Another Police Shooting Goes Wrong

I’d like to see a good percentage police patrol vehicles carrying a rifle and someone trained to use it.  In a better world I’d rather see an unarmed police force, but we’re going from bad to worse.  The basic idea is to give officers and the public confidence the right kind of back up can be brought in quickly when nutters of criminal and terrorist varieties kick off.

There’s a sad history of shootings going wrong.  Duggan and Grainer look to be part of this, but so was the awful accident in training that killed Ian Terry.  There is always a price to pay in practical matters.  Many believe we can’t properly arm our police for fears of escalation – but this ignores the stresses of working as a cop, or being innocent participants in some killing spree, without speedy containment.  There is a wider story than the odd sequence of bungles.

The Grauniad has just produced this piece of dross on Grainger – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/11/girlfriend-accuses-police-fatal-car-shooting – and much of the problem from Stockwell, through Duggan and on to this concerns utterly false reporting and the lack of ability to state the honest case quickly, for a variety of legal and PR ‘reasons’.  Our sub-judice laws are antiquated and based on silly ideas of what will prejudice a fair trial – as in Leveson and the Akers’ testimony.

Justice delayed is justice denied and we should allow quick and accurate reporting – indeed insist on it – and ensure we have jurors capable of making decisions on evidence in court, rather than turkeys swayed by earlier barking rot in the media or for that matter allowed in court as in Nico Bento and the well-known Irish cases.  The current system encourages gossip and for police and public bodies to engage in secrecy under the claim they have to wait for the day in court.

We don’t know why Grainger or Duggan were shot or even de Menezes.  We do know GMP even killed one of its own in training and along with a catalogue from around the world know officers are ramped up and will make mistakes.  In one incident, a black detective was shot 13 times by his own (he lived).  I was involved in some very farcical activity myself and have no faith a court and jury could understand why a weapon might be wrongly discharged and  what the pressures of not taking a shot can be.  Can one, for instance, shoot a terrorist running away, in order to protect the public in the future?

Our laws need bringing up to speed in a number of areas to include the necessity of quick statements of facts within days of incidents that cannot be ruled as  prejudicing future trials.  The trials of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four were clearly prejudiced by Irish hysteria and god knows what happened in the Bento case  in which judge and jury were convinced by claptrap expert non-evidence.  This had nothing to do with the press reporting facts in an early delivery of what the prosecution case was.

If Grainger has survived, could he possibly face a fair trial given his record has been made public?  Can the others arrested given we know this was a suspected armed robbery?  The answer is ‘yes’ – and so can various journalist managers after Akers.  There either is evidence or not.  That many people have no clue what evidence is and believe gossip, religion and other rot is always a matter for a court – sadly our courts aren’t particularly good at determining evidence themselves, with judges who would  struggle with O level chemistry poncing on about which forensic evidence to believe.  Denning called utterly crap evidence good against known standards and he is hardly alone.

My contention is our cops are being put through fear on a regular basis that wouldn’t be there if we had a more honest system and could trust to wider firearms issue.  In the way of this is the fear of telling the truth quickly when something goes wrong, including the ludicrous story of shouting ‘armed police’ at Stockwell and the branding of at least 17 witnesses as muppets incapable of hearing it — when the obvious need was for quick shooting to prevent a terrorist pushing the button rather than giving him reason to do so – except he was just an innocent man hyped by a trail of incompetence into what he was not in the shooters’ minds.  The focus on the shooter is a mistake and full of gossip-based idiocy.  We need a very different debate.

 

 

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Another Shooting By Police

Details on today’s incident are few.  Apparently some attempted car thief with a large bladed weapon was shot.  In years gone by we had to put ourselves at considerable risk and the likelihood of PTSD dealing with such creeps.  I’m not against them being gunned down instead.

I am concerned that the IPCC haven’t even (because of our dud legal system) told us the evidence on Duggan and this incident may take as long for what truth can be told to be out.  I believe the routine issue of one rifle per car is held back because of fears the complaints system is useless and officers don’t have the speedy back up that should be there for them.

More Problems For (I)PCC On Duggan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/20/mark-duggan-shooting-watchdog-panel

Two people have resigned from the Community Reference Committee set up by the IPCC after the killing of Mark Duggan and the riots sparked off by the event.  The allegations in the post above are dismal if true.

Perhaps the most damning is the statement that the IPCC Commissioner involved told CRC members 3 police officers gave a statement that a sergeant had been seen to throw the gun Duggan was supposed to be carrying to the spot where it was later found and later told them no such statements existed.  It’s more or less impossible to think of any reasonable excuse for the sergeant’s actions or to explain the lack of an arrest of the sergeant.  Quite how you can mislead someone on such a matter is also inexplicable.

We now seem to know that a potential murder scene (almost one of a police officer too) was easily compromised by the taxi Duggan was traveling in being moved and the brought back – flouting everything I know about crime scenes and yet apparently ‘authorised’ by IPCC investigators who hadn’t even made it to the scene, and that Duggan was under some kind of surveillance and allowed to pick up a weapon and travel with it.  Though we can’t be sure.

About the only thing we do know for certain nearly 4 months on is that Duggan’s death and the piss poor handling of the investigation caused riots across our cities.

This is not, as the IPCC would have us believe, a complex enquiry.  The players and the scene have been known since the outset.  A detective sergeant and a couple of jacks plus a SOCO should have been enough.  Early individual statements from officers at the scene (not colluding) should have been a must (the IPCC is so toothless it can’t even do this).  If a cop had been shot by Duggan most of the non-forensics would have been done within hours, statements within 24 and a charge read out the morning after.  The Commissioner seems so hapless she didn’t know even essential features of the investigation weeks into it and made up some that were untrue.

You wouldn’t find me anywhere near community referencing, but you could get me out of the office or bed to talk to a crowd of people in the circumstances of August 4th.  I wouldn’t do the job at all under the obvious remit for pussies in effect.

What I’d suggest is the scraping of elected police chiefs and letting us elect some regional oversight people to direct complaints and improvement with a small number of hardened investigators who would nick any “sergeant seen throwing a gun into a crime scene periphery”.  Of course, some will think we are getting no more than the usual community referencing porkies, but those of us who do think like this from time to time don’t go a-rioting.  I would say though, that police and IPCC people had enough time to spin false tales to the press and this means there was time to put together a truthful story to tell the putative rioters and the wider public.  If the nonsense on an exchange of fire and the rest came from officers involved in the incident, there is more gloom ahead.

IPCC Bungle On At Tortoise Speed

Whatever might the following mean?

“The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is to independently investigate the steps undertaken by Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) officers in relation to an investigation of an alleged assault, involving a firearm, in late July 2011.

As a result of the MPS investigation, an individual has been charged with offences relating to the firearm and alleged assault.

The MPS voluntarily referred the matter to the IPCC after tests suggested the non-police issue firearm recovered from the scene of the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan on 4 August 2011 could have been the one used in the earlier alleged assault.

