Tuesday, December 08, 2009 

The revisionism of Sir Ian Blair.

In general, once our great leaders and other betters resign from their positions of power, a strange thing tends to happen. Stripped of their main claim to fame, as it were, they become once again reasonable, even likeable human beings. This doesn't apply to the most controversial or divisive figures, such as Thatcher or Blair, who will doubtless continue to be either lionised or loathed until the day they die, but Major certainly, Michael Howard more recently and I confidently predict, Gordon Brown, will all eventually become mere mortals again that don't immediately invoke an almost atavistic sense of hatred.

Another person to whom this doesn't apply is Tony's namesake, Sir Ian Blair. At one point in the distant past I wondered whether Blair wasn't actually the best we were likely to get, despite being such an utter scaremongering tit; as it turns out, I was completely wrong, and Sir Paul Stephenson has, despite the G20 police riots, been the archetypal safe pair of hands. Blair though, despite having been forcibly retired, is determined that he shouldn't be remembered as the man in charge when a Brazilian was shot by his officers and who didn't learn of the fact he wasn't the man they thought he was until the following day despite even his secretary knowing, and is instead attempting to put together a revisionist account of his own time as chief commissioner at the Met. Not about Jean Charles de Menezes - he's clearly lost that battle - but rather of his role in cheerleading for up to 90 days detention without charge for terrorist suspects.

First, he attempts to draw a hardly conclusive historical parallel:

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both," said Benjamin Franklin. Nearly a century later, Abraham Lincoln would disagree: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." That essential conflict remains alive today.

This is hardly comparing like with like. Lincoln faced the biggest catastrophe a nation state can - a civil war. In such circumstances, when the life of the nation can be conclusively said to be under threat, emergency procedures and laws which would never otherwise be considered as proportionate may well be vital. We at the moment face a tiny band of extremists who can be more than successfully contained using the normal powers of the criminal justice system, who pose no threat to life as we know it whatsoever. New threats do pose new problems, but while the threat may be new, the actual danger posed is relatively limited compared to those we have come through in the past.

After the fall of communism, the west believed it had won. Despite what we now know to be al-Qaida-inspired attacks in the US, East Africa and the Gulf, many supported Francis Fukuyama's theory that history had ended. The 2001 attacks on the twin towers suddenly revealed it had not. As the Balkan conflict had indicated, older conflicts were resuming, not with the left-right mutually assured destruction of the cold war but an asymmetric struggle in an age of global communication.

It would be unfair to suggest that this is Blair attempting to be the intellectual. When he says "many" supported Fukuyama's much quoted but rarely examined in detail treatise that history had ended, it's unclear whether he realises that Fukuyama was one of the original neo-conservatives who believed that the end of the Soviet Union was the perfect opportunity to massively extend US influence and power without anyone having the temerity or power to interfere. History had only ended, in Fukuyama's view, in that both democracy and neo-liberal economics had triumphed and were now the only realistic options for mankind. That nations which disagreed with this view could then have democracy and neo-liberal economics imposed on them by force already suggested that this was hardly the end of history, but then Fukuyama himself has since changed his mind, and is even now espousing "realistic Wilsonianism" as an alternative to the less benign neo-conservative he once identified with.

What we do not know is what happens next: whether the last decade will prove an aberration; whether or not al-Qaida will be marginalised and fade into history. There is no doubt that the centre of al-Qaida has suffered many setbacks: those of its leaders who survive are in hiding. However, the group's inspiration and its message remain vibrant, resonating across continents and borders. It can reach not only its adherents but also the lonely and the unbalanced, using new methods of communication, trumpeting the many causes of anger and despair in the world, suggesting new dreams of fulfilment, offering new tools of attack and searching for more, including radiological and chemical weaponry.

So the question is whether, echoing Lincoln, "our case is new". If it is, then it may be better to risk being at the mercy of the state than at the mercy of the murderously inclined. At the very least, it would be useful to hear the arguments of those who believe or believed that we must "think anew and act anew".


Except none of what Blair lists is new, nor are we unable to adapt to it. He also presents the classic false dichotomy: we need neither be at the mercy of murderously inclined or at the mercy of the state. The current limits on detention without charge, which is what Blair is leading to discussing, do not put us at the mercy of the murderously inclined, but extending the limit further may well be putting the innocent at the mercy of the state.

By 2006, Britain had twice been attacked by suicide bombers and the plot to blow up airliners had been uncovered – a plot described by the trial judge as "the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction". We believed that we could not properly investigate these crimes within the period then available for detention.

Strange that Blair doesn't additionally list the case of Dhiren Barot, which he formerly described as a "true horror". Barot planned to construct a dirty bomb using smoke alarms, a crime so terrible that his handlers decided not to bother funding his fantasies. It's also instructive that Blair uses "believed" rather than "knew" or "expected", as those crimes were indeed investigated within the period then available for detention. The 21/7 attackers were dealt with successfully under the 14 days then available, while the "liquid bombers" were charged on the 28th day. Since then, anything longer than two weeks has not been needed in any terrorist investigation.

We proposed an equivalent of the system of "investigative detention" used in Europe – a rolling series of detention periods of up to seven days at a time, granted by increasingly senior members of the judiciary, with prisoners legally represented at each judicial hearing and throughout police interviews. This was necessary, we said, owing to the growing need to intervene in internationally constructed plots at a very early stage, given the scale of al-Qaida ambitions. At such early stages it was difficult to distinguish main conspirators from lesser players, there were language barriers and problems with encryption. We suggested an outer limit of 90 days.

Now this really is open revisionism - the up to 90 day period was never once described as the equivalent of the system of "investigative detention" used in Europe, probably because it isn't an apposite comparison, as the legal systems in which investigative detention is used differ from our own. The judicial nature was only ever used as a fig leaf - only the boldest judges are ever going to openly disagree with the police when they say they need more time to potentially prevent a terrorist attack. Even with the extra time, the police have still consistently failed to distinguish main conspirators from lesser players, with at least three men involved in the liquid bomb plot released without charge after the full 28 days. One of those tried in that case was cleared of any involvement after the second jury trial. Problems with encryption could have been got round used already applicable laws. Even in retrospect, Blair fails to conjure up anything approaching a convincing case.

It seemed to us that this was like bird flu: when that threatened, the public were entitled to hear from the chief veterinary officer, now they should hear from the police. But no: commentators of all stripes said this was the police being political. It was not. It was the police being the police, talking about policing. We should not be seen as street butlers, silent until spoken to.

