Extinguishing The Blue Lamp

There's only one Gerald Warner:

The legitimate outrage that was recently provoked by the adulation on Facebook of murderer Raoul Moat prompted some commentators to indulge in elaborate psychological and sociological theorising about the causes of so morally repugnant an attitude. The baffled theorists could not do better than to study the circumstances surrounding the death of news vendor Ian Tomlinson at the time of the G20 protests and the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute the police officer who struck him to the ground shortly before his death.

Nothing could be more calculated to aggravate public distrust of the police, now widely perceived as above the law they are supposed to enforce. One post mortem concluded that Mr Tomlinson had died of a heart attack, two others attributed his death to an abdominal haemorrhage. Even if a heart attack was the cause of death, its occurrence just 100 metres from the spot where he was struck down demands proper investigation in a court of law.

The statement by Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions, can only raise eyebrows: “After a thorough and careful review of the evidence, the CPS has decided that there is no realistic prospects of a conviction against the police officer in question for any offence arising from the matter investigated and that no charges should be brought against him.” For any offence? This statement was delivered after the public had watched on the television news repeated screenings of “the police officer in question” striking down Mr Tomlinson from behind.

Does the Crown Prosecution Service consider such conduct by a police officer is not reprehensible in any way? If there are “fundamental differences” of medical opinion, as cited by the CPS, surely that is all the more reason to resolve them in a court of law, rather than to kick this life-and-death question into the long grass.

The police have a very serious PR problem that threatens to damage their ability to operate effectively. They are seen as reluctant to attend scenes of all but the most serious crimes, as PC zealots harassing Christians, as persecutors of motorists and as paper-shufflers when they should be walking the beat. Much of the grotesque attempt to convert Raoul Moat into a hero came from the criminal fraternity; but not all of it. Dislike of the police has now spread far beyond the traditional areas of criminal alienation and into the wider community.

In that context, the decision to press no charges of any kind against a police officer whom the entire nation has watched behaving in a manner that, at best, can only be described as dubious is inflammatory. It reawakens memories of the case of Jean-Charles de Menezes and other police blunders. A generation ago, public horror of violence against the police was dramatically expressed in the film “The Blue Lamp”. We have gone from that sentiment to Facebook tributes to Raoul Moat. Some of that reflects a degeneration in public morality; but some of it is due to a deterioration in the quality of the police.