 IPCC Commissioner, Sarah Green, said:

“Our investigation will consider whether all investigative lines were promptly identified and acted upon by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service and to what extent, if any, the conduct of this investigation may have impacted on the supply of the firearm found at the scene of the shooting of Mark Duggan.

“We have informed Mr Duggan’s family of the situation today and IPCC family liaison managers continue to be on hand to support Mr Duggan’s family while investigations continue.

“As an individual has now been charged with offences in relation to that police investigation, we cannot provide any further information at this time.”

The MPS referred the matter to the IPCC on Monday 14 November 2011 and an assessment has been concluded resulting in the decision to undertake an independent investigation”

I thought the IPCC was investigating the Duggan shooting – obviously so badly that the Met have had to refer a relevant matter to them?  Surely one would expect this to simply be a matter uncovered by the IPCC investigators?  It happened before the Duggan killing – who didn’t tell them straight away.  It’s time for some sackings now, but who can say not cooperating with the IPCC is wrong after Blair denied them access at Stockwell?.

There are any number of possibilities on the non-police weapon, from Duggan carrying it about after it has been used in another criminal incident (dumb but done) to it having been planted at the scene of the Duggan killing.  What I detest and can see no reason for is the manner in which this kind of information is released.  Our notions of sub judice are long past sell by date and in need of review.  The IPCC or police can’t flout them as they stand, but the ground itself is dangerous.  Just as Duggan’s killing led to the march that led to the riots, this could too.  One hopes not.

It is now more than three months since the Duggan killing – one that almost killed a police officer from assumed friendly fire too.  One appreciates matters do not proceed at all like CSI (which is crass nonsense) – yet we do not seem to have any means to properly investigate in an appropriately open manner, reported in a way we can trust.  This is in part the British disease of secrecy and across the world a problem with enquiries into potential police wrongdoing and incompetence.

What’s at issue in matters like this is less the probable fantasy that Mark Duggan was gunned down and a ‘Saturday night special’ left to confuse any evidence trail, but the general problems we have with fair ways of getting truth out and for us to be able to trust in fair investigation.

We have had enquiries into Iraq and yet another one is yet to conclude.  This is years on and I have never understood why we went in to Iraq or Afghanistan and don’t meet anyone else who does either,  As someone who teaches economics in universities I don’t have a full understanding of what I think is looting by rich people, though I’d say I do know enough to say the economics presented by politicians and media is based on a quasi-religious farce that is a cover-story for the looting.

One might say that we should be able to rely on court reporting and the various inquiries and should just have patience.  This barely fits with history in any depth, other than that written by victors etc.  I suspect the real problem is we can demand nothing from democracy.  We now demand those arrested tell their story against not being believed in the future (oversimplification) – yet allow those in authority to delay and deylay until “enquiries” are complete – a point often ever deferred with enquiries in secret and conducted by people with interests and bias we are expected to take as ‘objective’.

There are better and faster ways.  We need to establish and build them into a working constitution.  That we can’t wake up and smell the coffee over matters from nearly four months elapsing with us no further enlightened on the death of one person and the near death of a police officer, are waiting until January over a Border Agency farce and have so little conception as a populace on how reasonable equality went so badly wrong in the hands of paid-for politicians and banksters – or have so much coverage of a soccer player calling someone black and so little about vulture funds stealing millions from poor people who live in the Congo (also black) through banks in Jersey – all strike me as to do with a justice system that is intentionally inaccessible, expensive and slow. I suspect the reasons for wanting to restrict what can be said to courtrooms and equivalents are a problem for democracy.

It seems we can’t trust the public, when acting as jurors, with information such as Tabak looking at the pornography of strangling women the night before he put his hands round Jo Yates’ neck – yet could expect them to exclude ‘Duggan the hood’ reporting on deliberation of his killing and the near killing of a police officer by another police officer.  My sense of it is we need something less archaic in place on what can and should be in public scrutiny.  There is no scientific evidence I know of to suggest judges’ instructions and the system of evidence in courtrooms makes anyone more objective – rather the opposite.  We still allow eyewitness evidence and credibility, knowing both are highly likely to be wrong.  Where is the independent assessment of IPCC reports?

The legitimisation crisis continues.  I have no idea whether the officer who shot Mark Duggan and nearly killed his fellow officer is culpable of anything.  I’m happy for courts to decide.  I’m not comfortable with, have all these been traced an investigation that has taken so long to decide where charges lie and seems to have missed relevant material or had this hidden from it.  Given the non-police issue weapon found being previously subject to likely police seizure from criminal activity or amnesty, have all these been traced?  Was this basic enquiry done at all given the way this chestnut seems to have been passed on? We could be told about this and should be.  The rest needs social and legal changes, including to the IPCC remit – but is essentially about the secrecy we have made habitual.

If Mark Duggan has survived and was subject to criminal charges, one line of enquiry essential to his defence would be the discovery of similar weapons handed-in to police that cannot be reliably traced to destruction, or worse, the actual weapon turning up in police hands and supposedly destroyed.  One would expect a paper trail.  Has this been done?  It would seem not on the basis of the IPCC having to be informed about this other matter.

 

A Short Introduction To Literature On Police Corruption

http://www.belui.ru/Doc/Mejdunar/Angl/33.pdf – full text Home Office

http://www.popcenter.org/problems/street_prostitution/PDFs/Newburn_1999.pdf – full text Home office

http://www.springerlink.com/content/vv5x0143017n1541/ Maurice Punch

This article has two themes. Firstly, that police corruption is not an individual aberration of an incidental nature that can be readily combated with temporary, repressive measures. The ‘new realism’ on this maintains that corruption and police misconduct are persistent and constantly recurring hazards generated by the organisation itself. Secondly, there is consensus on effective measures to tackle it and to promote integrity. Ingredients are strong leadership, a multi-faceted organisational strategy, a well-resourced internal affairs unit, proactive techniques of investigation, and persistent efforts to promote professional standards. The essence is a judicious and sophisticated balance between negative and positive social control. Policing is about the rule of law and due process: corruption and other forms of police deviance undermine the legitimacy of the police organisation and by implication the state. A ‘clean’ police is a crucial barometer of a healthy society. One can have few illusions about the difficulty of achieving this but a comparative review of the experience in four societies – USA, Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands – provides clear indicators about reform, control and leadership in fostering integrity and in tackling corruption.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/gpas/2003/00000013/00000002/art00004

ROTTEN ORCHARDS: “PESTILENCE”, POLICE MISCONDUCT AND SYSTEM FAILURE*

The literature on police corruption tends to be dominated by North American studies of widespread “grass-eating”. By contrast, this article examines scandals in three European societies (Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain) requiring analysis at the system level. In all of these instances, police deviance was unlike much of that in North America: there was either gross failure in the system to perform adequately or systemic rule-bending to achieve formal or informal institutional ends. The cases reveal that misconduct and/or failure to perform fostered significant scandals that implicated others within the criminal justice system and even beyond it. Understanding such upheavals requires cross-cultural attention to the specific social-political context. In addition, reform of police and justice agencies after major scandal demands proposals at the system level. Institutions often rationalize excesses with the “rotten apple” metaphor (human failure is the cause and can be swiftly rectified by removal). Here, the systemic emphasis is conveyed by the alternative metaphor of “rotten orchards”

