consumed more than 250 homes. Fire chiefs predict that the week-old fire should finally be brought under control by tomorrow. Boston broke high temperature records on Wednesday while black-outs in a sweltering New York City stranded a quarter of a million commuters. Meanwhile Texas and Oklahoma, until recently struggling with drought, have been hit with record rains and widespread flooding. Storms in the southern plains left 11 people dead.David Usborne

[…]

The world over, people are getting the message that the planet is ailing. Results last week from an unprecedented poll in 46 countries by the US-based Pew Research Centre showed environmental degradation is the number one concern of people around the world, eclipsing worry even about nuclear attacks, ethnic rivalries or Aids.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” says David Masur, director of PennEnvironment, an environmental advocacy group in Pennsylvania. “We’re not even at the tipping point yet, in terms of the worst of the worst.”

More…

British people have had a taste of the real danger themselves this past week and they don’t like it. About 27,000 homes and 5,000 businesses have been affected by flooding and storms with insurers estimating the cost at over a billion pounds.

It’s gradually sinking in (if you’ll excuse the pun) that we’ve got much more imminent threats to worry about than car-bombing.

FBI Recruiting Stasi Students, Attempts To Ban Academic Freedom. Sorta.

Published on June 26, 20071 Comment

It sounds like a joke – the FBI wants to stop US students going abroad, ’cause those evil, wily foreigners’ll steal their brains while they’re asleep:

FBI wants students to stop travelling

Fears technology loss

By Nick Farrell: Monday 25 June 2007, 07:50

THE FBI IS visiting the nation’s top technical universities in a bid to stop students taking their holidays outside the country.

MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts, have all had a visit from the spooks to warn them about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research. The FBI wants the universities to impose rules that will stop US university students from working late at the campus, travelling abroad, showing an interest in their colleagues’ work, or have friends outside the United States, engaging in independent research, or making extra money without the prior consent of the authorities.

No friends from abroad? Naah, this has to be a windup.

But no, no joke. You can download the guidelines here and they are as draconian as you could imagine. It really is like East Germany all over again:

Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to monitor their colleagues for signs of suspicious behaviour and report any concerns to the FBI or the military.

Could Mitt Romney’s No 1 Guy Be A Potential Serial Killer?

Published on June 22, 20072 Comments

This is a very strange story indeed, and the kind of behaviour one reads about in those serial killer investigation books: it’s the sort of thing Ted Buindy would’ve done.

Why did Mitt Romney’s campaign operations director need to impersonate a police officer?

[…]

Police are investigating one of Mitt Romney’s top campaign aides for allegedly impersonating a trooper by calling a Wilmington company and threatening to cite the driver of a company van for erratic driving, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.

Jay Garrity, who is director of operations on Romney’s presidential campaign and a constant presence at his side, became the primary target of the investigation, according to one of the sources, after authorities traced the cellphone used to make the call back to him

[…]

The investigation comes three years after Garrity, while working for Romney in the State House, was cited for having flashing lights and other police equipment in his car without proper permits.

The New Hampshire attorney general, according to the Associated Press, has also opened an investigation into a report that a Romney aide, later identified as Garrity, pulled over a New York Times reporter in New Hampshire and said he had run his license plate.

Does that sound like normal behaviour to you ? Me neither. Other famouis police impersonators include the likes of murderer Wayne Williams and others (.pdf):

Still, there were definite signs that all was not right with the enterprising young Williams. Despite his intelligence and ambition, he couldn’t make it through college, dropping out of Georgia State after just one year. His dream of discovering the next Stevie Wonder came to nothing, and he gained a reputation as a blowhard and liar—the kind of person who claims to have important contacts and is always making big promises that never pan out. An extreme loner, he had no real social relationships and continued to live with his parents into his twenties. He also began displaying some troubling behavioral traits, including a fondness for impersonating police officers (a common tendency among serial killers), as well as a morbid interest in accident scenes—the grislier the better. Monitoring police transmissions on
his shortwave, he rushed to the sites of car wrecks or fires or even plane crashes, shooting photographs and videos, then peddling them to the local media.

Perhaps they ought to take a look at this guy’s hard drive too.

In the phone call to the Wilmington company, which was recorded by an answering service and obtained by the Globe, a man who identifies himself as “Trooper Garrity with the Massachusetts State Police” complains about the driving of a van owned by Wayne’s Drains Middlesex Sewers of Wilmington. The caller repeatedly says he is a trooper and questions when the driver will return to the office.

“I’m going to get the address of your company,” the caller says during the May 13 call. “I’m going to come down to your company. I’m going to personally issue this driver a citation for both speeding, driving erratic, cutting across.”

“The whole thing was just hinky,” said Wayne Barme, owner of the Wilmington drain and sewer cleaning company, whose wife, Dot, contacted State Police after receiving the complaint.

