PCs suspended over photos of murder scene

Stop and search has been highly contraversial in London for years and years.

It's probably too off topic for this thread, as it's such a big topic in itself.

The fact they were women and black is of course a factor in how this is being dealt with and reported.

Which all sounds nice, until you remember how many black people are stopped "on suspicion" which leads to fuck all. So you then go back to the "suspicion" and discover it really was "Because I am black"

Who said it was " nice"? It is not nice to be stopped and searched when you have committed no offence or crime, but stop and search is a useful tool that has been brought back by various forces over recent times. Because it is effective.

I live in Liverpool, and in certain areas of the city youths ( & let's face it is mainly young males of whatever race or skin colour) are regularly stopped and search, because in some communities gangs of youths rule the roost ( or think they do); operating as 'foot soldiers' or 'runners', or wannabe gangsters; terrorising their local communities with wanton acts of violence and lawlessness; driving dirt bikes at high speed against the flow of traffic and so on.......

People/the community want these kids to be stopped and searched; and yes, it means that at times completely innocent people are stopped and searched too. Some of the communities I am talking about above are predominantly white, and it is white kids that are being stopped, because it is white kids 'doing the criminality' in those areas.

Does London not have an identified issue with gangs and knife crime, especially in certain black communities and neighbourhoods?

Good lord
Two sisters dead at once
Surprisingly little media coverage until it turns out that
Police took selfies
And we get

This is being discussed on the wrong board
It is an anti police thread
Black people are violent, loads of knife crime
They were at an illegal gathering
Women are not angels (women could have taken the pics you can't assume it was men) (even though this has blokes written all over it)
Why is race being brought into it
Etc etc etc etc

Depressing

Justhadathought whether the birthday gathering 'broke lock down rules' is irrelevant. Utterly and completely.I don't recall being informed that sanctions for breaking rules were to be murdered, do you

I'm talking about policing in a quite febrile time, when many tensions are in evidence all over the country. You seem to want to make everything about police toxicity, or similar, to back up a narrative about racism.

I have not said, that anyone deserves to murdered for attending an " illegal" gathering, even tough there have been quite a few murders over the last couple of weeks at such gatherings; as well as stabbings, rapes, attacks on the police, criminal damage and so on.

Do the police intervene; do they step back, and only get involved once things get out of hand.....?

This is quite a separate issue from what has allegedly happened with the police officers and their alleged serious misconduct in the aftermath of the double murder of two women, although many are just looking for any opportunity to make the current climate into a similar war against the police, like it is in the U.S.

Justhadathought whether the birthday gathering 'broke lock down rules' is irrelevant. Utterly and completely.

I don't recall being informed that sanctions for breaking rules were to be murdered, do you?

There's no indication at all that the police were involved in this family gathering while it was happening. What do lock down rules have to do with two women being brutally murdered in a park and police officers taking photos of their dead bodies - including a selfie - it would seem?

It's not necessary for anyone to construct an anti police narrative. The police officers conduct speaks for itself

Cheshirechav, give the board a go. You might learn something. I know I have.
I’ve lost the afternoon to reading about Operation Countryman thanks to ProfessorSlocombe.

And Cheshire, feel free to start your own thread about this elsewhere. Aibu perhaps.

You will lock horns with a poster on one thread and agree with them completely on another.

It’s shocking at first because we have become used to existing in thought-silos, an unintended consequence of the artificial intelligence algorithms written by social media techs.

Educate first and embrace later, or don’t embrace at all, but feminism is not and has never been a single organisation with an agreed aim. There are no leaders and no agreed manifestos. Decide which bits resonate and rail against the others (or ignore if you prefer).

CheshireChav
In feminist chat we discuss all sorts of things. I don't agree with every post but am happy to engage and discuss. Why you think we should be forbidden to discuss what happened to these women?

With respect, the title of the post was
'PCs suspended over photos of murder scene'

.. with the OP "Men. They never disappoint"

The post was about the police (of unspecified gender) that took the photos, not about the murder it the murderer.

It's a shame as I want to embrace & educate myself further about feminism, but I don't think the feminist board is for me.

You Seem to be saying it is wrong to judge on a sample of one but wish to do so as sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I am saying if it is wrong then it is wrong on all accounts.

Actually, I am agreeing with you. But if you don't hold a mirror up to the police and tell it like it is, you are going nowhere.

I am old enough to recall Operation Countryman and the hundreds of bent coppers it flushed out (so you can guess as to how many were still left behind). And the fact that the team working on the operation were not based in London as their superiors genuinely feared they'd be victims of a hit.

I'm sure it's all different now (is what the parents of Stephen Lawrence were told 20 years ago).

No need to tell me how brave our police officers are - nor the strains and horrors that they endure. But let's always remember they aren't conscripts.

anti-police narrative

Characterising any challenge or criticism as anti-police is how we end up with a police culture of abusing power with impunity.

Might it have anything at all to do with high levels of gang violence and knife crime in certain communities?

Which all sounds nice, until you remember how many black people are stopped "on suspicion" which leads to fuck all. So you then go back to the "suspicion" and discover it really was "Because I am black".