Police Corruption: Deviance, Accountability and Reform in Policing – book, Maurice Punch:

The book portrays police corruption as consisting of many deviant and criminal practices in the context of policing that may change character over time. Corruption is defined in a broad, multifaceted way that has the common thread of abuse of policing authority and the trust of the community. Its most serious forms involve criminal conspiracies that use specialized professional knowledge, contacts, and power to both commit crimes and evade detection. Typologies of corruption are identified, along with the forms of corruption that emerge in diverse policing environments. Also discussed are the pathways officers may take into corruption and their rationalizations for their corrupt and criminal behaviors. The book rejects the overarching portrayal of police corruption as caused by a few individual “bad apples” while promoting the metaphor of “bad orchards,” meaning that police corruption stems from corrupting police subcultures and temptations related to institutional failures and the nature of policing. Comparative analyses are made of police corruption, scandal, and reform in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. The analyses examine issues of control, accountability, and the new institutions of oversight, such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for England and Wales, at a time when external oversight of police has become a prominent feature of anticorruption efforts. This book is intended as an overview of the topic of police corruption for students, academics, police and criminal justice officials, and members of oversight agencies. Chapter notes, approximately 400 references, and a subject index.

An examination of the ‘blue code of silence – http://www.mendeley.com/research/corruption-blue-code-silence-7/  This paper examines the ‘Blue Code of Silence’ and its contribution to police corruption. After offering evidence for the existence of such a code, the paper locates the origins of the code in the work and culture of policing. The paper also examines cases, commission reports and an original case study to understand how the code is reinforced. Based on ‘participant observation’ research of the New York County Prosecutor’s Official Corruption Unit, the paper also illustrates how the code impedes investigations by police overseers. Finally, the paper discusses various measures to address the code of silence.

 

http://elmu.umm.ac.id/file.php/1/jurnal/I/International%20Journal%20of%20Police%20Strategies%20And%20Management/Vol23.Issue2.2000/18123bb2.pdf

full text on Australian management changes.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/q20337257371gw76/ – This paper examines issues concerned with police corruption and its control in England and Wales. The topic of defining police corruption is addressed, some current areas of risk are described and anti-corruption strategies, particularly those pursued by the London Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), are examined. What appears qualitatively and quantitatively different in the approach of services such as the MPS and Merseyside Police is the use of an adequately resourced, dedicated anti-corruption unit. This strategy has been buttressed by preventative measures involving management/administration and ethics/training. Dedicated units have been controversial, and preventative measures raise questions concerning evaluation. Nevertheless the approach to corruption bears comparison with that adopted by other major police services in other jurisdictions and represents a break with previous and unsuccessful efforts at corruption control in major police forces in England and Wales.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/mv1j0482g3217r34/ – a recent review with the first page available free.

Procedural Justice, Trust and Institutional Legitimacy by Mike Hough, Jonathan Jackson, Ben Bradford, Andy Myhill and Paul Quinton – a free pdf can be found by hitting the link at – http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?start=10&q=police+corruption+uk&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 – the IPCC in their ‘half-submission to the Home Secretary state little empirical research on public attitudes towards police corruption.  This paper demonstrates much work has in fact been done in relating empirical experience with explanatory theory.

This post represents half an hour of work by me done without any university access to what turns out to be a massive literature described in parts as ‘an industry’.  The IPCC ‘half-report’can be found at – http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/news/Pages/pr_150911_corruptionreport1.aspx by clicking the link there.

My own reading has been done as research for a novel.  I don’t believe our cops are substantially corrupt.  I do believe our CJS is and that our police are the best part of this wider system.  What’s wrong is subject to debate and the main problem is we aren’t getting this done in proper public scrutiny.  Any ‘blue code of silence’ is dwarfed by our pathetic secrecy practices (a theme of Heather Brookes) and the medieval ‘superiority’ our ‘authorities gone mad’ exhibit in covering up mistakes whilst blathering about ‘learning lessons’.

The IPCC make some mention of Cheshire detectives getting a felon out of prison to nod various crimes – he ends up with a mobile phone back in jail, drugs and was allowed to see his girlfriend.  I can find no full published report.  What they do say is known ‘gaming’ practice – you can get plenty of information at thinblueline (Steve Bennett).  Such reports need to be published in full and subject to academic scrutiny.  I witnesses much the same more than 30 years ago.  The big question is less about a couple of low-level jacks offering some perks to a chummy and his munter and more about how this is encouraged by more senior culture – we have no idea whether this is even entertained by the force PSD or IPCC worthies.  I’ll admit to having handed a few of my own ‘bodies’ over to this system – but then I can now.

The embarrassing truth is very few crimes are detected a la Jack Regan or though intelligence or detective case work.  Some ‘Plod’ (no derision intended from me) doing his or her job bravely spots some likely criminal and applies arrest – and this asset gets sweated.  Or despite a massive detective case, say, the ‘Black Panther’ or ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ remains free until ‘some Plod’ asks ‘what’s in that bag then’ (a phrase that leaves out much bravery).  Many detective efforts are huge feats of bureaucratic effort – like the Morecambe Cockle Pickers – which makes good examples no less brilliant.  I’d guess detection rates are nearer 4% than claimed figures if we take out TICs and other ‘clear up’ gaming.

When some awful tosser starts up on ‘illiterate cops’ we should remember that Plato himself wouldn’t have had the balls to ask ‘what’s in that bag then?’ – and no lawyers do that kind of asking or face the sawn-off pulled out.  We might get rid of a lot of corruption by making police work easier and doing something genuinely statistical with TICs- matters beyond scope here.  Most people would have no clue about getting nods,coughs and the rest out of a bent bastard.  Does anyone who has ever dealt with one think them likely to do so out of remorse (which they act) or ‘concerned citizenship’?  They do so through inducements.  Cops at the bottom of the scale doing what they do are not different in position to the phone hackers and their bosses no different than the ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ Murdoch-monkey species.  Finding a few who haven’t covered their tracks at the bottom is not a ‘corruption enquiry’ – finding out why they break the rules might be.  And we’ve known about TIC corruption for more than 50 years.

Just how many more cops would we need to get ‘real detections’ up to the claimed figures?  This might entail a ten-fold increase in on-street police activities.  The crooks I’ve interviewed all claim they get away with 99 out 100 crimes (they are, in part, wrong – as they all get nicked and TICed).  In a straight and naive system we could double street-policing to turn them over more often, triple burglary sweeps and so on.  Some of the corruption arises because we do policing on the cheap.  Where are the figures on detection where there has been a direct arrest and/or a direct evidence case for the offence?

