Community groups in a formerly troubled area of Manchester have warned of serious damage to relations with the local police after an investigation cleared officers of undue violence at a street fracas.Cue the usual outrage?
Well, hold on there:
The police said that the inquiry had been bedevilled by a lack of co-operation, because most complainants had refused to speak directly to the force's investigators.Ah. Difficult to see how the police can take the blame for this one then, isn't it?
So, what was the incident?
Police became involved after a report of shots being fired from a car which was then traced to the Bridgewater Hall, as families were leaving a children's talent contest. Officers searching the car were surrounded by large numbers of people and called for back-up.I get the distinct impression that they weren't 'surrounded by large numbers of people' offering help. As you might expect from any normal community!
Not that that's going to stop the usual rent-a-mouth political rabble-rousers:
Gabrielle Cox, a former Moss Side councillor and chair of the police authority in the 1980s, said: "It feels like we have gone back 20 years. The Bridgewater Hall incident undermined years of work to improve relationships between the police and the community in Moss Side.Perhaps you'd do better, sweetie, to wind your neck in and have a word with the whining members of your 'community' who think that the police can somehow take action without witness statements.
"The report will do nothing to repair those relationships, and is likely to compound the sense of frustration and powerlessness felt by the community. The finding of 'insufficient evidence' seems to damn every enquiry into inappropriate police actions. The system of the police investigating themselves, even if under IPCC management, remains a key barrier to community confidence."
That's not how we do things in this country. And even Moss Side still exists in this country.
This is GMP - a force that gave up on real policing to feed its former Chief Shagger's "interests" and has only recently learned to answer the telephone under the new Boss. We should not expect too much.
ReplyDeleteI suspect a deeper probing of the 'community' might reveal many scared people who do not feel protected by their cops at all. We still get them turning up saying there is nothing they can do about bullying-scrote families because even if they get them to court they'll be back taking revenge in days. Complaining about crime only makes things worse.
This is in an area without black teenagers wielding guns (for now?).
I believe (having worked Moss Side as a cop) the problems are all to do with the vile SMT-bent politician nexus pretending to solve problems for 40 years. GMP needs to be disbanded and new management brought in. Lancashire would do, but we need to get the party politicos out too. I'd guess the main problem is a few families and an inability to exclude them, along with the usual Gadget moaning cops who won't speak out in public.
"I believe (having worked Moss Side as a cop) the problems are all to do with the vile SMT-bent politician nexus pretending to solve problems for 40 years."
ReplyDeleteIf only they'd spent as much money on front-line staff as they did on getting a few communications staff spin-doctor training...