The act of impersonating a police officer hints at a couple of negative possibilities – either nefarious campaign political purposes, or more chillingly, his wanting to harm individuals by misusing assumed police powers. Neither is good in someone who’s the right hand man of a supposedly serious Presidential candidate.

Doesn’t say anything good about Mitt Romney’s judgement, either.

The Texas Taser Terror: Coming To A Town Near You

Published on June 21, 20072 Comments

Word to the wise: don’t be a diabetic in Texas and call for an ambulance.

Lester Haines in The Register:

Texas cops taser diabetic seizure man

‘We just took care of him’

By Lester Haines

A Texas man who called 911 to request medical assistance for a diabetic seizure earned a tasering from local cops for his trouble, the Waxahachie Daily Light reports.

Allen Nelms, 52, was suffering said seizure “during the early morning hours of April 28 when his girlfriend, Josie Edwards, called 911 to request paramedics”.

A police officer duly turned up at the house on Waxahachie’s east side, “inquired as to what was going on”, then called for back-up. Shortly after, and as Nelms was “in his bed in the couple’s bedroom”, cops “burst in with their guns drawn and yelling at him to get on the floor”.

Edwards recalled “about six or seven police officers kicked the front door in and stormed the back bedroom where she said she could hear one telling Nelms to get on the floor”. Her statement, which forms part of an written complaint made by Nelms to the Waxahachie police department, says: “Allen was shouting, ‘Please don’t do me like this. I just need help.’ Next thing I heard some ‘zing’ noise and Allen was shouting. I asked what were they doing to him. One policeman replied, ‘We just took care of him.’ … After they did their shooting and laughing, they came out [of] the rooms. The paramedics had to pull out the Tasers.”

Nelms claims he was “struck by Taser barbs on his left side, his back and his shoulder” as he went to roll over, and subsequently handcuffed, with “paramedics intervening when the officers began trying to yank the Taser barbs from his skin”. The paramedics removed the barbs, checked Nelms’ blood sugar level, and the cuffs came off. He was neither arrested nor charged.

They called for medical help and got paramilitaries? WTF?

Nelms has contacted Waxahachie attorney Rodney Ramsey, who told the Daily Light he has “filed notice with the city on Nelms’ behalf to preserve all documentation and evidence relating to the incident”. Ramsey said: “This police department has a bad history of disparate treatment on the east side. They’re not treated fairly. They’re not treated justly. I bet the police wouldn’t kick in a white man’s door on Spring Creek at 4:30am and Taser him three or four times.”

Ah, OK, I see what’s happening here: he was guilty of the crime of existing in Texas while black. Oh well, that’s all right then. As you were, officers:

The Waxahachie police department conducted an internal investigation into the matter, and informed Nelms: “A review regarding your written complaint dated May 3, 2007, was conducted. After careful consideration of your allegations we have found that the officers were within our departmental policies regarding the use of a less than lethal force option (TASER) on you during an event at your residence on April 28, 2007.”

And with that he’s supposed to shut up and just suck it up? Attorney Ramsay isn’t letting this one go, though:

Ramsey declared: “I don’t care if I make a dime on this case. I don’t care if this costs me money. I want to know what policy says you can kick somebody’s door down and Taser them for asking for medical help. This is not going to happen in this town anymore.”

Ramsey added that he “wants the names of the officers involved in the incident and that he will renew his efforts to see a citizens review board of police established in the city of Waxahachie, saying that while the majority of the department’s officers are good officers, there are some whose actions are questionable”.

[…]

Ramsey warned: “They better have everything they have on this. There had better not be one piece of evidence that is shredded in this case.”

More lawyers like this, please.

There’s a screaming need for specialist taser lawyers in Texas if the news is any guide; this sickening incident wasn’t the only tragic Texas taser news this week. Lubbock police also managed to apparently set a man on fire with a taser:

Police investigate fiery death of Texan man struck by their taser gun
Last updated at 12:23pm on 20th June 2007

Police in Texas are investigating whether a Taser stun gun that police used to subdue a man ignited gasoline he had poured over himself.

Juan Flores Lopez, 47, died Tuesday at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas.

Police initially used pepper spray when they tried to take Lopez into custody Monday evening.

Then they used the Taser. Some stun guns emit an electric spark when they deliver the jolt of electricity.

The Texas Rangers were also investigating whether a lighter that was on the porch could have contributed to the fire, Lt Bob Bullock said.

“We don’t know what ignited the fire,” police Lt Curtis Milbourn said.

No one else was injured in the confrontation. It was unclear whether Lopez had been charged with anything.

Two of his sons who live nearby said their father had been threatening for months to burn himself and his house.

His wife was seeking a divorce, and he did not want to have to leave the house, the sons said.

‘Neofascist police state’ is a pretty hackneyed phrase, but sometimes those are the only appropriate ones to use – and Texas appears to be a neofascist police state, if ever there was one.