Except this doesn't even begin to reflect what Ian Blair was doing when it came to discussion of 90 days. He wasn't just suggesting what was needed, or telling the government what he thought was necessary, leaving it to them to make the case, he himself was actively campaigning for the change, as did other officers. The Tories told at the time of the 90 day vote of MPs being contacted by their local chief constables urging them to rebel against the Tory whip and support the government. Again, it's also not an apposite comparison: the chief veterinary officer acts directly as an adviser; the chief commissioner of the Met is in charge of the police, who uphold the law, not actively attempt to make it up as they go along, a very good reason for them to be directly separate from it. It's also the case that the police will always claim that they need new powers regardless of whether they do or not; anything that makes their job easier and which gives them more authority is to be welcomed. It is the politician's job to resist it. The connect between the two Blairs became so close that the dividing line became indistinct. Neither saw this as a problem, and that in itself was worrying.

Still, much of this now feels like the ghost of Christmas past. Gone is the unrelenting paranoia of the terrorist threat; now we instead have the economic threat, much more real and much more damaging than the terrorist threat ever was. Whether we will feel the same way about our upcoming overlords as we now do about our previous ones may well depend on what happens tomorrow.

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Thursday, November 26, 2009 

Adapting to protest and adapting to the government's position.

It's an increasingly rare thing these days for an organisation to conduct a review into itself and actually find that not everything is as good as it could be. For that alone, Denis O'Connor and Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary, with their report "[A]dapting to protest", undertaken following the police riot at the G20 protests, deserve recognition. While hardly a blistering assault upon the piecemeal way in which the different forces police protests, it also doesn't pull its punches. O'Connor finds that there are no clear standards regarding the use of force for individual officers when it comes to policing protests; that there is little attention paid to the use by individual officers of batons or "distraction techniques"; that different forces have a different understanding of the "proper use" of public order police powers, as demonstrated by the climate camp protests in 2006 and 2008, and also at the G20; that some forces cannot even provide a "minimal accredited public order command structure"; that training and guidance is out of date; that there is inadequate training in law, especially human rights, and when it comes to the use of Forward Intelligence Teams; and that inappropriate use of public order powers is widespread.

Equally, O'Connor's recommendations are difficult to fault. He proposes that the police adopt a fundamental set of principles on the use of force that runs as "a golden thread" through all policing, not just that of protests, based around the minimum use; that public order policing across the board should be codified so that the use of powers, equipment and tactics is consistent; that public order training be improved, especially since individual officers are themselves legally accountable for their actions; that the Association of Chief Police Officers should have its status reviewed, especially considering its role in policy making, most notoriously of late designating legitimate protesters as "domestic extremists"; and probably most significantly, keeping communication open constantly with protesters and the public, especially with protest groups' representatives.

All this is meant, in O'Connor's mind, to ensure that the historic principle of policing by consent, as philosophised and introduced by Robert Peel, does not break down. The obvious problem with this is that while it's difficult to pin down exactly when this compact irrevocably broke when it came to the policing of protests, although the report itself notes that the clashes between the blackshirts and anti-fascists in the 30s were far more significant breakdowns in public order than many of our modern equivalents, irrevocably break down it did long ago. Policing by consent does still exist when it comes to the average bobby on the beat, but when it comes to protests, especially those that occur on the relative spur of the moment and when they concern relative matters of life and death, it's difficult for a good-natured and friendly relationship between protesters and those that are in control of them to exist, and to pretend that it can be maintained is relatively naive. Often on these occasions relative control can still be exercised, but it depends on those who are pushing their luck either being told in no uncertain terms to calm down, or on them being arrested, potentially both for their own good and to ensure that the protest as a whole doesn't embarrass both sides. For all the times when the police are rightly criticised for their actions, sometimes even protesters recognise that those amongst them are just out to cause trouble: this was the case back in January, during the protests in London against the Israeli attack on Gaza. Some of the trouble can be put down to both sides underestimating the numbers who were going to turn out, but also down to the police failure to separate those out who were determined to attack the police or property early enough. As much as protesters loathe the Forward Intelligence Teams that indiscriminately film protests for their own records, some of it is justified, if only so that the idiots can be filtered out to the benefit of both sides.

While O'Connor himself can hardly be blamed for focusing on the present, it's instructive that the policing of protests is only now considered controversial, mainly because of how the internet and modern media has ensured that the police (and indeed, the protesters themselves) can be held to account. After all, it's not as if the police have only suddenly disgraced themselves with how they treat legitimate protests; it's been going on for decades, whether you go back to the 70s marches where the National Front was often favoured against those protesting against them, to the Battle of Orgreave, the poll tax riots, the May Day protests of the 90s and early 00s, right up to the Countryside Alliance protest outside parliament during the pass of the fox hunting bill and more recent examples. It's also not just these more notorious cases, but the other, smaller marches, where outrageous police behaviour has often gone completely unnoticed by the national media. One thing O'Connor fails to address is that often it's been the very officers that are dedicated to control protests that have been amongst the very worst offenders; whether the Special Patrol Group or the modern equivalent the Territorial Support Group, these officers often seem to be selected not because of their powers of mediation, but because of their very obstinacy, quickness to use of force and general disdain for protesters of every hue. It may be that officers drafted in to control large protests aren't trained properly, and as a result of probably being as frightened and as uncertain as the protesters themselves can lash out and act defensively, but it's often those who have been specially trained that are the very worst. A special review of those in these groups and an emphasis on facilitating the right to protest would have been especially welcome as an additional recommendation.

The largest hole in O'Connor's report though has nothing to do with the police themselves; it is the influence of government itself upon the policing of protest. It's easily forgotten that this government has been one of the most ruthless at suppressing protest in living memory, that as well as banning protests within a mile of Westminster without prior permission, it attempted and almost succeeded in banning the biggest protest march in this country of all time, the Feb 15th 2003 anti-Iraq war protest, by claiming that to do so would damage the grass of Hyde Park. More recently it has connived with those being targeted by the likes of Climate Camp, directly handing over intelligence on individuals to the companies running the power stations. The support the government has given to the police, on almost every single thing they have done or been criticised over, has been total. Even Ken Livingstone, hardly a prior fan of the Met, defended Ian Blair and his force to the hilt after the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes. When you give such total, unconditional support, and shrink from criticising anything, you invite them to believe themselves unaccountable. To be fair to New Labour when it doesn't deserve it, it's not that this is new; the Tories did much the same, but not to the same extent. Every single new power which you give to the police is abused, most recently uncovered that the granting of the power of arrest for any offence has resulted in the taking of DNA profiles to continually enlarge the database, almost certainly by stealth and without any debate. Unless the government itself decides that protest as a whole is legitimate, and should be facilitated rather than something which it has to put up with, there's little hope of the police themselves introducing such an enlightened stance.

