Kid_Eternity
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Front page of the Daily Mail tomorrow...
Met Police accused of waterboarding
- Thread starter Badger Kitten
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Still, I suppose the suspects can think themselves lucky they didn't get the 1970s East Midlands Serious Crime Squad plastic bag special, eh?
East mids, nothing compared to the west mids. I guess you mean suffocating and resusing? Fucking hell. I loved the 70s and 80s. Good time to be Irish.
I fear you're focusing too narrowly on the one investigation.
So some geezers were busted. And, er, questioned. Allegedly.
The questioning is not forced to have been about convicting them.
One could make up stories in which it was about:
a) "So, tell us, who's Mr Big" - looking for the career-enhancing wholesaler bust;
b) "So, honky, tell us about the darkies you got the shit from"
c) <apply imagination here>
Badger Kitten
oof
Are you expressing your own opinion, or that of the masses? And do you do this on suburban too?
A poster: Sausages are nice with mustard
Butchers: We get to decide what sausages are good with, thanks
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What's wrong with that?
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Probably not what Lord Denning had in mind when he quietly used the common law to introduce "investigative detention" in 1965. Of course as an idealist he had the very best of intentions.Still, I suppose the suspects can think themselves lucky they didn't get the 1970s East Midlands Serious Crime Squad plastic bag special, eh?
Badger Kitten
oof
I know, I'll just pop you on ignore for a week, it's much less tiresome.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Yep.
Especially if you looked guilty, and what person with long hair and a flappy collar doesn't look guilty?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Liberals - crap. I cannot be disagreed with!
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Denning was as much an idealist as I am a Catholic, i.e. not at all. He was a nasty old git who happened to have the air of a kindly but absent-minded uncle.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
He's trapped you! idealism = communiism or annarchism in his mind.
He was a state stooge as we all know anyway.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
And when all the other investigations get to court a halfway competent defence solicitor/barrister will want to know where all this comes from. Or maybe it slips through, then comes to light post-conviction resulting in a lot of quashed sentences and media firestorm.
Beyond that, any whiff of torture has to be as good a way of getting yourself thrown out the service as any. Perhaps even better than taking manila envelopes from people who do a mean Ray Winstone impression. However brutal you are, if you're rational, you don't go around waterboarding people.
I'm as pessimistic about human nature as anyone, but this whole thing is bizarre.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
That's bollocks though isn't it?
I mean, the guilford fit-up for example was achieved through beatings through the phonebooks stuff. Not to mention the 'we'll kill yer dad/son' stuff
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Denning seemed to believe that the police was a perfect institution and officers were biologically incapable of framing the Birmingham Six, and rejected their appeal on those grounds. That's idealism taken to the point of fantasy. Give me Orwell's knurled old hanging judge any trial.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
I did say today, post-PACE, post all cases like the Guildford fit-up coming to light. Back in the 1970s torture made sense in some circumstances if an officer was ruthless enough.
If I'm wrong, and the police can routinely get away with torture regardless of PACE, that Act's one useful accomplishment is in fact a failure. How depressing.
Bizarre, yes.
"Occam's Razor, she say 'shut the fuck up, no way'"? No. Plausible, on the face of it.
It's a good point. That should be first person singular, otherwise you sound like a pompous git.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Think I've been economical enough. Once using the confession to get convictions and corruption are excluded, there's not a lot left. If the officers are dribbling sadists it makes sense, but then we're back to Broadmoor territory. Using that degree of sadism, and for that purpose, is unhinged. What other explanations are there?
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Well my dig to the kidneys was post-PACE and I have no reason to believe that the Met have changed their ways. Especially given the massive arse covering episode that went on with Ian Tomlinsons death. So desperate to sweep it under that they brought out the pet pathology bloke. He of already discredited fame.
Gangsters with badges, the Met.
The worrying thing is that if this stuff is true, it implies a culture of sadism.
There's no way that that many officers spontaneously decide to take inspiration from our American cousins, get the necessary tools and then follow through on it.
And if so, where's that tacit green light coming from - the Enfield chief? Higher up the Met? The influence of Anti-terror legislation? Involvement with Anti-terror squads?
