Witch Hunt

There are no links today, simply because they mean linking in to ghastly pictures of Jean Charles de Menezes lying in pools of blood on the tube floor. You can link to the article in the Guardian if you wish. Im just blogging my own sentiments today so here goes…

When police were searching in earnest for the failed London islamoterrorists on July 22 and shot dead an innocent man (note the lack of my qualifying him as Brazilian as if this makes the whole tragedy in some way much much worse?), we all nodded at the horror of the accident and need for an enquiry, felt pity for the family and rightly, most of us looked towards the terrorists as the ones to blame. They after all had so squarely forced the police to adopt new, untried and difficult tactics. Even now when I see a picture of Hussein Osman, smiling at us from his mugshot in Italy, where his lawyer describes him as ‘sweet and doe eyed’ and as we tie ourselves up in knots ‘fairly’ determining HIS future, I feel nothing but utter hatred and an absolute desire to see him prosecuted for Jean Charles’ death.

Before he was arrested, the fear that pervaded the streets of this city was such that all we wanted was for the police to find them, find them, find them….And clearly that was the same sentiment shared by the single minded Police Commissioner who asked the Home Office to allow the terror hunt to temporarily come above the shooting enquiry. Now it seems the media and the do gooders are out to undermine that single mindedness as an utter and ‘horrifying’ failure. The media and the public always have to have someone’s scalp. I think the media are often less watchdogs of the public interest and more cheerleaders of victim culture. After all the latter is probably more likely to yeald a sensational story. Victims’ lawyers need to spark controversy to justify huge payouts and the fat cut they take. Justice groups have to be formed to give a few people who might normally be selling The Big Issue a new reason to hate the police and channel their resentment. Purposefully do gooding their way into the limelight for their all too easy 15 seconds of fame. And the media seize and fuel the proceedings on the execution stage even before the full facts have emerged.

Is the whole purpose of an investigation into the death of this innocent man, to learn from the dreadful mistakes, so that we might not have to place our officers in this situation again or indeed see an innocent man die? Or is it a superslick way to bay for blood and appease the victims wanting ‘justice’.

It seems oh so simple to weigh up the rights and wrongs of a few horrifying minutes at Stockwell with the benefit of hindsight. How is it possible that the term ‘murderer’, which alludes to killing someone in cold blood and with ‘malice of forethought’, is applied to these ordinary policemen placed in awful situations, called upon to make decisions you and I would never wish to make? And how is it possible that these family men might now have to face judicial processes that level them with the likes of Hussein Osman - who set out to kill and maim. Or that the doggedly determined Ian Blair who for all his challenging political correctness at times, must now resign as if this serves some cause.

The cause being 'Justice for Jean'? what does justice actually mean anymore.

Victim culture is abhorrent. Devised by lawyers and perpetrated by the media, the whole vile spectacle is played out to an audience.