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009 

Don't tase us bros!

The latest figures released on the use of tasers by police forces across the country are starting to look concerning. While the jump from 187 uses between October to December 2008 to 250 during January to March this year can be explained by how the Home Office allowed Chief Officers to decide when "specially-trained" units can be deployed with the weapons, it doesn't explain why different forces are using them far more readily than others.

The most startling are the number of uses by Northumbria police, which since April 2004 has used tasers in one way or another on 704 occasions, 4 more than even the Met has. This is an astounding number, especially when compared to another force of similar size and with a similar urban environment, Merseyside, who also took part in the same trial as Northumbria and which has used them just 76 times in total. One explanation might that more units were trained in their use than in the other forces, but Northumbria's use still seems to be remarkably high. Northumbria claim that their use is highest because they're the only force to train firearm response officers to also use them, and that the rise would correspond with the drop in firearm officers being deployed, in contrast to other forces, but it also makes you wonder whether because officers know this they more readily call for help when faced with problems they would have dealt with themselves before. Only the Met and West Yorkshire actually fully "discharged", as in fired rather than threatened their use or pressed the weapon up against the person on more occasions.

The biggest worry with the use of tasers has to be that when the police would previously have reasoned extensively to subdue someone who was uncooperative with them, or used acceptable, if subjective force to achieve the same result, the weapon becomes the first resort rather than the last, even if used just simply as a threat. Unlike in the US, where the Taser was meant to be deployed as an alternative to firearms (even if, somewhat predictably, no such fall in the use of guns seems to have been noted), police in this country have only ever used guns when the suspect is also believed to have or has used one. That tasers seem to be entering normal police use, and that as a result, their use also becomes to be seen as normal is a cause for concern when the safety of the weapons is far from being certain. As the Guardian leader argues, the exact circumstances of their use, as well as how they were used needs to be recorded to ensure that the above doesn't become the norm. The police blogger Nightjack wrote that most police were approachable and pleasant, it was just that they had started to dress and be armed like "imperial stormtroopers" which worried and put the general public off. The casual deployment of tasers would only make such attitudes worse.

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Thursday, April 16, 2009 

Damian Green and the state of the nation.

For what was meant to be an apology for the ultimate conclusion of spin, Gordon Brown's mealy-mouthed "sorry" was remarkably like a piece of spin in itself. While the press and the Conservatives have been whipping themselves up into a frenzy over something that Brown almost certainly knew nothing about, the decision not to charge Damian Green has been pushed down the news agenda, helped by Brown's sudden decision to express contrition to a camera.

It's a shame, as the Green case is far more indicative of where the nation is going as opposed to where the state of politics is descending. It's the combination of everything which New Labour has ultimately been building towards, encouraged by the pliant tabloid media which demands ever harsher authoritarian crime polices and by their flexible friends in the police, where national security and anti-terrorism supplant everything else, used opportunistically as the excuse for every little abuse of power and every little act of authorised bullying.

Some might question the link between the arrest of 114 climate change protesters before they had so much as thought of carrying out their plans for peaceful demonstrations, the deletion of a tourist's photographs on the grounds that you can't shoot any building, structure or vehicle involved in London's transportation system, the brutality shown towards some G20 protesters and Damian Green's arrest, but they are all representative of one thing: of an overbearing state which continues to grow in power while the individual continues to be diminished and patronised, with their complaints ignored or whitewashed. The key difference in the latter case was that both the police and government overestimated their power and overstepped themselves in imagining that they could arrest someone who was themselves in a position of power, diminished as it was, and not outrage that person's colleagues and as a result the media. A similar thing almost happened a couple of years earlier, except to the actual party of government with the arrest of Ruth Turner, but that was soon forgotten by those who themselves felt that they were still invulnerable.

Not a single person imagined for a second that Damian Green would be charged with anything. Members of parliament don't get charged when it comes to leaks; their stringers and the other little people involved are the ones that usually have to take one for the team. More surprising was that the Home Affairs Select Committee, especially one chaired by a loyalist like Keith Vaz, noted that despite the claims by the Cabinet Office and Home Office, none of the material leaked even approached breaching national security, something confirmed by the head of the CPS, an organisation which seems to be bucking the trend in remaining fiercely independent, first with Ken Macdonald and now with Kier Starmer at the helm. Notable also was that the police's actions were compared to the Keystone Cops, which isn't quite apposite, for the reason that Keystone Cops were meant to be laughed at. No one is laughing at what the police increasingly seem to be getting up to, as incompetent as their actions at times are.

Whether Jacqui Smith did or did not know that Green was personally going to be arrested, and despite my initial thoughts that I believed it was unlikely, I've now changed my mind somewhat, it's still indicative of how the Home Office has changed under Labour. Undoubtedly the change can be linked right back to the James Bulger murder and the consensus which emerged between the political parties that prison works, but the succession of ridiculously hardline politicians made home secretary began with David Blunkett and has continued since. In turn, each has been more ludicrous and more certain of themselves in succession, and all of them have also shared one political characteristic: they have all been Blairites. All have been dismissive in the traditional Blairite way of established procedure, whether it be populist in nature as it was when John Reid declared that his department was "not fit for purpose" or with Smith not apparently caring one jot that she to all intents and purposes wasted police time, still today defending that calling in Inspector Knacker was the right thing to do. None of her predecessors though were so completely hopeless at their job, so thoroughly discredited and as weak as she has become, thanks both to her expenses claims and other piling up failures. That she is still in her position itself is a miracle, and it is surely one which will not survive any coming reshuffle, although as in the past, she will undoubtedly be replaced by someone just as bad and just as opportunist; the job seems to now require those characteristics.

Few will disagree with Damian Green's statement that he could not think "of a better symbol of an out of touch, authoritarian, failing government that has been in power for too long". The Conservatives however offer no alternative whatsoever on the authoritarian front. If anything, they might well turn out be worse on that score when it comes to crime, and their promise to increase the police's powers of surveillance suggests that despite the clamour which is beginning to build regarding the casual dilution of civil liberties, they still don't understand that there has to be a step change in the relationship between the individual and the state. That it took the arrest of one of their own for them to begin to finally grasp that was an indictment of their own failure to read that mood was changing, and it's even harder to believe that once in power they will be any different to Labour in responding to the anguished cries of the latest tabloid headline. One of the things they could do which might encourage the belief that they will seriously examine just how powerful and unaccountable the police have become is to propose a royal commission into their tactics, as first argued by Martin Kettle. If they seriously want the public to believe they will not be as political as New Labour has been, and the signs from Boris Johnson are that they might even be more so, then it's the absolute least they will have to do.