There's no way that that many officers spontaneously decide to take inspiration from our American cousins, get the necessary tools and then follow through on it.
And if so, where's that tacit green light coming from - the Enfield chief? Higher up the Met? The influence of Anti-terror legislation? Involvement with Anti-terror squads?
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Bad as a dig in the kidneys is, would you agree it's not in the same league as torturing a confession out of a suspect with waterboading? I never said the Met are all decent people: I said this specific circumstance is staggering.
Tomlinson's death, amidst a hectic street protest, is a different circumstance. Even then, as Channel 4's collection of footage appeared to show, it seems one officer, detached from his unit, was responsible. (And no, I'm not saying other officers wouldn't cover for him.)
What I said: looking for leads to catch fish they want to fry more than these.
At least. Maybe there are other explanations.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
This is the most disturbing part. If amoral but reasonable motives like securing a conviction are excluded, sadism is all that remains. Sadism allied to gain is bad enough, but sadism as an end in itself is the worst thing, since no mitigating factors exist.
Brutal officers have always exited and always will, but our amoral law, interested only in procedure and bureaucracy, coupled with the relentless drive to pad out the ranks, can only increase their presence.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
It's the culture of casual brutality I refer to. I had a mate who was sectioned forcibly and landed in the mental bin with a face like mike tyson had done him. An uncle who came out of a simple 'suspected proceeds of crime' (I can't recall the precise terms of the nicking) type nicking with black and blue ribs and short 500 quid of the 3 k they nicked him with. A mate who was pinched with 5 ounces of hash that shrank to 3 when he was before the judge (where did those two extra go? eh?)
The Met are rotten to he core.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
If the police are on a fishing trip, it only takes some rudimentary legal work to expose it. Suspect tells his brief "They tortured me and I revealed X names", and it turns out that X names were swiftly arrested. It starts to look very bad, very quickly.
If the allegations are true, the most disturbing thing is that the endless drumming in of PACE and its codes would have failed in a significant way. This sort of torture demands a terrifying amount of complicity to go on undetected.
ericjarvis
give a feck for the feckless
It's not exactly the first time officers in the Met have gone criminally over the top. What's interesting is that it appears that in this case it's not been supported by fellow officers, the CPS, or even higher ups in the Met. So all in all it's an improvement on past cases.
I think many of us, if not most of us, are perfectly aware that the range of behaviour within the police is enormous, and that historically the problem has been that all police officers have been prepared to support those of their colleagues who've gone beyond the pale. If that's ending then it can only be a good thing.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
I've seen the police behave in a disgraceful fashion myself (not the Met, as it happens, but that's coincidental) but I can't comment on its extent.
The only solution to police brutality is frequent and vigorous prosecutions for misconduct. This used to happen, but it dried up at least sixty years ago. If PACE has failed to deal with brutality, it just confirms my opinion that bureaucracy is no answer. A properly disciplined force is the only solution. Brutality seems to have got much worse with the rise of "special squads" and braindead idealist judges who think the police can do no wrong. Oddly the "old school" gets the blame when innovation was the cause.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Sadly this loyalty is part-and-parcel of the camaraderie necessary and inevitable in a police force. (Although it doesn't seem to extend to officers who betray their fellows.) It'll never end, but it can be limited by scrutiny in our courts and severe punishment for officers caught perverting the course of justice.
Beware of media hyperbole ...
A couple of reports I have heard today added a bit more detail ... and said that a suspect had had his head stuck in a bucket of water. Now, while that is clearly wrong (and actually a serious criminal offence), "Met Police accused of sticking a suspects head in a bucket of water" doesn't give quite the same mental imagery as "Met Police accused of waterboarding" ...
(After all, sticking someone's head in a bucket of water / down the toilet or whatever has been a pretty standard bullying tactic at schools for years and I'm not sure even Eton have moved on to waterboarding yet ...).
As for there being no denials yet, there is an ongoing investigation so the police cannot and will not make any detailed comments nor, I suspect, would you actually want them to. The description of the chain of events (abandoned trial, professional standards investigation and then referred to IPCC) suggests very strongly that there are at least some grounds to believe that the complaint has some foundation in fact.
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