"If So Many Lawless People Are Engaged In This Kind Of Work"

Martin Kelly writes:

Mr. Moat has ended his own life, a sadly inevitable outcome. He has gone to judgement, and one only hopes God shows him the same mercy I hope one day to receive.

There will, no doubt, be the usual round of public breastbeating in The Guardian, followed by the usual round of sterile, baboon-like chestbeating both by the police and our politicians. Somebody throw them a banana, for goodness' sake. We will hear the usual stale paeans to the courage of our police, when serving in Britain's police services remains vastly less dangerous than working on a British building site. However, there are a few broader cultural questions not just about this situation but about the way we do things in general that are germane to the past few days' events and that I would like to see answered.

In no particular order, I think the whole 'nightclub bouncer' and 'bodybuilding' scenes needs to be examined very closely. If so many lawless people are engaged in this kind of work, we need to ask ourselves whether it is properly regulated.

If one believes what one reads in the newspapers, then the trigger that activated Mr. Moat's spree or one of them at least, was being told by his ex-girlfriend, while he was imprisoned, that she had taken up with a policeman. In his case, that was not true, but one does wonder whether there are any policemen engaged in relationships with prisoners' wives and girlfriends, and if so, how many. One only asks because of what seems to be the shocking level of criminality, both proven and alleged, amongst members of Britain's police services. In May, PC Craig Flowers was imprisoned for drug dealing. Just last week, a policeman was remanded in custody at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on suspicion of drug dealing and - mehercule! - breaching the Official Secrets Act. Just yesterday, PC's Maurice Allen and Damien Cobain received suspended prison sentences for selling on guns which had been handed in for disposal.

When one sees such stories, one must ask just what the sergeants and the inspectors are doing. There is an awful lot of blah written and spoken about the police being shackled by bureaucracy and form-filling. When one sees what they are capable of when not chained to their desks, we should perhaps be grateful that they have to spend so much time ticking boxes.

They shot him. Of course they did. The IPCC would certainly have exonerated them for having done so, and might very well have been right. So why lie?