16 September 2006

Fair Play For Criminals

Yes, I know the Daily Mail has a reputation for being a hotbed of xenophobic, right-wing tosh, but as someone who's faithfully imbibed the left-wing drivel of the Guardian for well-nigh 30 years now, it only seems fair to balance my intake by reading some nonsense from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Besides, say what you will about its content, the Mail frequently contains more entertainment than the dour maunderings of the Guardian or Independent can muster.

But even taken with the requisite grain of salt, this latest "PC run mad" alert from the Mail has to raise an eyebrow. Policemen are to be banned from chasing criminals if the chase might put the criminals at risk of injuring themselves. This from the same bright sparks who just awarded a lucrative promotion to the officer who oversaw the summary shooting to death of an illegal Brazilian immigrant somehow mistaken for a Middle Eastern suicide bomber.

Cressida Dick, the officer in question, narrowly escaped prosecution for her handling of that case, and may still face disciplinary proceedings within her own department. But never mind that, she's a woman, she's believes in "modernisation" of the Police, and, what hey, she's mates with the Police Commissioner, what a surprise.

Besides that, according to her official bio, "Cressida’s policing interests include public order, hostage negotiation, leadership, police ethics and diversity." Well, that's okay, then, as long as she's in favour of diversity. True, giving South Americans the same opportunity to be shot as Middle Eastern terrorists might not be some people's idea of true diversity, but perhaps Jean Charles de Menezes' mistake was in simply sitting there on the Tube while the police rushed up and pumped six bullets into him. If he'd behaved like a proper criminal and run away, ideally in a dangerous fashion, the police would have had to abandon the chase for fear of breaching Health and Safety regulations.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think there are some words missing in the second paragraph.

Larry Livermore said...

There were, weren't there? And as to what exactly they were, I can only dimly recall. I've tried to reconstruct them to the best of my ability, but trust me, whatever I said originally and which then got erased was far more eloquent and pertinent than the corrected version. Pity you won't ever be able to read it. Thanks for the heads up, anyway.