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Wednesday, April 08, 2009 

Accidental death of a non-protester.

Both Shuggy and Chris Dillow are right in pointing out that the police treatment of Ian Tomlinson was far from shocking, as some others have claimed. If anything, the officer who violently pushed him over when there was no need whatsoever to do so was taking part in some of the less dangerous action with the protesters that day. As long as Tomlinson didn't hit his head, and from the video it seems that he didn't, a push like that is only likely to result in grazed or cut knees and hands, along with the temporary shock that comes from being bundled over when you're not expecting it. The cracking of heads which other officers were engaged in all day, causes far more potential for concern. If however you have a weak heart, as it seems Tomlinson did, the sort of altercation which he was involved in with the police can quite easily lead to the complications which he seems to have subsequently suffered.

The entire slow emergence of what actually happened as opposed to the police version of events is also not shocking; rather wholly predictable, following the same pattern as that of earlier events where the police have been involved in inflicting either serious injuries or even death on completely innocent bystanders. The first obvious example is Jean Charles de Menezes, where the misinformation if not outright lies which emerged from the Metropolitan police before leaks from the Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry established that much of their story was entirely false. Confusion and different accounts of what happened are always likely to be the order of the day to begin with, and we should expect that over time that the story will change. Once the police realise however that their original statements about what happened are inaccurate, they should be quick to correct them. This was what they completely failed to do in the case of de Menezes, hence the continuing myths that he had run from the police and had leapt the barriers, amongst others. It's hard not to conclude that half of the reason why the police fail to do this is because they know full well that first impressions and reports colour people's attitudes and are hard afterwards to shift, meaning that those who defend them will have a far easier job. They must have known full well, for instance, that they had not been showered with missiles, let alone "bricks", as the Evening Standard had it while they tended to Tomlinson; as video has subsequently showed, at most two bottles were thrown in their general direction, and the protesters quickly demanded that be stopped. Equally, some of the officers must have known full well that Tomlinson had at least been pushed, if not further assaulted before or after then as others are also alleging. Instead all we heard was that his death was "natural causes", and even up until 6pm yesterday the BBC was still denying that there was any news in his death whatsoever, treating the Guardian footage as a parochial "London" story.

Perhaps even more instructive though as to how far the police will go in denying their involvement in occasionally brutal tactics is the treatment that was meted out to Babar Ahmed when he was arrested. Medical examination showed quite clearly that he had been seriously assaulted despite putting up no resistance, but the Met completely denied any wrongdoing, right up until six years later in the High Court when the commissioner had to shamefacedly admit what had happened so that the officers themselves did not have to give evidence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the officers involved had a cache of complaints made against them, overwhelmingly from Asian and black men, the letters of which had mysteriously gone missing. None of the officers involved appears to have been disciplined.

Nice as it would be to establish a complete pattern, it still doesn't entirely fit. For while the policing at last Wednesday's protest was almost inevitable after the police themselves and the media had repeatedly hyped up the idea there would be violence, at other demonstrations it has been a different story, possibly because of the short notice the police have had of them rather than actual tactical differences. The Gaza protests in January for example were for the most part poorly policed, as well as poorly organised, as clearly no one had expected the numbers which turned up, and the disorder which happened could have been nipped in the bud if the police had stepped in sooner to arrest the troublemakers, for which they would have had overwhelming support to do. At the continuing Tamil protests in central London, the police yesterday foolishly rushed in to confiscate flags which they claimed were emblems of the Tamil Tigers, a proscribed terrorist organisation, when they were instead the normal Tamil flag. On the Gaza protests, the flags of Hizbullah, Hamas and some even claimed al-Qaida were swung, draped over backs and flown with no such intervention from the police. The lack of consistency is striking, and it has to be assumed that the police do what they do when they can get away with it and when they can't they fall back. Tamils it seems are easier targets than potentially hot head young Muslims.

Once you have stripped everything away, the responsibility for the policing of the protests does not however fall on the heads of the cops themselves: it rests with the state, or the government, itself. The practice of kettling, of riot police attacking protesters who were either sitting down or involved in the entirely peaceful Bishopgate climate camp is not just down to the police hierarchy but to the politicians who authorise or even encourage such tactics. As Shatterface pointed out last week on Liberal Conspiracy, during the 80s the left routinely referred to the police as Thatcher's shock or storm troopers. That applies just as much today if not more so, except now they're New Labour's first line of defence. Can the casual deprivation of liberties and the right to protest, such as the continuing ban on demonstrations within a mile of parliament really be separated from the actions of the police last Wednesday and across the country over the last few years? Last Wednesday was just the most visible demonstration of the contempt for the right to protest which has continued to develop. Those watching the scenes, whether of the lone band of idiots who smashed up the RBS branch or of those bleeding from their heads after accidentally coming into contact with police batons will have only taken one message from such pictures: that registering your anger in such a way is wrong, and that if you continue to do so regardless of that fact, then you've only got yourself to blame if you're left with a few bruises. Those who might have wanted to do something similar will have been deterred by the deprivation of liberty they would have undergone, unable to leave when they wanted to, and likely to be hit if they looked as though might be about to do something that they police arbitrarily decide is verboten. For both the government and police, it's a win-win situation.

The one very weak bright spot to take from the emergence of the video showing what happened to Tomlinson is that it has fatally undermined the supposed ban on taking photographs and video of police officers. No one can now argue that such measures are necessary when without such material the truth would have never been exposed. True, it won't stop individual officers from continuing to demand that material be wiped, but such abuse of power is still likely to be given short shrift. The video should also put pay to the idea that protesters with masks are inevitably up to no good; if they are, then the police who cover their faces, as Tomlinson's attacker did, should be subject to the same scrutiny. There needs to be a full, independent inquiry before blame is apportioned, but the Met is once again looking like scoundrels and blackguards, simply because it and the government can neither tell the truth or explain their true motives.

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Thursday, March 05, 2009 

Remembering the case of James Ashley.

Everyone, sadly, knows the name Jean Charles de Menezes. Probably not enough know the name Harry Stanley. Even less probably know about, or considering the length of time since his shooting, remember the name of James Ashley, his family formally apologised to today. His case however shows just how little the police learnt from the tragedy which befell him.