There’s a can of worms here and what I think most unfair is probably decent cops at the bottom copping for discipline and harsh treatment doing what is the bidding of senior people and indeed the public.  The systemic problem needs to be addressed and maybe even something like an amnesty is needed to find out what is really going on.  I was good on TICs and you ca bet I was only smarter or luckier than the two Cheshire detectives.  They got no financial reward – something not true of some bureaucop taking a bonus on the basis of their work.

 

 

Learning Lessons From The Mark Duggan Killing

A number of weeks after Mark Duggan’s death we know little of the case.  There are no lessons to learn on the police and IPCC communication following the shooting.  This followed a standard cock-up line that is all too familiar, from which lessons should have been learned in the past and new procedures should already have been in place.  The big lesson to be learned is that the ‘learning lessons’ excuse is just an excuse.  The IPCC has been in place about 8 years and only gross incompetence can be responsible for its repeated failures at Stockwell, the Tomlinson incident and the general course of the discharge of its duties.  It is not trusted by anyone needing recourse to it or the police. Eight years on, it still recruits police to its investigation teams.

The release of misinformation that police had been involved in an exchange of fire and lack of decency by police and IPCC in regard to Duggan’s family is standard fare, as is the press reporting of the dead man as a gangster.  We need better rules for the media and on case material disclosure to ensure a good form of public scrutiny – rules that won’t compromise the prosecution of a case and will help to prevent people gathering round police stations and the sparking of riots.

Currently it is possible to suspect police officers involved of anything from incompetence to murder, as well as the opposite in that they may have been bravely doing their job.  This is all down to lack of information.  There are rumours that the non-police gun found ‘near the scene’ may have been planted, that the taxi in which Duggan seems to have been shot left the scene  and returned, and there are unanswered questions about how the false information on an exchange of fire arose.

We now know the converted starting pistol has no traces of Duggan on it and that the taxi was stopped in an intelligence-led operation.  The cops involved may be guilty of something, but the statistical likelihood is that they aren’t – but they are subject to protracted stress.  The Duggans feel police are operating a shoot to kill policy; unlikely, yet this is not to deny substance to their feelings.  How they come to feel this and be suspicious of the IPCC needs to be brought into the open and compared with others dissatisfied with police complaints.  The non-IPCC story on this is utterly unsatisfactory, as is their engagement in gaming performance management.

The lack of forensics linking Duggan to the converted starting pistol is disturbing.  Crooks, if he was such, are usually careless, and only a fool would chance his arm with such a weapon against the real thing.  Clearly, if this is either a murder or a conspiracy to cover up a cock up we don’t want disclosure that would prejudice future proceedings; yet 3,000 people may turn out to the funeral today believing the worst.

The mistake we’re making is in the belief that information has to be kept from the public domain to allow a fair trial and that this is possible in the modern world,or even desirable. Harwood cannot now receive such a ‘fair trial’, but would not be facing trial were it not for the public scrutiny that forced a proper investigation which police clearly tried to suppress.

It is miserable in extreme that police officers should find themselves under suspicion when they may have been acting diligently and bravely.  I’ve been in the position myself and it still rankles.  My guess is we can’t get round the problem, but could make it more open and get matters over more quickly through procedural changes and a change in attitude on disclosure before trial or likely trial.  The real problem is dated attitudes towards sub-judice and press reporting based on ‘salation’ rather than facts.  This allows the kind of secrecy that leads to conspiracy and potentially, riots.

We might also wonder, in this case, on how easy it was to arrest and imprison a nurse at Stepping Hill on almost no evidence, and the treatment of the officers involved in considerable discourtesy to the Duggans, the issue of misinformation, a man dead and millions and lives lost in ensuing riots.

In circumstances like this, officers involved should not be allowed to collude and should be subject to recorded question and answer as soon as possible.  A long and dark story on police evidence and its place in our system of evidence is involved here.  When officers collude, they produce  versions on the same story, accurate to a degree never found among other witnesses.  This is regarded favourably in court, against all scientific sense which would expect some differences.  Thus we have a court system based on evidence that cannot be accurate and is known to be based on collusion.

All the issues arising in the Duggan case should have been fixed from ‘lessons’ allegedly learned by police and IPCC on many occasions before.  The key lesson is they use learning lessons as an excuse and do little about it.  Another is the issue of police collusion on evidence – the IPCC has been against this since its inception and failed to get change.  Another may be the disdain shown by police and IPCC – an important cultural problem.

I have no faith in the IPCC and most people trying to complain have none.  It’s time they were gone.  We’d be better off with cops under elected control and outside standard operational police work doing the job.

IPCC Should Go In Police Cuts

The IPCC have pronounced on several of the Met’s now former officers and continue to ferret away on John Yates’ involvement in a job for one of the girls. This is all a waste of money.  There has obviously been a problem at the Met with officers getting involved in selling stories and frames.  This looks much worse when various officers seem rather too close to the media bosses involved further up the chain.  Officers involved in attempts to frame people to discredit them is really bad news.  One hopes there is a real investigation going on into this, done by cops who know what they are doing.  By the time the IPCC were doing their work, those who might have done something had had plenty of time to get rid of any evidence and get their stories right.  The whole of Westminster seems into ‘unhealthy’ relations with media.  No reason really to look at the Met over this.  A ‘clean you act up now’ message should have been enough.

The IPCC is a dismal failure and the reasons generally given for this point to a management failure in our country.  The same failures as in previous revisions of what to do about police corruption and bent cops were built into the IPCC – this reeks for the classic British management disease of repeating past mistakes in apparent change.  The others involve the closed nature of the organisation, restricted remit, lack of power, bureaucracy in extremis, bias towards internal accounts (i.e. police accounts), timidity and with no influence on the kind of change that could make a real difference.  After enough time to be making a real difference (8 years +) the IPCC’s website is not full of competent reports and successful prosecutions, but cluttered with failures like Stockwell and clown performance management.

Compare the costs of a Bill Bratton style “assault” on UK policing with those of the IPCC.  I don’t expect you have these to hand, but the first obvious downer for the IPCC is that it saves no money and is always an added cost.  You don’t need Bratton to ‘do Bratton’  – the management style essentially boots out the ‘LOMBARDS’ at the top, brings in a new top team, cuts our dross (BPR – whatever) and forces accountability (including testing for cheating through statistics) and sponsors action (broken windows is usually team action on genuine problems) rather than ‘cuffing’ on work.  Bratton’s work has happened alongside far more serious arrests and convictions of bent cops than anything the IPCC has screwed up here.  There may be more corruption in the USA, but if not you have to wonder what we are paying our lillywhites for.  The IPCC look ripe to cut because of their success in being unable to find any!

They won’t find any if they keep looking where there is none and where the evidence has already been “routinely” destroyed or left in the hands of the potentially culpable to change or disappear.  They could be cut to provide the running costs of setting up a Bratton type re-engineering of British policing.  We could replace them with 10 regional teams under elected chiefs with a broader remit and more power to do management discipline and proactive anti-corruption work.

In terms of measuring police performance, we could establish a better understanding of why so many of the non-criminal public who come into contact with police are dissatisfied and work through the data for reasons.  On the same theme, we also need reliable estimates on crime costs as well as numbers to enable a better gauge of whether crime is under control or just being diverted.