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/15/man-sues-met-police-injuries-suffered-alleged-racist-arrest-tariq-stanley

“I was sitting in my car outside my home and I was watching a YouTube video. I had actually come outside to have a cigarette. I saw a police van pull up behind me. I thought nothing of this but then could see an officer approaching my car as other officers stood near the van. This officer came up to the driver-side window and asked me what I was doing. I explained that I lived here and pointed to my flat.”

He added: “This officer said he smelled cannabis and said he wanted to search me and the car. I was shocked by this as the accusation came out of nowhere. I do not smoke cannabis and therefore there is no way the officer could have smelled this. He also pointed to my car, a BMW, and said it was a nice car to be owned by someone like me."

Although I was shocked by this I told the officer he could search me and the car. I had nothing to hide so I got out and handed both my car and house keys to him. It was when I started to video record the incident with my phone that this officer tried to place handcuffs on my left wrist. He did this without warning or explanation.”

Stanley said another officer joined in the arrest and forced his forearm behind his back. He alleged that the two policemen snatched the phone off him to stop him filming the incident.

“They actually said that I should stop being aggressive but they were the ones doing all the aggression. As you can see and hear from the video, I kept offering to cooperate, telling them there was no need for handcuffs.”

Now I may not be a great scientist. But I am pretty certain you can only smell things that are there. Not things that aren't. So where did the "suspicion" come from ? Still at least they didn't use 7 bullet to remove his head, so maybe instead of whining he should actually pay them a bonus ?

One bad apple ? Or two:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53097628

A nurse pulled over by police who drove in front of her in a "hard stop" operation, says she was targeted because of her race.

(contd)

Just checked, Archdeacon Smallman retired in 2016. Interesting that she is titled Mrs rather than Rev or Ven(erable). You don't retire from priesthood even when you are no longer in post.

Professor I have no idea how many police forces are corrupt by we see evidence of it in the failure to investigate/prosecute rapes, the failure to take harassment if women seriously, the ignoring of threats on social media, the ‘checking your thinking’, and so on.

You Seem to be saying it is wrong to judge on a sample of one but wish to do so as sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I am saying if it is wrong then it is wrong on all accounts.

But then you need to explain why in a city like London blacks get stopped far more often than statistics say is random

Might it have anything at all to do with high levels of gang violence and knife crime in certain communities?

My son and his friends have been stopped and searched numerous times when out late at night - if a crime has been reported in the area in which they are. And I frequently see cars being stopped and searched if police suspect they are being used to transport guns or drugs, or are complicit in organised crime.

The whole bad apple analogy is based on the fact that rot spreads and soon the whole barrel is rotten. I think this is widely misunderstood, forgotten or ignored.

I suppose it is possible that one or both of the selfie-taking officers is a woman, but I'd be very surprised and I'd immediately wonder whether she had always been a woman and been born, raised and socialised as a girl. It's not impossible but I think it's highly unlikely.

I also think two white women who went missing in similar circumstances would have been searched for more promptly and thoroughly and not left to be found by a loving concerned partner. How will he ever get over that, or even close his eyes to go to sleep at night? 😢

I understand that the victims' mother is an ordained priest in the Church of England and in post as an Archdeacon; the first black woman to hold that office here. If she couldn't get the police to take the out-of-character disappearance of her daughter's seriously, something is badly wrong.

Whilst a shocking, utterly abhorrent act ... why is it in 'feminist chat'?

The victims were women and they were ignored by the police then the police treated them appallingly. Why wouldn’t a space dedicated to women’s rights be concerned about that?

But you cannot extrapolate this across the whole service.

Why not ? Have you seen how the police treat all black people based in a sample of one ? Or women, based on a sample of one.

I warned you in the post (the bit you snipped). It's amazing how quickly the police squeal when you treat the them the same way they treat you.

By all means come back and tell us how vanishingly few officers are corrupt, violent. rulebreakers, lazy and incompetent. But then you need to explain why in a city like London blacks get stopped far more often than statistics say is random.

Whilst a shocking, utterly abhorrent act ... why is it in 'feminist chat'?

Because not only were the victims women (real women) but there appears to be a strong case that their sex and ethnicity were key factors in the entire handling of this case.

Not just the lackadaisical initial investigation, but the appalling violation the victims a second time at the hands of those we charge with protecting us from danger.

It really shouldn't need explaining (and is worrying that it does).

To be honest, the sex of the officers in this incident is irrelevant - although balance of probabilities would suggest XY chromosomes are involved.

posted too soon. You cannot extrapolate it across the whole service from one incident but nor could you assume the culture that allowed it was absent elsewhere.

You have a barrel with (say) 22,000 apples in it. What are the odds that two successive and random selections of a single apple will result in your drawing the only two bad ones ?????????

The first apple is not chosen at random here - we are starting from the fact we have one bad apple and considering the chance of the next one being bad also. We are also not selecting from the whole barrel but only those close to the first bad apple and as anyone with a mouldy peach will know the mould spreads to adjacent fruit.

You don’t go straight to unacceptable behaviour like this in a single step - it takes lots of little steps where each behaviour is allowed by those around them. Which raises red flags concerning the culture in which these two police officers operated. But you cannot extrapolate this across the whole service.

I'm completely supportive of having a police force; none of the alternatives seem at all realistic to me

The need for a police force might be taken as a sign that society - or community - has failed. Generally they are there to protect property and those who own it.

At the risk of going all hippy-trippy (well, reverting to hippy-trippy ) ...

“Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.”