Ashley, it must be said, had at best both an unpleasant past and some unsavoury friends. He had served 2 years for manslaughter and had been involved in a stabbing in the pub, although it subsequently turned out that he had pulled the perpetrator off the victim.

Police intelligence was that there was a large amount of drugs in the house, and that it was highly likely that Ashley would be armed and dangerous. On the 22nd of July 2005, the armed officers that were to shoot de Menezes were told in their briefing that they were likely to encounter individuals that were "deadly and determined" and "up for it", despite the fact that all the failed bombers were on the run and had no further explosives to fall back on. Similarly, the intelligence turned out to be completely wrong in the case of the Kamal family, and while we have never subsequently learned definitively exactly what it was they expected to find in their house in Forest Gate (suggestions included that it was some sort of "dirty" device, or an explosive with some sort of chemical substance), allegations have also been made that the intelligence came from a highly dubious source.

The raid itself occurred in the early hours of the morning, as it did in Forest Gate. This is standard police procedure, as between 4 and 6am is when those targeted are felt most likely to be at home. This approach has the downside that unless the police make clear who they are, and this itself has the downside that it makes those inside attempt to flee before the police have succeeded in breaking in, that the occupants often fall under the impression that they're being burgled. This was what James Ashley thought, as did the brothers in Forest Gate. The other obvious thing about conducting raids in the early morning is the problem of the light: this was crucial in both the raid in Forest Gate and in the one which led to Ashley's death. In Forest Gate, Abdulkahar came pounding down the stairs as the police were coming up them; the officer, with only the light from his weapon for guidance, thought that someone was pulling at his arm and probably due to the bulkiness of the chemical suit he was wearing, ended up discharging his weapon, something that ought to have been foreseen (PDF). In the tragic case of Ashley, the officers had been disoriented by the plan of the house, knocking into an ironing board and also coming across an unexpected communal door. Fatefully, when an officer entered James' bedroom, again in the dark, he thought that James, having been woken and in a daze staggering towards the door, was about to attack him and so fired his weapon, killing him.

James had been in bed and was naked when he was shot. He had no weapon to hand, and only an airgun was found in the subsequent search. Also found was a small quantity of cannabis. He was found not to have links to the drug ring he had been suspected of belonging to. It was, to quote what an officer said to the Guardian in regards to the shooting of de Menezes, "a complete and utter fuck-up."

If this was as far as the fuck-up went, it might not have been so bad. Yet just as in the examples of the Forest Gate raid and the Stockwell shooting, the police either gave information which turned out to be wrong to the media or at worst actively conducted smear operations against those shot. Paul Whitehouse, the then chief constable of Sussex police, conducted a press conference in which he claimed that Ashley was wanted for attempted murder, that the raid was professionally planned and that the use of firearms was proportionate. A subsequent report conducted by Sir John Hoddinott under the auspices of the Police Complaints Authority, the forerunner to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which has never been published, found that Whitehouse had "wilfully failed to tell the truth as he knew it; he did so without reasonable excuse or justification and what he published and said was misleading and therefore likely to injure the public interest." Whitehouse resigned after the then home secretary David Blunkett suggested that he ought to be sacked to restore public confidence in the force. Perhaps the best that can be said for Whitehouse is that at least he made an active decision to lie about what had happened, having been fully informed of the raid; Sir Ian Blair, on the other hand, did not know that an innocent man had been shot on the 22nd of July until the following morning, when apparently even his secretary knew that was likely to be the case. Menezes was besmirched in any case, alleged to be here illegally when he was not, acting strangely when he had not been, wearing a "bulky jacket" despite it being a warm day, when he had in fact been wearing a light denim jacket, and that he had jumped the barriers at the Stockwell station, when in actuality the police running to catch up with him, having arrived late, were the ones who leaped over them, being confused with de Menezes.

Much the same thing happened to the Forest Gate brothers, with the Murdoch press leading the way and eventually having to apologise for their coverage. The Times and the Sun said they had criminal convictions when they did not, the Sun claimed that the large amount of money found in the house had not been explained, when in fact the police had been told repeatedly that they were keeping it there as it's haram (forbidden) in Islam to use bank accounts which accrue interest, then alleged that the brothers had spat at and insulted soldiers outside the brothers, also completely untrue. Finally, the big gun was brought out: the police leaked to the News of the World that child pornography had been found on a computer and mobile phone seized in the raid on the house. It turned out that this material had been on both devices since before they had been bought, second-hand by the family.

If lessons were meant to have been learned from the shooting of Mr Ashley, then they quite obviously weren't; the opposite seems to be the case. You almost have to wonder if it was or still is common police procedure to cast aspersions on the character of those who are unfortunate to find themselves at the heart of police bungles, knowing full well that once you have planted a seed of doubt in the public's mind, many will still believe it even if it subsequently turns out to be untrue. Right up until the final inquiry into the shooting of de Menezes was released, commenters on newspaper articles were still bringing up his supposed jumping of the barrier and that he wasn't legally here. In almost all the cases the police themselves could have corrected the mistakes, if that's what they were, but chose not to. Whitehouse was eventually held accountable, but no charges were brought over the Forest Gate raid, and while Sir Ian Blair was eventually forced out by Boris Johnson, the prosecution of the Met on health and safety grounds only resulted in a fine that the taxpayer had to be pay, while the coroner at the inquest denied the jury the opportunity to decide whether de Menezes was unlawfully killed, although they did strongly criticise the officers who shot de Menezes over their conflicting stories with that of other witnesses. The hope has to be that the next time an innocent person is shot, as they inevitably will be, that the above does not happen again. That however is all that it is, a hope.

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Thursday, February 12, 2009 

Sleepwalking towards a police state.

Such has been the casual but persistent dilution of liberties since New Labour came to power, it's become all too easy to scream about the coming police state, with the argument always focused on the dichotomy between security and liberty, that at times it's been rather swept under the carpet whether at times Labour has specifically intended to reach the position we're currently at. There's no doubt that they have encouraged and abetted, for example, the world's largest number of CCTV cameras, while there is not a single scrap of evidence that they even begin to prevent crime, even if they personally have not been behind the huge increase.

Likewise, when they introduced section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, they may not have intended that the police would routinely abuse it and use it as a power to stop and search when the other applicable authorisations could not be justified, but they must have known full well that whenever the police are given a new power to detain, search or arrest, that it takes a great deal of restraint for them not to routinely use it for purposes for which it was not intended.