My guess on cost saving is that 15% could be targeted and that a major part of restructuring would be improving recruit quality and flattening supervision structures (less ranks, less in rank).  The ‘overhead’ on a piece of police action is dire (some of my old research bids were at 60% – I’ve worked recently where they are at 24%).  There are ways to beat this through more focused recruitment, part-timers and specialisation that doesn’t require the current uniform ‘plodding’.  I’m not surprised Bratton says he would love the job.  As a business re-engineering prize it looks as good as the Imperial Group back in the 80’s.

National Service and a New National Language

The BBM Bruni handgun found at the scene of Mark Duggan’s shooting is probably one of the starting pistols that could be legally held until June 2010.  It was classified as a prohibited weapon because it could be easily machined to fire live rounds.  There was a police amnesty on these weapons and many were handed in.  Some converted weapons turned up in criminal activity.

A week after the shooting we know very little except that two shots were fired by police, both hitting Mr.Duggan, one killing him and one probably the one that lodged in an officer’s radio.  The IPCC are out appealing for witnesses and have presumably, belatedly, interviewed the minicab driver.  There seems some suggestion police initially gave the IPCC the impression there was an exchange of fire.  A bullet was ‘up the spout’ in the Bruni.

In the meantime Mr. Duggan has been described as a ganster, the impression given that police were involved in an ‘exchange of fire’ and officers not culpable.  The issue isn’t really whether the officers involved acted appropriately – though this is obviously important to Mr. Duggan’s family.

The wider problem concerns press reporting, the nature of investigations into police and investigations generally and what and when we should be told about the enquiries, particularly as our courts take a view on this and a case may be influenced (should it in modern times?)

We have seen riots over English cities, ‘sparked’ in some unknown extent by the people who marched on Tottenham police station, feeling close family had not been told enough, treated properly and through feelings of injustice.  I can remember similar in Manchester 30 years ago – though although there was a disorder, there was no looting.  The accused in this instance did not deserve the ‘support’ and was a cheap hood.  A Test against Australia was also cancelled by people supporting George Davis spoiling the pitch – he was later caught on camera in a bank raid.

Britain is supposed to be a free society and we should protest injustice where official channels fail us.  I don’t know what our rioters were ‘inspired’ by and suspect they don’t know.  Most of them were obviously too thick for much considered decision making.  My own contention is that economics has failed and the social contract is broken.  I doubt this can be addressed by ‘new systems’, other than on press reporting and a change in law on contempt and what is thought to influence a fair trial.  There is a clear need for better notions of openness here and to drop the idea that courtroom space needs protecting from ‘undue influence’ as though people must only be influenced by what they witness in it.  That is psychological and practical fairyland these days.  We need scrutiny of police and IPCC investigations and CPS decision-making.  There is a lot unhealthy in this area and no sign the organisations themselves remotely understand.  British notions of authority are still medieval and those of objectivity based on Victorian notions of journalism.  We have Supreme Court judges who confuse objectivity with outward control of emotion.

The fix for me in terms of general society (Not possible without reframing economics) is the establishment of a 2 million strong modern National Service (not necessarily military but certainly using skills in our armed forces) combined with school-leaving at 14 for half our kids into disciplined work and training.  Later, I would halve university places and change 16 plus education to work and training.  Politically, we need to understand the rich have stolen the money to do this, even if this is a form of ‘institutionalized stealing’.  This is obvious from GDP figures since 1979.  Governments are in of this racket because of the role of banks they privilege in raising government borrowing.  There is no need for any ludicrous ‘Soviet’ – indeed the rich have now accumulated more wealth and power than any centralised government dreamed.

What links the Duggan shooting and the state of our nopolitics society is the mass lack of willingness to insist on truth as an automatic feature of our world.  The crowd that gathered in Tottenham were not satisfied by the police-IPCC response, and it’s clear now that claims we are increasing education standards hapless lies.  “Democracy” no longer relies on argument, but reaction at unconscious levels  that actors dig into in audiences.  No one has ‘facts’ and this is not because of any intellectual relativism.  It’s programmed in through useless education that is never about the real world.

On Duggan it should be automatic to explain what the investigation will be and what is being found. in reasonable time.  The law should be changed and clarified to encourage this – to make it second-nature instead of the current disdain of the public and that one somehow should keep them in the dark.  Disclosure and data protection should be straight-forward parts of ordinary jobs and not involve anyone with the words in a job title.

We always get the inappropriate disclosure as in the ‘blue-rinse fairy’ story or Duggan the gangster.  This is world-wide in police cases.  Some of it comes from police, the majority is just hapless reporting to our own indolence and voyeurism.  After the Tomlinson case we have reasons to worry about police investigations or matter involving themselves and CPS decision making. The IPCC did a good job later, after their idiot then leader proved himself so out of touch he didn’t expect CCTV coverage in the middle of London.  Quite why the Duggan family could not be assured we don’t know, but we do know most victims who complain to the IPCC feel angry.  One ‘trick’ all the authorities use is to make anyone complaining into a malevolent complainer.  This, as the police action lawyers group found, is in their very language.

But if we have police figures getting what truth can be told wrong, our politicians no longer speak anything except ‘Orwell’.  They can get away with this because our education system doesn’t even teach anyone to listen.  In the Duggan case forensics have already demonstrated two police bullets were fired and that the other gun found probably wasn’t.  They will be looking for fingerprints and DNA to link the gun to someone, Duggan or not.  Witness statements will be taken.  The job will be done.  I’m concerned on the treatment of non-police evidence and that police will be allowed to collude of theirs.  This matter could be fixed with modern notions of evidence and should be.  Even forensic evidence needs to be on a better footing.  We are not good at responding to basic problems like this.

The Government is insisting police numbers can be cut whilst focusing more officers on the street.  They don’t talk to us about the full picture.  The riots are plain criminality – yet really this isn’t the case, sickening as they were.  Millibore is saying we need a culture of responsibility across our society, which is right – but how?  We shouldn’t be canning 16,000 police officers – right – but how do we afford not doing it?  The ‘Orwell’ is appalling – no consideration of the problem and fixes for it is made clear.  Animal language is turning out to be more complex than we realised – but these people may as well be grunting or seducing.  Whist we have problems at levels like police investigation and through the justice system, they are small beer in comparison with public dialogue.

While we blame parents, schools, police, vile bureaucrats or evil poor the very talk takes place in an economic system that is barking mad and colours everything we say.  We can suggest role models, child care, more police – whatever and none of this gets to grips with the tragedy or the bullshit means politicians and media have been using to hide it.  We have been so feeble we haven’t been able to stop people running about in hoodies and masked faces.  We will hear over and over that the financial position is this and there is nothing we can do about it.  Cameron re-writes the Riot Act – clearly only a ‘solution’ in terms of hiding the problem and making people victimised like me think the real offense these rioters committed was to bring their estate routines to view.

