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January 27, 2006
Is this Guv a Fair Cop?
Jean Charles de Menezes was neither white nor British born. Yet, rightly there has been no shortage of media coverage of his cold-blooded summary execution by police last July in a London underground carriage.
His killing occurred the day after a ‘feigned’ multiple suicide bombing on the same transportation system that had been staged whilst the shockwaves of the real suicide bombings of the 7th were still at their height.
One reason for the vast media interest there has been in the police execution of this perfectly innocent man has been the profound, and still unanswered, questions it has raised about the propriety of police conduct and procedure, both before, at the time of, and subsequent to the killing, at every level of seniority of the police force.
These questions go right up to the very top of the tree on which Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair continues to remain perched. His grip there seems ever more precarious, especially since the long-awaited results of the IPCC enquiry into the shooting have now gone to the CPS for consideration whether criminal charges should be pressed against any of the police involved in the shooting. .
For Sir Ian to have accused the media of institutional racism as he did yesterday -- accusations he repeated today at the very same time as he apologised for what he now admits was insensitivity in having previously suggesed media coverage of the killings of school-girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had been unduly and disproportionately large on account of their skin colour -- is really a case of insult being added to injury.
It is, perhaps, true, as he has observed, that certain murders that occur in Britain attract from the British media more coverage than others, and, often, as in the case of the murders of these two girls, that part of the reason they do is that the colour of the skin of the victims matches that of the majority of readers of the newspapers reporting these murders.
This does not show that newspapers whose size of coverage of a murder is, in part, a function of the colour of the skin of its victim are guilty of institutional racism. It no more shows this than does their readers being more interested, other things being equal, in the details of murders of those whose skin-colour matches their own than they are in the details of the murders of those of other skin-colour shows they are guilty of non-institutional racism.
Unless one wishes to say people who are more attracted by and who marry those of similar skin-colour to theirs thereby show themselves racist, it is a perfectly morally innocuous and universal fact about human nature that people tend to identify more closely with others in proportion as they are alike, and therefore tend to be more interested in the fate of those with whom they are similar than they are in that of others.
It follows that newspapers catering for a predominantly white readership might, ceteris paribus, devote more column inches to the murder of a white person than a black person. That they might do so in certain cases is not necessarily indicative of any racism on their part or that of their readers. It no more is so than the fact that British newspapers devote more column inches to domestic news than they do to what is happening in France or Germany, or even in all foreign countries combined, is indicative of xenophobia or chauvinism on their part or that of their readers.
Sir Ian’s blast at the press for giving more coverage to some murders than others seems a clear case of what psycho-analysts call displacement. His proffered explanation of why the murder of the Soham girls received such large media coverage applies with equal force to another widely-reprted killing of someone who was not white. This other killing has lately given him no end of trouble which suggests it may have been the huge media coverage given to it that was the real object of his ire.
In explanation of the unusually large media coverage given to the Soham murders, Sir Ian said: ‘There are lots of murders of people that do not get this size of coverage – sometimes they do, sometimes they just don’t. Putting it bluntly it is a quiet news day, it’s August, these things can blow up.’
‘These things can blow up’! -- another tell-tale sign that it might well have been this other much written-about killing that was really what was preying on Sir Ian's mind.
His latest intervention is not only crass in the extreme. It suggests that he might be in even hotter water than his latest gaff has dropped him into.
Posted by David Conway at January 27, 2006 04:48 PM
Comments
Sir Ian Blair is a pompous idiot well suited to carry his namesake's political and social agenda. When will a knight in shining armour rescue us from all this political correctness and social engineering?
Posted by: Henry Kaye at January 27, 2006 08:13 PM
The resources allocated to murder investigations are influenced by the amount of media attention. The accusations can flow both ways. I have expanded on this subject on my blog.
Ian Blair will not be censored as a result of the Stockwell shooting. It is too political.
Posted by: World Weary Detective at January 27, 2006 08:18 PM
Jean Charles de Menezes was classed as of European descent in Brazil and therefore officially white (though most claiming to be of 'pure' European extraction in Latin America usually have native American ancestry as well and are, strictly speaking, 'mestizo').
Jean Charles 'racial identity' was effectively hijacked by unscrupulous propagandists who wanted to portray him as a victim of police racism. This blatant distortion gained acceptance when Selfridges allowed one of its window display areas to be used by an 'installation artist' who reconstructed the killing and used a black man to represent the victim.
What the agitators did very successfully was to evoke in the public imagination the 'institutional racism' of the Met in their investigation of the death of Stephen Lawrence (probably the most widely covered murder case of the modern era).
In actual fact the distressing and unfortunate circumstances surrounding the death of Jean Charles are eerily similar to another well publicised case of police bungling over 20 years ago which older visitors to this site may well remember - the shooting of Steven Waldorf.
In January 1983 Stephen Waldorf, a 26 year old film editor, was travelling in a car in Earls Court, London. As it came to a halt in traffic the vehicle was surrounded by police.
Waldorf was then shot 5 times in the head and torso at point blank range, dragged out onto the road and pistol whipped. Miraculously he survived and made a full recovery. He later received £120,000 compensation and under the terms of the settlement was forbidden from publicly discussing his case.
Waldorf had the misfortune of bearing a passing resemblance to David Martin a notorious London gangster and bank robber who was on the run following a prison breakout (he was later apprehended and hanged himself in prison shortly after).
As in the de Menezes case, Waldorf was misidentified by a single police officer and no attempt was made to confirm the accuracy of the sighting by any other officer participating in the operation.
Indeed, it eventually transpired that it was a female passenger in the car, Sue Stephens, who sparked the operation as police later claimed that she was a girlfriend of David Martin. The debacle made some commentators wonder by just how many stages Waldorf would have had to have been removed from Martin before the police would have had the good sense to suspend the operation.
The issues prevailing then prevail now, though this time an innocent man had to die.
Posted by: Joseph at January 28, 2006 04:46 AM
What puzzles me is why Sir Ian Blair thinks that it is any part of his job to discuss and comment on whether the press is "institutionally racist"? If they are, does this in any way affect his investigations and if so, how and why? Is he doing his job if he lets this affect investigations?
If the answer is that it doesn't affect police investigations, why is he commenting on it in his police role? Shouldn't he instead be spending his time (for which us taxpayers pay so handsomely) on making the police more effective?
Posted by: HJHJ at January 28, 2006 05:16 PM
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