Posts Tagged ‘Keir Starmer’
Unlawful Killing
Killer Scumbag Cop
The verdict in the Ian Tomlinson case is in – unlawful killing. Anything else would have been a travesty of justice.
The jury said Pc Simon Harwood used “excessive and unreasonable” force in striking him and “he posed no threat”.
Lily-livered Keir Starmer, the DPP, must now reverse his earlier, disgraceful decision and charge PC Harwood with manslaughter.
For A Bad Cop, Prison Is Just The Start
Doing His Duty
I hope that ex-Police Sergeant Mark Andrews had a really bad night on Tuesday. It was his first night in jail after being sentenced to six months for assaulting Pamela Somerville, an innocent member of the public, someone he was paid and trusted to protect. See here for the full story.
I hope he had a really bad day yesterday too. I hope he’s scared. I hope he’s ashamed and racked with guilt. I hope he has a really bad day tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. I hope every single minute of his jail time is frightening, distressing, humiliating and painful. I hope he misses his wife and two children and is beside himself with grief and shame at the way he has let them down. The man is pond life scum. He should be extremely grateful that he got off so lightly because if I was the judge I would have considered six years to be a more appropriate sentence than six months. In fact, I really hope that the CPS appeals the sentence. There’s no way that it is sufficient. He’ll be out in just 13 weeks and free to go back to his family. He should be made to suffer.
When a police officer commits a crime, particularly an assault while on duty, it is far, far more serious than when it is an ordinary member of the public. It is a breach of trust. It is like a bank manager stealing from his own bank. It can never be forgiven. It has to be marked as the most heinous of crimes.
Sleazy Starmer
I suppose we have to be thankful that the CPS even brought charges in the first place. It and its thoroughly sleazy boss, Keir Starmer, seem to do everything they can to avoid bringing police officers to justice. Keir Starmer has the brazen cheek to pontificate about changing the system of murder charges when he is complicit in enabling police officers to avoid justice! See here. We’re really not interested in his thoughts about the future of justice in Britain. He is too deeply ensconsed in the corruption and failures of the past. We want him out of his job and on the scrapheap with Andrews. In fact, I’d have him in the cell next door to Andrews and I’d put them both back on slopping out but they could do each other’s rather than their own.
I congratulate Wiltshire Constabulary on bringing Andrews to justice and particularly the police officer who turned him in. That man deserves a medal.
Killer
Thug
This should send a signal to thugs like Delroy Smellie, Simon Harwood and every other bent cop that you will never, ever get away with your behaviour. Even if you manage to wriggle free like Smellie with the assistance of slimeball judges or evade the full force of the law like Harwood with the help of his crony Starmer, we, the British public, will never let you off. It won’t ever be over for you, whether or not you do time in prison. You and your kind are on a life sentence. You will be despised, reviled, hated and subject to ridicule and abuse until the end of your days. You deserve nothing less.
My MP, Richard Drax, To Write To David Cameron On Drugs Policy
The Honourable Member For Dorset South
Today I met with my MP, Richard Drax. He was just as sickeningly handsome and charming as I expected him to be! So I showed him no mercy and bombarded him with my opinions for a good half an hour.
I realised afterwards that my favourite maxim “less is more” would have been a better strategy. Nevertheless, he did offer to write to David Cameron on my behalf on drugs policy and seemed genuinely sympathetic to some of the points I made.
I have just sent him a lengthy email in confirmation which I reproduce below. If anyone wishes to use this as a template for a letter or email to their own MP, please feel free to do so.
******
Dear Richard,
Thank you so much for your time today. I very much enjoyed meeting you. As I said, I came with opinions not problems. I am grateful to you for listening to me.
I realise that I made the classic mistake of bombarding you with far too much information and not giving you time to absorb any. I hope I may correct that error by summarising here what we talked about.
1. Gary McKinnon. Thank heavens that progress seems to have been made on this. The idea of an “extradition” treaty that provides for someone to be sent to the USA for trial on an alleged crime committed here is iniquitous. It’s particularly unfair in McKinnon’s case as he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. You pointed out to me that similar dangers exist with the new European arrest warrant.
I would urge you to do everything possible to ensure that if Gary McKinnon is to be tried, it should take place in the UK.
2. Ian Tomlinson. In my view the failure to prosecute the policeman who assaulted him is an outrage and Keir Starmer’s reasons entirely inadequate. Now that the credibility of the pathologist in the case has been destroyed by a GMC panel, Starmer should at least reconsider and hopefully reverse his decision.