We could clearly invest in a modern National Service by asking our rich to fund it for 5 years.  They have enough money.  But we don’t like direct language like this.  We speak ‘Orwell’ which contains indefinable terms like ‘responsibility’, probably thought to be something the right kind of individual has as a virtue.  Political language is always escapable, much as Popper said of pseudo-sciences like Marxism and Freudian terminology.  Our “responsible” rich have put it about that they will leave with all “their” money if we ask them for anything.  In ‘Orwell’ this position is already defended by wider language – that we all work hard for our wealth, ‘self-made men’ and the rest.  Through this kind of guff one emerges to the economic model of ‘trickle down’, itself guarded by the lexicon of entrepreneurial innovation – indeed one oceanic language-game after another which one cannot prove.  One can make arguments against it all – but this flies in the face of something we’ve known about argument since the Greeks – one can argue well for all kinds of positions equally well.

We need a new National Language.  I once thought science was it, but teaching made me realise very few can understand what counts as evidence., let alone the maths and logic and all this relates to creative speculation.  What we get in ‘Orwell’ is blather by people being paid to blather, as though hearing this somehow allows balance.  I don’t believe any of this is any more than a cover to prevent the real accounts being seen.  None of us could ‘read’ the RBS balance sheet before it collapsed, but then most of wouldn’t know governments do false accounting on a regular basis either.  The ‘noble cause’ was once not to let gold leave the country.  False accounting is a long story – the mistake we always make is believing integrity ever works at all other than to stop us seeing the real books.

Our people should be revolting rather than the strange crew looting.  The message seems to get through to the least educated.  Education has taught us not to look for what is wrong.  I suspect technology and engineering are the main reasons for our current productive abilities, not economics.  And that thieving banksters have the real responsibility for the riots.  We will pretend otherwise with harsh sentences and the imposition of yet more secret policing.  We are as thick as mud.

Rioting Side Issues

The Metropolitan Police clearly should have been out in higher strength on Monday night – this is not straight from Captain Hindsight but the fact of the Tottenham riot the night before.  One wonders what ‘Gold’ was up to, especially as they have to foot the bill under an ancient Riot Act.

The ‘lying’ over the shooting incident needs scrutiny now and sackings.  I doubt the shooting was unlawful – our attitudes towards cops dealing with guns needs tuning up, perhaps by more ‘citizens’ representatives’ doing virtual courses and being reminded nothing shoots back on them!  The IPCC should have had something considered to say within a couple of hours.  My suspicious mind wonders where the non-police gun came from – but it is as irresponsible to put that in main media as the usual character assassination of the dead or brutalised that always seems to be put out.  In these circumstances it should be possible to be as clear on the forensics of that gun as the ballistics on the police shooting.

What have we been told, under successive nopolitics govenrments, under the guise of ‘falling crime’?  Across the comparable EU ‘highlight crime’ except drug dealing is down since 2002.  These highlight figures are manipulated in all forces I’ve worked with in research in much the same way.  There is little effort in real detection other than on serious crime and the figures rely on nodding and the other gaming techniques.  Essentially, someone like me years ago spots a ‘likely lad’ or set of the bastards and nicks them with a pair of socks in their pocket or swag in someone else’s car – perhaps after a chase against pursuit rules – or someone’s munter dob’s him in to get rid of his violence – and the resulting body is sweated for further crimes.  98% even of recorded crime is undetected directly and is ‘coughed’.  How many of the coughs are true is a matter of casting dice.  This is part of the reason Bill the Burglar believes his chance of being caught is one in a hundred – though Bill is so thick he can’t work out his real odds.

The figures seem not to have told us about a welter of young men who will pop out and loot.  In Manchester, it seems one family took their car out to do the ‘shopping’ at a Lydl as it was trashed.  The truth here is that police do not have the responsibility to get in amongst these people in community liaison – this is what government should be doing through jobs and a form of National Service.

The call to sweep the scum off our streets seems hapless – one assumes cops have been keeping the lid on until now.  One suspects this approach on its own will only fester more and deeper problems.  We can come up with a scheme to create jobs and decent opportunities – the problem is always the clown economics that has diverted wealth abroad and to the rich in massive percentages.  This is always the sticking point.  The people involved are the most disgusting thieves of all and not only go unpunished but are lauded as “successful”.  Life and business is actually simple.  The rich and political class just make up schemes to divert work effort into their cash, even getting governments to fund their losses.  The occupy the same moral ground as slave owners and feudal barons.  The social contract and work ethic of old farts like me is broken.  Even the fantasy of university and knowledge society work has evaporated.

Police are out in my City Centre, but if there is any sustainability amongst these looters they will soon be down the road instead.  My guess is this is all the fault of my complacent generation – we are at the very least the parents of it.  There has been a way out for 40 years but we refused to learn, preferring nopolitics and now to brand the perpetrators as hooligans – which they are – but also elides our responsibility for them.  These riots have been familiar to many outside their homes over many years.  Are these the kids ‘achieving’ ever better educational standards?  Ever increasing ‘standards’ that leave them with no decent job?

Guff I found particularly ‘clown’ is that tonight’s police finally have the political backing they need – cops don’t need anything political to deal with crime.  Numbers and equipment yes, but ‘political leadership’ is exactly what we don’t want in this area.  They should be fixing the economy.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the appeal courts when sentencing comes along – is it possible to give these scumbags higher tariffs than they could expect for 100 burglaries on mine and yours?  Would this survive appeal?  Can the judicial cosh work?  Who will be the first vigilante prosecuted>  Are the racists ‘planning’ anything?

Above all, how is it we need ‘mindless looting’ to get us talking about sorting the country out?  Newsnight has just produced she guy in a hoodie and mask with more sense than the politicians.  This government, which looks incompetent and lazy, is puking the old fascist tale that it’s all “hooligans” smashing up their own.  This appeals to us all, but is a con. This is a time to support police action, but if this is turned in such a way as to write off this lot as merely criminal behaviour and the reasons crushed as they would be in a police state – then we have another ball game – or rather ‘you’.  I’m off.

They will try joint enterprise prosecutions – something we should see more of in other circumstances – and these may well backfire.  As may the ‘full force of the law’ (which may be has hapless as Gadget predicts) in encouraging the spread of the feeling of unfairness .  ‘Ring leaders’ will be targeted – all rather like political suppression.  I’d be staying if we had democracy – but that would mean we discussed the real issues and could direct action rather than have to engage in ‘direct action’.  Instead, we have remained so ‘tranced’ that most of us conflate household economics with the global picture.

The similarities between the riots and scene from Grand Theft Auto (SA) are remarkable.  These lads come from this generation.  Have we heard any sensible material on their plight or what it is to grow up poor with no prospects – let alone any action by us to fix the global economic idiocy that has led to massive increases in the wealth of the rich and the creation of a new kind of poor class  – and no democratic means to contest this because the the rich and their banksters are ‘global’ – a term which translates into protection racket jargon of screwing any country that wants to provide public services and structured routes out of poverty.

The events were “unprecedented” (actually there is historic precedent) – and they were in a reasonable sense before Tottenham – but surely not the night afterwards!