With this in mind, it's incredibly easy to be greatly cynical about the new offence created in the latest and greatest "Counter-Terrorism" Act. Contained in section 76 is the criminalisation of "[E]liciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc", which you would imagine ostensibly is intended to stop individuals, such as those convicted of plotting to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier, from compiling information on potential targets, whether it be home addresses or photographs of soldiers themselves. That alone is contentious; what is even more contentious is that this covers not just members of the armed force and the intelligence services, but also humble police constables.

It's rather difficult not to connect this directly to what has become more than just individual, jumped-up officers of the law asking members of the public what they're doing when they're seen taking photographs of almost anything, as has become almost routine for some whose simple pleasures including taking pictures of buildings, or even getting a camera out in the vicinity of children. While this does not directly cover that, what it will directly cover is the photographing of police officers, which has also become something of a point of concern, with those photographed routinely demanding that such pictures be deleted, even going so far as to confiscate the devices if they're digital and doing it for them. This has been especially noted on demonstrations, where ironically there are now almost always dedicated teams of officers, known as Forward Intelligence Teams, who film and take photographs of everyone, regardless of whether there is even the slightest likelihood of violence or the breaking of the law. FIT was originally set up to monitor football crowds for hooligans; now those exact same methods are used to do little more than intimidate peaceful protesters.

In response, the likes of FIT Watch have been set up to give the officers a taste of their own medicine. It could be argued that the archives of FIT Watch could be used by those with less salubrious methods to target officers for far more than just tit for tat gestures, but the chances of this seem to be negligible. Rather, what section 76 does is simply put into law what the officers have already been unofficially practising for some time.

The consequences of this could not potentially be more serious. It essentially means that anyone who comes across an instance of the police abusing their powers and manages to record it can have their evidence destroyed with next to no powers of appeal. It will further empower officers to intervene with photographers regardless of what they are doing. It in effect gives carte blanche to the police to stop anyone from recording almost anything, with the excuse being they themselves might be the ones being targeted. Furthermore, because of the vagueness of the legislation, which is almost certainly deliberate, it's up to the police and the courts themselves to intrepret when there was a breach. It's a recipe for completely disempowering the individual while empowering the authorities of the state to do almost whatever they feel like, with little sanction for appeal.

I've long argued that rather than this country becoming a police state, as some have in the past seriously suggested, what we have instead become is an incompetent surveillance society, built on the false idea and justification that surveillance equals security. Section 76 however moves us on from there: it puts not just the armed forces and the security services but also the police force almost completely above the law, able to control anyone who dares to question their authority through the camera. Richard Thomas, the information commissioner has long said that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society; we now in fact appear to be sleepwalking fully towards that long feared but prophesied police state.

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Monday, December 22, 2008 

Quick, slow, Quick, Quick, slow.

(Not Cap'n) Bob's Interceptor.

It's a fitting tribute to the investigatory skills of our finest anti-terrorism officers that Bob Quick should be so, err, quick in pointing the finger at the Tories for "planting" a story in the Mail on Sunday regarding his wife's car hire business, which he then complained was potentially putting his family at risk, despite the family's home address being advertised on a far from inaccessible website.

This is after all meant to be the man who'll be in charge should there be another terrorist attack, someone with qualities such as remaining calm in a crisis, unflappable, not liable to send in CO19 after another Brazilian wearing a denim jacket. Even if we accept that the Tories have indeed being trying their hardest to gain politically from the utterly foolish raid on Damian Green's office, something which judging by the polls they've failed to do, and have also been putting pressure on the Met to drop the inquiry, the level of paranoia Quick is apparently suffering from to immediately pin the blame on the Conservatives - and not just to do it privately, but to brief the Press Association with your suspicions, accusing the party of acting in a "corrupt way" - shows a fairly shocking lack of judgement for again, someone in his position.

Being in the limelight can obviously do very strange things to you, especially when you have been thrust into it unceremoniously and found yourself at the centre of a furore over breaching the very heart of democracy, as can being concerned for the safety of your family. It does make you wonder whether, as well almost being able to act with something approaching impunity, the police also seem to imagine that they can also say anything, regardless of evidence, and also get away with it. Surely the most ill-advised notion of all on Quick's part was that rather than letting the simmering row over Green's arrest die down over Christmas, as it was always going to, followed by the quiet dropping of the inquiry, he has instead brought all the more attention towards himself and invited the accusations that this just overwhelming proves the closeness of the current crop of senior police officers to the incumbent party of government.

The allegations that Sir Ian Blair presided over a politically correct police force were always ridiculous - chance would be a fine thing - but far more dangerous is the idea that Labour and the police are in cahoots, one not helped by the disgraceful initial lobbying by the police for 90 and then 42 days, which only succeeded in turning ever more of those who might have been sympathetic against it. In reality both the Conservatives and Labour have increasingly kow-towed to police demands for new powers or laws, mainly because they turned the prevention of crime into a battle over who could be the toughest. Having failed to provide total job or economic security, governments have instead turned to the idea that they can provide total personal security as a failsafe, when they can of course do neither. Labour's authoritarianism, especially under Brown and Smith, although how quickly we forget past home secretaries and their own excesses, has been more noticeable because Brown cannot defend it as well as Blair could or simply doesn't have the inclination to, and because Smith, like John Reid, actually seems to relish playing the hard (wo)man, an ultra-Blairite thug when being a Blairite has become deeply unfashionable. Combined with her apparent inability to suffer shame when she blames Boris Johnson of all people for politicising the police, you can hardly blame those who have taken to calling her "Jackboots Jacqui". Thing is, if she knew she'd probably wouldn't mind in the slightest.

Similarly, it would be nice to think that Labour's decision to step back from direct elections to police authorities was because it had realised that was unlikely to increase accountability and instead only increase the politicisation of the police - instead it's hard not to imagine it was because they knew it was hardly likely any of their representatives would be the ones to win the popular vote. All sides, Labour, Conservative and the police need to find a way to retreat from their current positions and realise that this is doing none of them any good, but doing that after all consider themselves to be unfairly slurred is easier said than done.

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Thursday, October 02, 2008 

Blair today, gone tomorrow.

Almost perversely, I take no pleasure whatsoever in the resignation of Ian Blair. Perhaps because it has come so suddenly and without warning, when if he had had any dignity it would have been when it was revealed that he hadn't known that an innocent man had been shot dead by his officers until morning after it had happened, when even his secretary had apparently known.