References here:
http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/killer-cop-harwood-must-be-charged/
http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/keir-starmer-the-next-lord-widgery/
I would urge you to press for a re-consideration of the decision not to bring charges. If no criminal charges are brought, at the very least the disciplinary hearing should be held in public as the rules allow. The Tomlinson family are entitled to justice.
3. Drugs policy. You very kindly agreed to write to David Cameron on my behalf. I am very concerned at the conduct of the Home Office at present and particularly James Brokenshire, the Minister for Crime Prevention who is causing great damage to both the coalition governemnt and the Tory party by promoting ideas and policies that contradict virtually all expert opinion, including the government’s own scientific advisers. He also seems to be completely at odds with the calls for drug law reform which both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have made consistently over the last 10 years.
This is not a peripheral or secondary issue. According to Baroness Meacher in the House of Lords on 15th June 2010, “There is no more obvious waste than the £19 billion annual cost of the UK’s war on drugs”.
There is a huge amount of reference material on this subject on my blog:
http://pjroldblog.wordpress.com/?s=drugs
I would also refer you to the Transform Drug Policy Foundation which has highly detailed and almost universally acclaimed proposals for drug regulation:
Virtually all experts agree that the “war on drugs” has failed. In exactly the same way as alcohol prohibition in the US led to a massive increase in crime and violence, so drug prohibition has created an illegal market said to be worth £350 billion per year. It has also financed civil war in Latin America for 25 years and is the principal source of finance for Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Our soldiers are dying every day because of the illegal trade in opiates. Why don’t we just buy up the whole crop for the next 10 years? It would be much cheaper in both cash and lives than the Afghan war.
Virtually all experts agree that regulation would be a better solution. I have distilled the following five point plan from everything that I have read and learned over more than 30 years:
1. An end to oppression of drug users (at least 10 million UK citizens)
2. Removal from the criminal law of any offence for possession and/or social supply
3. Fact and evidence-based policy, information and regulation
4. Re-direction of law enforcement resources against real criminals
5. Treat problematic drug use as a health issue
Five years ago, while campaigning for the Tory party leadership, David Cameron called for “fresh thinking and a new approach” towards drugs policy and said that it would be “disappointing if radical options on the law on cannabis were not looked at”. Nick Clegg has promised to repeal “illiberal, intrusive and unnecessary” laws and to stop “making ordinary people criminals”. There can be no better example of this than the laws against personal use and cultivation of cannabis, particularly for medicinal reasons. The coalition government’s new Your Freedom website has been inundated with proposals to legalise cannabis and to end the futile war on drugs. In July a poll carried out for the LibDems showed 70% of people in favour of legalising cannabis.
The Home Office and James Brokenshire are completely out of touch with expert and public opinion as well as the declared views of both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.
In my view, regulation means tighter control on the most dangerous drugs such as heroin, cocaine and alcohol and lighter regulation on relatively harmless substances like cannabis and ecstasy.
There is also the very important question of medicinal cannabis. The discovery of the endocannabinoid system in 1998 has led to an ever-escalating volume of evidence of the medicinal value of cannabis. In June the MHRA approved Sativex as an MS medicine in the UK. It is a whole plant extract yet presently, the Home Office refuses to consider a regulated system of the plant itself for medicinal purposes. This is completely irrational and absurd. The House Of Lords scientific committee recommended such a system should be introduced 12 years ago. Medicinal cannabis is available and regulated throughout almost all of Europe, Israel and 14 states in the USA (with 12 more in the planning stage). The UK stands almost alone in its obstinate refusal even to consider such a system.
Already this is leading to quite obscene injustices where patients have been prescribed Sativex by their doctor but their health authority has refused to fund it and patients are then facing criminal prosecution for cultivating their own plants. There is a case of exactly this going on in the Dorchester Crown Court at present and the CPS insists it is in the public interest to prosecute!
Thank you once again for listening to me Richard. I hope these notes are useful in composing your letter to David Cameron and I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Kind regards,
Peter Reynolds
Killer Cop Harwood Must Be Charged
Incompetent And Corrupt
The only even half-excuse that Keir Starmer, the DPP, had for not charging PC Simon Harwood over the death of Ian Tomlinson was disagreement among pathologists. As it was, he should have allowed a jury to determine which pathologist to believe. Now, Dr Freddy Patel, who wasn’t even qualified to carry out the post mortem in the first place, has been found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council.
Killer
Richard Davies, chairman of the GMC panel said in relation to another case that Patel should not have set aside his “professional judgement for any of the parties involved during or after a post-mortem examination for reasons of expediency or anything else”. Patel’s credibility is therefore shot to pieces. No jury could choose to believe him in the Tomlinson case, particularly when the other two pathologists were both agreed on their diagnosis.