The immediate ‘search’ for some rational reason under the riots flies in the face of what we know about human behaviour – that it is hardly ever rational.  A better metaphor might be how this boil built up and how it burst.  Our most politically uneducated have been out smashing things up, but they presumably know they are small mushrooms in the trickle-down fertilizer society we have created.  We should not compare the greed of some hoodie with a T-shirt and cd-player with Madoff and his mates as yet not caught (or our greed in wanting Ponzi-level returns bound to be too good to be true).

I’ve just seen Horriet Harmoon and Gove the Gory whacking each other over the deficit and other bulldung.  The actual issue is about not having people live in the kind of poverty amongst celebrity affluence we have developed (which has returned Britain to 1900) without either big government Sino-Soviet style (which we have now because we are governed by a bankster politburo) or a collapse in motivation to do anything.  This means getting to grips with the fact that we are massively capable and productive – but also gullible in the extreme as witnessed in Nopolitics and ADMASS.  There are reasons we can’t condone criminality – but just as terrorists become freedom-fighters when someone else gets to write history these lads may be written-up rather differently than in current knee-jerk.  Trying to write them up as merely criminal seems as irresponsible as their own actions.

As for cops claiming they haven’t got enough confidence or powers to deal effectively with any of this – why didn’t they say so long before where it might matter?  And all the others who have claimed crime was falling for some bonus or political purpose?  It seems reasonable to suppose that the current boot boys are the same as those causing the anti-social crime police have been doing more or less nothing about (sometimes not for want of effort) outside our homes.  That was crime and not ‘politically motivated behaviour’ too.

Manchester has had a bad night tonight.  Looking at some of the clowns involved, I can see little difference between them and the ones dismissed as ‘just kids, no crime’ for so long until we got a new chief constable.  This isn’t ‘la revolucion’ – but it could be if we could wake up.  I’ll be stuck doing another year for pension catch-up as the stock market plunges (though most of mine is now elsewhere).  I just take a ‘grubbing by’ position.  My guess is the media will convince us robust policing has sorted the matter out by the time I make my escape.  Water cannons will just be another symbol of the banana republic I leave.  It’s 10 years know since an Iraqi colleague explained he had left London to work in Bahrain to get away from uncontrolled streets and this kind of juvenile thug.  They keep a substantial body of their people poor and there is looting behind their actually political-religious riots.  They fairly randomly lock up as much as 10% of their male Shia population.  We have relied on a different model, but have equally left a substantial proportion of our people in hopelessness and a small number with nearly all the wealth.

In respect of this, I’m always told that the top people in our organisations only take a small part of the budget.  This looks true – but the message in preparing a taken-over company was always ‘find the LOMBARDS’ (loads of money but are right dicks) and get rid of them – broadly so the company or part of it could be put up for sale without their wage and on costs.  This had many names – delayering, right-sizing, business process re-engineering and kwality – and it continues everywhere in offering packages to get rid of your experienced people and replace them with cheaper ones.  All sorts of people supposedly vital sparks turn out not to be needed at all and often turn out to have been utterly unproductive doing non-existent management functions and drawing double and triple the salary of someone doing the actual work.  If our promotion systems are this bad, imagine what the truth behind bankers’ claims to be so much better and so much in need of mega-bonus motivation.  Ask yourself too how the rich got so much richer as wages collapsed from around 1979 to now – one might have thought it would become more difficult to get rich if earnings were suppressed.  They ran the world as a richman’s ckub is how, able to invest abroad to take advantage of serf-labour and in the gambling club running Ponzi schemes we have just paid for (only in part).

That we have a legal system out of date and out of order can be seen in the berating of the street-scum and their horrible behaviour and the lack of demand to do anything about the rich and their hoods.  500 riots like these over the last few nights does not make one Madoff.

Disciplined National Service (whatever the work done – it needn’t be military) is the answer – but we can’t afford it because the rich want their money (how was it ‘earned’) invested in China, Indonesia and so on – or some hedge fund betting on global collapse – the top 20% own about 70% (these are people with £350,000 or a lot more) and the bottom 10% don’t even register for any (HMIRC figures).

Our politicians should be implementing an emergency wealth tax across the developed world to be invested at home.  But these politicians are all up to their necks in the existing fraud – countries even cheat on stuff like a gold standard against very clear rules.  ACPOs who find their integrity challenged should know the main figures of integrity at the Bank of England (etc.) cheat.  There is no other solution that will not destroy hard-earned freedoms – and I suspect this is what is at stake.

Just imagine teaching our ‘new revolutionaries’!  And remember they have been produced as educational standards have risen year on year just as crime has fallen year on year.  Like get real!  From 1979 to 1999 personal wealth in Britain went from £500 billion to£2,752billion (figures that just happen to be at hand). I for one was more content then. Soon, I fear, they will be knocking on the door to render such memories seditious! This said, these crimes are crimes and I hope the knocks come where they are deserved.

It’s long been rumored that Manchester’s city centre was rebuilt with Russian Mafia money and this increased the drug trade (etc.), but I guess the thought the hoodies were trying to make a statement on this is as daft as imagining the IRA was ever really Marxist-Leninist!  Might be worth remembering that the peaceful civil rights marches got not much of a response in NI.  Thank goodness they’ve cancelled the soccer friendly and not thew Test!

The generation of “Grand Theft Auto Revolutionarses” is the spoiled generation of recent social-psychological speculation.  I have no doubt they have been dumped on, but they have not known the poverty of my youth.  They have ‘grown’ without corporal punishment and the kind of authority we had.  The ones I speak to are generally clueless – you just hope they are toilet-trained.  Even their brighter cousins I’ve been forced to teach at 18 are dire – we commonly say we are the first people they encounter who say ‘no’ to them.  The idea they know anything is frankly unbelievable and these are the ones with GCSEs and some kind of A levels.  Most of them demand spoon-feeding and then claim it’s boring.  We now vie for the evening classes once avoided in order to miss these young, idle dorks – only to find them spoiling things for mature students once they realise (it takes time) they don’t have to get up in the morning if they crash the evening option.  We should be failing them in droves – but guess what – it’s career suicide.

Now some gawp is saying parents should dob their own kids in to be ‘true Mancunians’.  Those of us who might consider that before dismissing it already know where our kids were.  If this lot are criminals their parents are already not surprised when new equipment comes into the house.  These looters have just upped their thieving from my garden or front room to the high street.  Who and what they are isn’t the issue (except in due process).  What kind of home isn’t bothered when its pre-teens and teenagers aren’t in by 9 p.m. ?  One that ain’t bothered when one of them lugs in a new hoover for Mum.  And our cops are not cracking down on that kind of “home” and we have housing and social workers doing sod all about them too.  If I have a theory it’s that the police and other agencies who should have done something for Fiona Pilkington (and I suspect any poor sod living near these scum and victim of them) have been sitting on an iceberg of this stuff pretending kit wasn’t there.  More lying in performance management and even worse (I suspect a widespread character assassination of victims, even to the point of conspiracies to blame and prosecute them) – these scum are foisted on decent people in denial by authorities on what they do – imagine living next door.  The riots are just the problems of police and related agency failures to tell the truth and get these scum out of other people’s lives.  The reason is resourcing (the rich again) and a fatal nexus of senior bureaucrats and politicians.  Anyone offering space next door for the scum youth you’ve seen?  Not likely is it, but they live near someone and that’s all right as long as it’s someone else.