That stubborn obstinacy to admit to his failings however was something that completely dominated his tenure as the Metropolitan police's chief commissioner. While the execution of a Brazilian man on a tube train the day after an attempted round of suicide attacks was ultimately what brought him down, with its slow but inexorable casting of a shadow over him, this was a policeman who thought that he was a politician first and a cop second. He never ceased to inform the country of just how dark the sky was due to the potential threat of exploding brown people, even while his officers proved themselves almost as adept at causing fear as the terrorists' attempts were amateurish. He campaigned for up to 90 days detention without charge, thought that identity cards were a brilliant idea, and generally put himself about as much as he possibly could.

While you cannot directly blame Blair personally for the smear campaigns against Jean Charles de Menezes and secondly the Kalam family, he was ultimately responsible for the actions of his officers. What he can be directly linked to was the decision to plead not guilty to the charges brought under the health and safety act, especially when so many other senior officers pleaded with him to take the hit and get over it. Again, even this wouldn't have been so bad if he had instructed his lawyers not to be aggresive and instead defend the Met purely from the operational point of view, that it had been a dreadful mistake in an incredibly hectic and uncertain time, but they didn't; they went straight for the jugular. Jean Charles de Menezes was according to Ronald Thwaites QC more or less asking for it: despite never being challenged by the police, Thwaites claimed that he had failed to comply with them; that he looked like the suspect, when his skin tone was completely different; that he was aggressive and threatening when he acted just like every other commuter that morning, as the CCTV showed; and that he might have acted in such a way because he may have thought he had cocaine in his pocket, even though he hadn't.

No one with absolutely any feeling for the de Menezes family would have argued such a case, but Ian Blair somehow imagined it was appropriate. Just like other things he thought were appropriate, such as recording a call he made to the attorney general without permission, as well as ones to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The IPCC in fact undoubtedly delivered the most telling criticism of him: that if he hadn't, as soon as he knew a man had been shot dead by police on 22/07/05, wrote to the prime minister asking that the IPCC be stopped from launching their investigation into the death of someone at the hands of the police, as they are legally required to do, then many of the things that subsequently happened that resulted in the prosecution against the Met may not have occurred. There was never any evidence that Blair was trying to cover anything up, as after all, he was completely out of the loop. It was just a typically ignorant, short-sighted move, delaying something that would have had to be done at some point as a matter of course. That delay effectively left him a dead man walking.

I take no pleasure, not even schadenfreude, not just because it sets a precedent where the London Mayor can effectively veto the choice of the home secretary, not to mention the MPA, further politicising the role, but because as bad as Blair was in so many ways, there's hardly a whole bundle of talent waiting to take over from him. And as much as he was potentially corrupt, constantly scaremongering, interfering in political discussions and out of his depth, he also was probably the most liberal, at least on general policing and on encouraging ethnic minorities to join the force, commanding officer the Met has ever had and is now likely to have for quite some time. Despite his apparent personality clashes with both Ali Dizaei and Tarique Ghuffar, he started the move towards a more representative Met, and no one I think can begin to suggest that was anything but a good thing. When you consider that the other most senior police officers, or at least publicly recognisable ones of late have been Lord Stevens, Andy Hayman and Peter Clarke, all of them as either convinced of the sky falling as Blair was or in the case of Hayman, just as guilty as Blair over de Menezes whilst also accused of siphoning off money, then it doesn't exactly fill you with hope that the replacement will be any better. Celebrate the demise of Blair if we must, but perhaps as with what we got after the other Blair, we might come to rue what we wished for.

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Friday, May 23, 2008 

Don't panic, but he might be Islamic!

So, a man walks into a Giraffe...

Err....

It does seem almost like a joke, doesn't it? Guy chooses a Giraffe restaurant, of all places, to go in (the one here advertises "global burgers" and is probably fair-traded and feng shuied out of the stratosphere), orders a drink, then goes to the toilets and explodes. Still, it was nice of this not quite Mr Creosote to go pop out where it was unlikely anyone else would have got hurt, wasn't it?

You also have to hand it to the police. The explosion took place at around 12:50 this afternoon. By just before 10, the police had managed to investigate to such an extent that they felt confident enough to know exactly why Nicky Reilly did what he did: apparently he is a recent convert to Islam, suffers from mental illness, and, in their words, was "was preyed upon and radicalised." That's a pretty decent turn around for any investigation, and the police's decision to announce their initial conclusions before any charges have been laid, and before the dust had even settled can only be welcomed. 42 days? Apparently all they really need is 42 hours.

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Saturday, February 23, 2008 

Bizarro tabloid world.

There were calls last night for the abolition of calling for the abolition of the death penalty to be overturned after the latest horrific murder case to shock Britain reached its conclusion. As the killer of Sylvia Miller was sentenced to life imprisonment, her mother Edith Miller spoke out to reporters.

"Actually, I feel that justice has been done. It's unlikely that my daughter's killer will ever be released, and although I can never forgive or forget the immense pain he's caused to our family by taking away our beautiful daughter, I also don't see what putting him to death will achieve. I believe in justice, not vengeance, and I also don't believe that even if we had the death penalty it would have made him think twice before doing what he did."

In another surprise development, the police said that they were actually completely satisfied with the way the DNA database was currently working, and that they saw neither the need to extend it to encompass the entirety of Britain's population or to take samples from children as soon as they're pulled out of the womb. "Doing so would surely be one of the first steps towards a true police state, where you're presumed guilty until proved innocent," said PC Politically Correct, who then went off to inspect his recently delivered politically correct brigade new squad car. "Instead of being equipped with a loud, noisy siren, this new vehicle is instead fitted with an ice cream van's music player, which is intermittently interrupted with the word "police" whispered lightly so as not to disturb anyone," said the officer (cont. page 94)

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Thursday, February 07, 2008 

Boozing this holiday? The police want a round.

If the government is trying to look like a puritanical, reactionary, authoritarian load of killjoys, then it's certainly been remarkably successful of late. What else to make of the latest knee-jerk plans from Jacqui Smith and the Home Office?

The majority of Britain's 13-year-olds have drunk alcohol, marking a worrying "tipping point" for underage drinking, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, warned yesterday as she promised to step up enforcement action.

I didn't realise that alcohol had suddenly turned into the devil weed where a single sip is enough to turn you into a drunken yob liable to kick someone's husband to death. Smith does realise a decent proportion of those 13-year-olds would have only have drank with parental supervision and not binged, right? I thought the whole point of relaxing the licensing laws was, apart from greatly enriching the alcohol industry and clubs and pubs, to attempt to introduce a continental culture where they don't drink just to get smashed and get smashed only. It's either failed, or Smith's forgotten it in a blaze of attempting to react to tabloid apoplexy.

