by lliam » Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:42 am
Police shooting: Too high a price to pay
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It must be pretty difficult being a commuter in London these days. Although millions of commuters are going about their daily business as if nothing has happened, there is a real concern certainly by many outside the capital that London is just not safe anymore. According to former Metropolitan Police chief, Sir John Stevens, an estimated 3000 Islamic extremists are lurking in Britain, having returned in recent years from terror training camps in Afghanistan and the Middle East ready to continue the work already started by their co-religionists. That is a major threat that needs to be addressed. However one method of addressing that threat which was employed to tragic effect on Friday poses as great a danger to the people of Britain as any suicide bomber. Sir Ian Blair, top cop at the Met says that more innocent people are likely to be shot by his officers yet there appears to be no political or public outrage at this suggestion. The statement that British police officers are likely to shoot more innocent citizens should be viewed with utter amazement, horror and revulsion. Perhaps we are too numbed from the shock that nearly 60 people were murdered by suicide bombers to take in what Sir Ian has announced? British police have a very difficult job to perform; the officers on the front line exemplify professionalism, dedication and have to deal with those episodes of horror and evil, which few of us not in the police service will ever encounter. The facts of the case are still emerging but it would appear that the police gave chase to a man who lived in a block of flats that was under surveillance. There was no suggestion that the man himself was a suspect for the bombings or any other crime. He was a recent immigrant from Brazil, a country whose own police force uses some very questionable and controversial tactics; he used Portuguese as his first language and had been recently mugged in the Stockwell area. His actions, after being shouted at by what might have appeared to him another gang of muggers, might in the circumstances be perfectly rational. He ran and if a British tourist in Rio de Janeiro was suddenly confronted by three rather scruffy looking men armed with machine guns shouting hurriedly in Portuguese, he might well too act impulsively and run for his life. The 27 year old electrician from Brazil did not look anything like the four terrorists who failed to blow up devices last Thursday, which the police are hunting, all of whom are reported to be of East African origin. The man was not even of Middle Eastern appearance, southern European perhaps but certainly not Pakistani or Middle Eastern. The pictures of Jean Charles de Menezes in today’s newspapers and on the Internet show a white skinned, dark haired man who would not have looked out of place in Madrid, Marseilles or Milan. Of course there is no justification for the police to shoot anyone based merely on their appearance but racial profiling of likely suspects really does need to be employed by the security services. Men and women of distinctly British and European appearance are not likely to be Islamic suicide bombers. Men and women of far east Asian, Japanese and Koreans are not likely to be Islamic suicide bombers and men and women of Amerindian appearance (not that we have many Amazonian Indians wandering around the place) are not likely to be Islamic suicide bombers. One could add that Sikhs and Hindus, many of whom chose to wear their traditional dress are not likely to be suicide bombers and if a police officer has not been trained to distinguish between Sikhs, Hindus, Koreans and other “Asians”, the diversity training courses need to be beefed up with some proper lessons in anthropological science instead of sociological waffle.Similarly, wasting police time searching the bags of whites, Chinese and other overwhelmingly non-Islamic peoples, is a politically correct farce that puts everybody at greater risk - including non-hostile Asian and black Muslims. Politicians from the Labour-Islam axis are quick to say that this is a price we have to pay; innocent people may well get shot 5 times in the head by a police team, or searched without any reason, but that is the price we all have to pay for our collective safety. What nonsense – does this not show just how much contempt the Labour politicians have for the electorate, the taxpayers who pay for their bullet proof limousines, their 24/7 personal protection officers and bomb proof grace and favour residences? Britons live in one of the most tightly regulated societies on the planet. There is hardly any aspect of our own lives, which is not subject to regulation, authority, legislation and control. Multi-racial and multi-cultural societies do not just come together naturally. They have to be brought into existence by legislation and thereafter tightly controlled with strong enforcement. We have already had to pay a very high price for multi-culturalism with our ancient centuries old legal system being twisted and perverted to such an extent that in issues of alleged racial discrimination, those accused are now guilty until proven innocent. We have already had a very high price to pay for multi-racialism with our ancient liberties such as freedom of association, freedom of expression and freedom of speech, taken away in the name of progress and tolerance. Now in our 21st century capital Londoners and visitors alike are used to daily seeing armed officers on the streets. In just 40 years Britain’s police have gone from truncheon to Heckler and Koch, from bicycles to armoured cars. Tolerating a small minority of fundamentalist extremists because we have, apparently, to respect their faith and their culture is all well and good but when the price is having to risk suicide bombers on one side and professional assassins in police uniform on the other, that is a price too great and many of us are simply not prepared to pay up. The entire dismantling of the multi-cultural edifice must be the ultimate goal; every daft piece of repressive legislation has to go, every statute and order which stifles free speech has to be repealed, every agency and organisation which enforces the multi-culti system has to be consigned to the history books. Given a choice between living in a repressive multi-faith society, where I am likely to be either blown up by a fellow passenger on a train or bus, or where I am likely to be shot by a trigger happy police officer because I never heard his shouts and the alternative of living in a society made up predominantly of my own people, where if I see an unattended item of luggage I am more likely to see if the owner has left her name on it than to report it as a suspicious device, where police officers pound the beat and carry nothing more lethal than a notebook and a set of handcuffs, then really there is no choice – common sense and one’s innate survival instinct leads us to make the correct decision.
Lliam.
I spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted - George Best