We’re all guilty – but there was no outcry about the bastards who nearly drove me and my partner insane, killed the Pilkingtons and another dozen cases I’ve uncovered (I know it’s thousands) involving murder, arson and drugs.  What does anyone imagine these bastards do when they aren’t rioting — deliver meals on wheels?  A family like this could be dumped near you tomorrow.  I’d have them machine-gunned simply to save others from having them nearby.  Yet the real problem is the rich.

 

London Riots Bring Out The Old Fascist Mentality

There should have been a curfew in London and across England last night.  There is no excuse for the kind of violence we have seen.

I would like to believe the violence is a political reaction to quite hapless, greedy-rich “government” – but it isn’t in any direct manner.  This is nopolitics Britain.

The facts are pretty clear – most of the trouble is being done by those labeled ‘mindless, criminal and violent’.  It’s doubtful this is all these people are, though the behaviour is that of scum.  Cops clearly could not cope with the outbreak of this mindless, criminal, violent group – which rather suggests they are not normally this, leaving open the question of what the tilting point was.  Many of us have suffered because the police don’t take the goings on of these bastards seriously enough and write matters down as antisocial behavior.

Police clearly failed to control anything much and Gadget is claiming officers were talking about the Tomlinson case as an excuse, fearing they would ‘become Harwood’ if they got stuck in.  If this is true our officers have sunk to a new low.  Mr. Tomlinson was subject to an unnecessary attack by a clod (Harwood) in front of other officers who should have stopped him.  If police really see the Tomlinson incident in this light (most police blogs don’t) they need disabusing and re-training or replacement.  I don’t believe it, though just as the scum out on our streets are a minority, there is no doubt a scum minority in the police who have the fascist mentality on brutality.

We don’t yet know who Mr. Duggan was, but it is now emerging he was shot twice and not involved in any exchange of fire with police.  There is lots about in the press about Mr. Duggan – my reading left me with the impression he was a hood.  This kind of information always seems to get out well ahead of facts, and often turns out to be wrong.  This has been subject of considerable academic scrutiny, and it’s accepted that police get the ‘misinformation in first’ – the Rodney King beating is the classic example.

I know how difficult armed duty is (and even worse what unarmed duty feels like when you expect the opposition to be armed – the trauma lingers) and I also know the public has little clue.  Instead of the cosy dinners with media bosses and misinformation tactics there should be better education of what being armed means and what police have to deal with – combined with honesty about incidents (this latter point requires change in the legal system).  There is no reason interim statements could not be made quickly and not just of the form ‘we can’t say anything because there may be a court case – no reason, but there is law which is out of date.

There is no ideology behind the riots (unless a sect has found ways to influence and/or take advantage the ‘mindlessness’ – some of the fires are suspicious in this respect).  But this doesn’t mean some tragedy in our society is not responsible.  Most of the lackwits I’ve seen couldn’t get out of bed without being led by the nose.

If I get a message that a few mates are meeting for a few pints I’ll probably go.  I am not going to be moved by ‘let’s go looting’.  So why are any of these kids?  Mind is at work, even some kind of collective mind and we need to know its content.

My guess is that there is no longer moral authority in this country.  Most of the people who have expressed this to me have been living or working abroad.  The basic revulsion of the ex-pat is often yobbery and nothing being done about it.  The collapse of proper legal action – most of this being said to me in countries with dictatorship!

I despise what the culture of my own country has become – yet in Germany I hear the same thing.  There the comment is often ‘the country is flooded with foreigners’.  Germany treats its own non-academic youth much better than we do, as do other northern European countries.  The blight of non-onomics is there too, but better controlled.

Other countries around the world control the kind of ‘mentality’ that may be behind our riots through dictatorship and arrest and imprisonment more or less at will – with more or less unaccountable police.  Go go go the Gadget battalions?  I don’t think so.

We are not hearing a beep in our media about the economic conditions other than ‘youth clubs being closed’.  Factors from hardly any white taxi drivers through to the thieving rich probably play a part.  Police have been shown to be outnumbered, outclassed tactically and other jumble by these ‘mindless criminals’.  Even the cops in Miss Marple were smarter than that!  Of course, none of this rot is true – it’s argument from my dog can drive to the moon is blue cheese.

Now Channel 4 has a completely different story on Mark Duggan than first issued.  Only two shots were fired and both hit Duggan.  The Incompetent Poodles of Constabulary Corruption (IPCC) are just getting round to interviewing the taxi driver involved!  FFS!

No one was able to anticipate the scale of criminality last night – why not?  Last night followed a previous night of large scale rioting.  A no brainer!

Channel 4 finally ask a black lad in Grand Theft Auto garb and he says the problem is with police not liking black people, Asian people and they don’t even like their own people.  Why are we not hearing more from such sources – he may well be wrong, but didn’t sound ‘mindless’.  He had a rather clear view.  As did the guy ‘harassing’ Boris telling the reporter he didn’t need to comment because we all know about wages taxed to death and mortgage payments hard to make (think of Gadget refusing to tell the truth openly because she’d lose her mortgage-paying abilities).

Cops should be out with the Army tonight and there should be a tough crack down.  But not on sick old guys Gadget, while other cops look on.  That view is clown fascism and the start of the slippery slope to exactly the kind of ‘law and order’ of the police state.  Our cops are fortunately better than this, despite your agitation.  Frankly, it’s a mind-state as stupid as that of the rioters.  This stupidity is a result of “ejukation” so dim most of our population can’t ‘read’ GDP figures and balance sheets that show untold wealth in so few hands but probably sense the chronic unfairness and the fact we have no democracy to cope with putting it right.  We only have the fascist propaganda that it’s about meritocracy (debunked 40 years ago) and scumbags who won’t work and immigrants stealing our jobs (which is a problem for poor people and known to be).

We have lost compassion and our economists, politicians and vile rich are doing nothing to make markets honest and work to provide reasonably shares in wealth.  I have no problem with tougher policing to give us breathing space to do something effective about this.  At the moment, the only people who seem prepared to take action are ‘mindless, teen criminals’ – which says something about the rest of us.  I’m leaving – and it’s not the teen-thugs behind my reasoning – it’s the rest of us – spineless and mean, prepared to cling to clown propaganda when the evidence is clear.

There is no moral authority in this country.  It’s ripe to the point of something rotten in the State of Denmark.  The thieving going on in financial services, the suppression of jobs and wages (plus immigration to poor sectors) and funding of a special economy for the rich and a legal system accessible only to rich interests are the reasons for the riots – even if the daft sods doing it think they are playing Grand Theft Auto.