There is therefore no reason now not to charge Harwood and there must be a better than even chance of his conviction for manslaughter.
Starmer has a chance to try to rescue his reputation. He should grab it with both hands immediately.
British Justice On Trial
Thugs, Slimeballs And Grunts
At last, four of the Metropolitan Police’s Territorial Support Group are to stand in the dock charged with assault causing actual bodily harm and a jury is to decide their fate. They are PC Nigel Cowley, PC Mark Jones, PC Roderick James-Bowen and DC John Donohue.
He's Got To Go
Perhaps Keir Starmer, Director Of Public Prosecutions, thinks he will win back some credibility through this after his catastrophically bad judgement in the Ian Tomlinson case. Not a bit of it. In fact, the decision to prosecute now after a successful civil claim against these thugs, proves how negligent the original decision was. The CPS is charged to uphold the public interest by statute. It should not have to be harried to the Court reluctantly by civil action. Yet again, Keir Starmer should hang his head in shame. In fact, he should resign
These officers have already been proven on the balance of probabilities to have illegally assaulted Babar Ahmad in 2003. Last year the High Court heard that he was subject to “serious, gratuitous, prolonged, unjustified violence” and “religious abuse”. Now the criminal courts will seek to extend that proof to beyond a reasonable doubt. Meanwhile, the Met, which decided against any disciplinary action, chooses not even to suspend these proven thugs and bullies. Sir Paul Stephenson should join them in the dock. His disrespect for due process is astounding. How can he have such men under his command? The IPCC also failed in this case – yet again. In 2007, it decided to take no action against any of the officers.
Keeping Mum
Almost every day now, new horror stories of illegal, brutal or simply dumb police behaviour are revealed. This is the reward we have reaped from the massive investment and huge increase in salaries we gave to the police in the 80s. According to my contact with inside knowledge it is due to a “collapse in supervision…and an arrogance due to few cops having much other work experience”. The police service is no such thing for the average British citizen. It is a self-serving bureaucracy with an aggressive sub-culture, acting as a revenue generating workforce for the state. It is institutionalised racism, brutality, prejudice, bullying, corruption, cowardice, freemasonry, all dressed up in a jack-the-lad, paramilitary uniform. It isn’t even any good at what it does. Aside from dealing with road accidents and high-level anti-terrorism, I know of little good work done by the British police. It has become an out of control monster that avoids doing what the public wants and picks and chooses what to devote its resources to.
PC Simon Harwood
If Keir Starmer can reverse his decsion on these thugs who beat up a suspected terrorist, he can also reverse his decison on the fatal assault on Ian Tomlinson, an entirely innocent bystander. Meanwhile we await impatiently the coroner’s inquest on his death and the disciplinary hearing against PC Simon Harwood, which must be held in public in accordance with the statutory provisions.
Every time that a police officer breaks the law or exceeds his powers he breaches our trust. It is the same as a bank employee stealing from his bank. It must be punished particularly severely. This must be the standard that British police adhere to. We must never relent from calling the corrupt and incompetent to account.
We Wait For Justice
Whether a conviction is possible in this latest case, seven years after the events took place, I don’t know. On the basis of its own rules the CPS must believe a conviction is more likely than not or it wouldn’t be proceeding . Justice delayed though, is justice denied for Babar Ahmad and the policemen. This repeated and continuing incompetence by the prosecution and regulatory authorities is every bid as dangerous as the deterioration in the police. Suspicions of corruption, collusion and conspiracy are inevitable and must be answered. These are serious threats to British justice.
Keir Starmer – The Next Lord Widgery?
No Better Than A Terrorist
The scandalous decision not to prosecute PC Simon Harwood over the death of Ian Tomlinson is reverberating right across the world.
British justice has become a laughing stock and our proud history of freedom, liberty and fairness is heaped with derision – and deservedly so
When the establishment needs to dissemble and misinform it calls on its tame lawyers and paper tiger figureheads. Keir Starmer, the DPP, is clearly angling for his peerage and his place on the government roster of professional liars, deceivers and propagandists.
In 1972, when British soldiers murdered protestors on the streets of Londonderry, they wheeled out Lord Widgery who produced a report of such crass dishonesty and fundamental deception that it took a further enquiry lasting 12 years and costing £200 million to expose it as nonsense.
When millions across the world have witnessed the unprovoked assault from behind on Ian Tomlinson, they have wheeled out Keir Starmer, another tame QC, to demonstrate a complete absence of integrity and deliver a deeply corrupt, manipulative and unforgivable decision not to prosecute.
In the last 50 years more than 1,000 people have died while in police custody in the UK but not a single policeman has been prosecuted.