Smith used a Home Office conference on alcohol enforcement in north London to warn of the dangers of underage drinking and confirmed that she was prepared to tighten 10-year-old police powers to confiscate alcoholic drinks from under-18s in public places if changes were needed: "I will listen to the police and give them extra powers to make it illegal for under-18s to drink alcohol in public so that they don't have to prove reasonable suspicion, if needed," she said.

She announced that from next week a new £875,000 enforcement campaign will get under way over half-term to confiscate alcohol from under-18s drinking in public places. A similar campaign which ran in 23 local police divisions last autumn led to 3,700 litres of alcohol being confiscated - 6,500 pints - and this year the campaign, which will run from February 9 to 24, will take place in 175 local police divisions across England and Wales.

In other words, people who are breaking no laws as long as public drinking isn't specifically prohibited, as it is in certain areas, and in most cases will also be drinking perfectly responsibly without bothering anyone else will be threatened by the police for no specific purpose other than for Smith's political advantage. It won't just affect those who are underage who are drinking in public, but also those that are over 18 but who aren't carrying ID and unable to prove their age. It's the perfect kind of action for which the police will be completely unaccountable that's bound to cause more problems than it solves, angering those who've committed no crime and punishing them in the pocket. Labour hates being accused of nanny statism and the wagging finger mentality, then it comes up with this sort of illiberal nonsense. Leaving the kids alone has never been more out of vogue.

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Thursday, January 31, 2008 

Sussed out.

There is little more nauseating sight than politicians queueing up to attempt to outdo each other. If you were still harbouring the belief that New Labour under Gordon Brown were going to or had abandoned the policy making by headline way of governing, then yesterday's pathetic display by both Brown and the Conservatives ought to have been enough to shatter that impression once and for all.

The Grauniad's Alan Travis summed the day's events up succinctly, but it more or less came down to this. Cameron gives an exclusive interview to (who else?) the Scum, promising that police will be encouraged to use their powers to stop and search far more frequently, by abolishing the "foot-long" form they have to fill in when they make one and having to have the permission of an inspector or above to make random searches in a specific area. The government instantly replied that was exactly what it was about to do as well, using the Mirror, and more or less making clear that was what Ronnie Flanagan's report on cutting police bureaucracy is also going to conclude. This most pitiful battle royale continued at prime minister's questions, and ended in a similar stalemate.

Cameron's actual interview with the Scum is slightly more conciliatory than it appears at first sight, saying that he will consult with communities on the powers, although whether he'll agree if they come to the wrong predestined conclusion is doubtful. Cameron's argument though more or less amounts to this: I know what's best, and whether you like it or not, you're going to take the medicine.

This is not about race. It’s about stopping crime and reducing the number of victims of crime. The statistics are undeniable and it’s clear by carrying out more stops and searches it is the black and Asian communities who will benefit the most.

I know this is controversial but Britain has changed. We cannot solve a 2008 problem by looking at it through 1980s eyes. It’s a critical debate and one we have got to confront.


The statistics are indeed undeniable. Compared to whites, black and Asians are six times more likely to be stopped and searched. You can argue all you like about whether this is because there's more crime in areas with a higher "ethnic" population or otherwise. I also don't think anyone will deny that the police have changed to a certain extent, thanks partly to the Macpherson report and due to the institution of the IPCC, for example, and also natural wastage, with some of the older guard retiring, but you perhaps ought to ask the black and Asian men routinely stopped in certain areas simply because they're driving a "flash" car for their view on whether the police have changed. As the priest on Newsnight last night said, the first few times those who have been continuously stopped accept it or write it off as acceptable and understandable; when it gets to the fifth or above it's when they start getting angry.

Perhaps far more pertinent than the initial objections based on the proportion of how many black and Asians are stopped compared to whites is another simple fact bared out by statistics. Stopping and searching is about as blunt a weapon against crime as there is, which only very rarely results in charges being brought; what it offers is a deterrent, not anything even approaching a solution, and as a deterrent it's one that turns attitudes against the police that are often never won back again.

But this isn't just a race issue. It's a class issue, it's a youth issue, it goes to the very heart of the debate on the casual slide towards authoritarianism. It's surely not a coincidence that the least likely people to be stopped and searched are white, middle-aged and middle or upper-class, and they also just happen to be the overwhelming occupiers of the Westminster village and the upper echelons of the media. The most offensive thing is that Cameron thought that if he dressed up in the clothes of being concerned about the "black and Asian communities" that they would welcome the de facto reintroduction of the sus laws with open arms. Sure, come on in, shake us down, it's for the
children. This was by far his most laughable argument:

"This is a moment in our history when we have to wake up, sit up and have massive social, political and cultural change. We are never going to deal with it unless we free the police to do far more stopping and far more searching. I am quite clear the current rules have to go."

Every politician has to pretend that this latest outrage demands complete change, so we can't really object to that. What is objectionable is that he somehow imagines that it's the police or stop and searching that will bring about any change whatsoever, except for the worse. He says forget about the 80s, but he surely needs to do the opposite: he needs to learn the lessons from the 80s and realise that those days aren't gone by a long chalk. The clichéd quote is that those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, but that sums up what Cameron really ought to do.

Is it really too much to ask that instead of looking for short-term, self-serving solutions designed for political gain, that we invest in intelligence-led policing that targets the criminal rather than the poor sod who just happens to be walking down the street as the plod also happen to be? Today's report in the Guardian from Stockport provides something approaching a model, but it's one that doesn't allow for a soundbite to give to the Scum. That the Tories and the populist press are going for such measures is understandable, that Labour, faced with crime coming down is even contemplating the bringing back of open discriminatory police practices shows that they've abandoned any pretence of correcting the numerous Blairite failings.

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Monday, January 07, 2008 

Hands off Lionheart.

Both Tim and Anorak News link to Lionheart, a blogger threatened with stirring up racial hatred, presumably although not explained to him because of the highly anti-Muslim tone and rhetoric of his posting.

The slightest glance at his site will show that he and I don't exactly share the same views. Despite that, there is nothing on his site that should be in way deemed to be illegal; it's fairly run of the mill anti-jihadi anti-Muslim sentiment, with a local flavour based on happenings in and around Luton. If we can tolerate behaviour like that in the Dispatches Undercover Mosque documentary, we can quite easily deal with the other end of the scale. He is in any case only to be interviewed over the matter, has not yet been charged, nor is there any suggestion that he will be.

In any case, solidarity.

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