These are just the latest in a whole slew of cases in which various Texas police departments and sherriffs are alleged to have used tasers as the first line of policing. They’re hardly the only state to do this, but they do seem to be producing the most egregious examples of meatheads using weapons first and asking questions afterwards – with predictably fatal results.

But it’s not just Texas and not just America. It’s a British issue too, UK Indymedia alleges:

A 15-year-old boy has been shot with a Taser gun during a police raid in Moss side Manchester.

Police “”claim”” the teenager began threatening officers during the search of a property on Broadoak Road in Moss Side on Monday the 15 year old child had to have a ambulance called after police appear to have used the Tazer on the unarmed child because he was dis-obeying officers after he became concerned at having the front door smashed in.

And Amnesty International reports:

Amnesty International today (16 October) expressed concern after a man died in County Durham, three days after he was shot with a Taser electro-shock weapon and a baton round. Brian Loan, 47, is believed to be the first person in the UK to die after being shocked with a Taser. A Home Office post-mortem reportedly found that he had died of natural causes.

It doesn’t take a degree in jurisprudence, criminology or psychology to realise that if you give people (and people inclined towards militarism and authoritarianism at that) weapons, tell them they are the less-lethal option and then put those people in stressful situations, that they’ll use them.

If it were just the stupidity, perhaps it could be dealt with by legislation banning the sale and use of the device.

Fat chance.

Taser has made multiple millions from producing and marketing cattle prods for controlling the populace and it’s had the help of many prominent government figures to do so: not least the horribly corrupt Bernie Kerik, (who Bush tried to make director of Homeland Security before his exposure) as have a host of other Republican worthies.

WASHINGTON – Bernard Kerik, President Bush’s choice to run the Homeland Security Department, made $6.2 million by exercising stock options he received from a company that sold stun guns to the department — and seeks more business with it.

Taser International was one of many companies that received consulting advice from Kerik after he left his job as New York City police commissioner in 2001, when he was earning $150,500 a year. Kerik remains on Taser’s board of directors, although the company and the White House said he planned to sever the relationship.

Partnering with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and also operating independently, Kerik has had business arrangements with manufacturers of prescription drugs, computer software and bulletproof materials, as well as companies selling nuclear power, telephone service, insurance and security advice for Americans working abroad.

Even the UK police have made money from coercive technology:

THE American manufacturer of Taser, the controversial stun gun, gave the exclusive British distribution rights to a senior serving police officer who helped win Home Office approval for the weapon.

Inspector Peter Boatman had a 50% share in a company that sold Tasers at the same time as devising Britain’s first police training programme for the use of weapons.

Boatman was in charge of assessing the merits of Taser as head of operational training for Northamptonshire police and was regarded as an impartial expert on the weapon.

Since he left the force a little more than three years ago, his firm has provided 1,500 Tasers worth about £1m to 20 British police forces. It is the exclusive UK distributor for the US company, Taser International.

Disclosure of the apparent conflict of interest comes after Taser International, the US manufacturer, was accused of providing American police officers with share options potentially worth $1m.

Police repression is a dirty business all right:

Companies House records show that Boatman took a 50% stake in a start-up company, Pro-Tect Systems, in December 2000. He became a director of the firm on December 5 and resigned three weeks later, on December 27, but held on to his stake in the company.

In February 2001, Pro-Tect received the Taser contract for the UK. Within two months Boatman was acting as an adviser to the Home Office on whether to issue Tasers to British officers. He was “regarded as a national and international expert” on Tasers, Chris Fox, the former chief constable of Northamptonshire, said yesterday.

In December 2001, three months after the Home Office approved trial imports, Boatman publicly rebutted claims by Police Federation officers that Tasers could be dangerous. Boatman wrote “with sadness” to Police Review that “this technology is very effective — more than any other technique, device or equipment for establishing control over violent and dangerous subjects”.

He retired from the police on April 16, 2002. Two days later he was installed as chairman of Pro-Tect Systems. His fellow founding director and friend, Kevin Coles, had been running the firm in the meantime.

More…

The development sale and use of coercive technologies for controlling rebeliious civilians is a big business and a dirty business. If this were just an issue of a a few rogue cops acting outside their remit, then the problem could be solved by better training, legislation and codes of practice.

But there is just so much money involved and there’s so many vested interests in the sale and use of these torture gadgets, that their use will only proliferate.

When shooting an innocent man seven times in the head on a tube train while he’s going about his lawful, innocent private business attracts no opprobrium whatsoever for the guilty officers, then I don’t hold out much hope for any redress against an illegal police tasering.

Much more on police taser incidents at Bad Cop. No Donut!

This Does not Inspire Confidence

Published on August 30, 2006

There’s a good reason why they’re called the plod.

Watch Mark Thomas with a video camera runs rings around a bevy of beefy transport police at Highbury & Islington tube station – it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. This lot couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a bloody war on terror.

I particularly like the constable leaning against the railings smirking. The whole thing has shades of Nobby and Sgt. Colon. Doesn’t it make you proud?