Is it any wonder that we have pond life like Raoul Moat feted and worshipped by the underclass when they suffer under the yoke of police oppression, when they see no justice nor fairness nor hope?
The truth is that PC Simon Harwood and Raoul Moat are two peas from the same pod. Police websites, such as the notorious Inspector Gadget, reveal serving police officers’ attitudes just as perverse as those that supported the Raoul Moat Facebook page. The police are completely out of control, ineffective, mismanaged and corrupt.
It took 30 years for the Metropolitan Police to admit that one of its officers was responsible for the death of Blair Peach.
The suggestion from the extreme left is that we are being softened up and desensitised against a future where with swingeing public expenditure cuts we can expect to see riots in the streets and more police violence. I don’t buy this conspiracy theory but I am desperately worried for the future of British justice when men like Keir Starmer are in charge.
It isn’t just incompetence. It isn’t just misjudgement. There is clear intent to pervert the course of justice. He knew that the six month limit on bringing a charge of common assault was passing. He knew that the conflict between expert evidence was for a jury to determine. He knew that never was it more essential “in the public interest” for a prosecution to be brought.
Keir Starmer is every bit as dangerous to the fabric of our society as any terrorist or subversive. Look at how many lives Lord Widgery’s behaviour was responsible for. Look at how his lies prolonged the violence and fed the divisions within Northern Ireland. The same thing is happening all over again.
PC Simon Harwood, Raoul Moat, Keir Starmer. They are all the same. They are all a danger to society. They should all be behind bars.
Keir Starmer Must Go
Failure
There can be no excuse for his gross dereliction of duty. He has totally lost sight of the purpose of his job. Whatever it takes to get rid of him, he must go.
Ian Tomlinson’s Death Puts the Final Nail In the Coffin Of British Justice
The Man Who Destroyed Justice
Keir Starmer’s decision not to prosecute PC Simon Harwood, who clearly assaulted Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest, while concealing his identity, is an outrageous scandal. It is perhaps the most shameful episode ever in the history of British justice, a system which has long held a much higher opinion of itself than it ever deserved. Today it is proved to be utterly useless and Starmer’s conduct proves him to be both incompetent and entirely unsuitable for his responsibility.
Starmer’s weasel words in his statement are truly pathetic and demonstrate weakness, a complete inability to see beyond legalese to the truth and are a clarion call for his dismissal.
We the people of Great Britain care not one jot for the disagreement between medical experts. We want this matter put before a jury.
We want PC Simon Harwood’s head. He is a murderer.
We want Keir Starmer’s head. He is an apologist for police brutality and an incompetent Director of Public Prosecutions.
Theresa May Must Act On Gary McKinnon And Ian Tomlinson
It's Decision Time
After defence there can be no higher priority for any government than justice. The new government’s honeymoon period is over. The cases of Gary McKinnon and Ian Tomlinson need urgent attention from our new Home Secretary.
A Victim Not A Villain
Gary McKinnon’s case raises profound issues. He is in danger of “extradition” to the US but any idea that this is some legitimate process is nonsense. He is actually in danger of illegal rendition or kidnapping which the previous Labour government seemed ready to sanction. Any alleged crime was committed on British soil so there isn’t even any question of “extradition”. If he is to be tried he must be tried where the alleged crime was committed.
There seems though to be no progress at all on the murder of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests. This is a scandal and injustice of the very highest order and those responsible for prevaricating and filibustering over bringing charges are criminals themselves.
Murder
Ian Tomlinson’s family waits helpless while the dilatory DPP, Keir Starmer, and the CPS quibble and procrastinate over facts that the whole country has seen revealed on its TV screens. Obviously they intend to delay long enough so that the case be consigned to history like the murder of Blair Peach by a police officer in 1979. It was only last month that the Metropolitan Police came clean on this, 30 years too late.
There is some nonsense excuse being peddled that there is a problem with obtaining expert medical evidence. This is a dreadful miscarriage of justice. These are issues for a jury to decide. Keir Starmer should be dismissed for gross misconduct and should consider himself lucky if he doesn’t go to jail for perverting the course of justice.
Thug
We have already seen the inexcuseable acquittal of Sergeant Delroy Smellie, the thug who assaulted Nicola Fisher at the G20 protests (see here). This must be one of the lowest points ever in the history of British justice. There can be no other description of this verdict and District Judge Daphne Wickham who made the decision than corrupt. She deserves to be tarred and feathered for what she has done.
What can be higher in priority on Theresa May’s todo list than these matters of great principle and injustice? She should put everything else aside. There can be no more excuses.
