We’ve probably all seen the CCTV of a squaddie being roughed-up by three cops in the road outside a nightclub. The two regular officers were not considered culpable, the special is likely to got to jail. The violence seems not to be the point to me. Police lied in court at the guy’s first trial and have been ‘found out’ by CCTV. The guy on the floor had form for making a nuisance of himself after drinking (like many of us no doubt, whether convicted or not). The CCTV seems to have appeared after the perjury.
I don’t like what Lightfoot did, but would have thought a dressing down from the sergeant present enough. Both the regular officers failed to intervene and tell the truth. The real point here is that our cops feel under so much pressure not to tell the truth and that the CCTV was missed (the best evidence). Dealing with violent drunks is very difficult – what bothers me is we let officers down and have the culture of lying and collusion on evidence and lack of supervision. This leads to a guilty man getting off and police officers (what about the prosecution?) getting in to trouble when really they should not. The two regular officers do not seem to have been charged with just being there allowing it to go on, as the public have been in a number of incidents. Questions about how much lying and skewing of prosecutions is going on arise from an incident that should just have been a simple arrest.
Allcoppedout's Blog 
Your post summarises the position very well from all points of view.
Most of the bad apples and their crimes must be known to colleagues. Perpetuating the cover ups and keeping the rogues in uniform, are officers with a misplaced sense of loyalty and officers with something to hide themselves.
Some detectives I worked with were so dumb they would start to fit up people who were bang-to-rights. Lightfoot, the special facing prison in a GMP case will undoubtedly have been coached to lie. This culture in endemic and even the IPCC is full of it. I suspect it comes from television and a lack of understanding of evidence. Truth is under suppressing fire. They don’t understand signal to noise ratios very well or their responsibility to spot the cases that don’t conform to their stereotyping.
The special constable may well have been told to lie
by those of a higher rank, as this is an old M.O. often used to scapegoat those at the bottom of the ladder.
The culture of lying does not come from television.
It is an old habit, older than TV, and has been used
by men to save their own skins for a long, long time.
Just look to the political breed and the legal system,
and there you will find the root cause.
The “big” men sit smug,whilst the lowly get shafted.
Hogday may not like the Mail, but they have done some good work in recent years, and brought out some truth.
Without the Mail’s good work, Labour may have been re-elected, and that would have been very bad news!
THe two police officers were found not guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in relation to the trial, which would tend to suggest they did not lie in court.
I have a strong dislike of the `Mail` and that dislike is reinforced on this occasion, by the way they have tweaked-up the already bad incident by introducing the `unsung soldier hero victim` element – totally bloody irrelevant. I have family in the forces, one of whom was caught in an IED in Afghan, watching 3 of his mates killed and maimed. But heroes or not, drunks can be a pain in the arse, especially ones with an in-built fighting spirit. I have fought tooth and nail with pissed squaddies, on their first home leave after the Falklands War, some of whom were even nursing gunshot wounds! I had to use quite a bit of force, which grieved me but which was totally necessary. I have also dealt with `red mist` cases and covered up nothing, with the result s being informally resolved. It is amazing the reaction of people when you put your hands up and admit the truth – one of the most disarming things one can do, in my experience. For sure, The Mail should comment on evidence it has uncovered on thug cops, no objection from me when it does. But when they tweak emotions, jibe and waggle innuendo’s, they simply reinforce how cheap and nasty they really are.
They didn’t seem to be so keen to label pitbull-owning Christian Foulkes a ‘soldier hero victim’ did they?
Funny, that…
Hog is right. It’s sadly what we are failing to do enough of. I find the Guardian as bad now on the ‘other side’ from time to time. There is a valid complaint from officers that they are judged by standards no one could maintain and that, if they were, would cause more problems in public order.
Local resolution IPCC-style is nothing of the kind and only encourages more lying and cover-up – but at the same time some complaints are as dire in origin as Gadget publicises. Not easy, but we could be doing much better.
I must admit to reading the Mail from time to time over the last few years.
What appears common in our politics now is the lying.
The lying involved in cover ups!