Tuesday 28 August 2007

Heroic police tackle hardened thug

Readers may have noticed that it's not often that I have nice things to say about the police. After all, when you have a situation where a man reporting a GBH is told to write to his MP, because the police are too busy to deal with it, but where the police can find the time to go out and arrest a schoolgirl for objecting to working with pupils who did not speak English, or to go and interrogate a ten year-old for using the word 'gay' in an e-mail, then you might very well get the impression that the police are more interested in bullying the law-abiding, than in taking on real criminals.

However, that impression would be surely be dispelled forever the moment one read of the case of the hardened thug Frank Gibson, and how heroically the police dealt with this clearly very dangerous and evil man:
A frail 81-year-old who was charged with assaulting two burly policemen on his way from church last Christmas Eve will have to wait until after next Christmas for the chance to clear his name.
Frank Gibson, OBE, a former Conservative councillor, Tory group leader and mayor of Gravesend in Kent, went on trial in Chatham last week after denying assaulting the two young, well-built officers.

To his dismay, Mr Gibson - who is hard of hearing, has high blood pressure, arthritic hands and, at the time of his arrest, could barely walk following major surgery on his feet - was told at the end of the prosecution case that there was no space on the court calendar for the defence to be heard until January.

[...]

Mr Gibson is accused of pushing one officer in the chest and twisting the thumb of another after they pulled him over on suspicion of drink-driving as he drove home his Volvo.

A breath test was taken but, as Mr Gibson had only had a sip of communion wine, it was negative. But because the pensioner refused to get out of his car, saying he had done nothing wrong, Mr Gibson claims the two officers grabbed an arm each and dragged him from his vehicle.

Pc Steven Cole told Medway magistrates' court that Mr Gibson had grabbed his thumb. "It hurt. He twisted it back and I noted down in my pocket notebook that I let out a yelp. There is no way else of describing it."

John Fitzgerald, prosecuting, said: "Mr Gibson's reaction was to push Pc Thomas McGregor in the chest with his left hand and walk back to his car."

The officers said that they were so traumatised by the OAP's actions they called for back-up before arresting him.

Ah diddums. No wonder the police don't bother to challenge real thugs: they'd be spending the rest of their lives in therapy.
How many officers were eventually needed to bring this arthritic octogenarian under control, I wonder? Four? Six? Still, I don't suppose there was anything more important to do. I mean, everyone knows there's no crime at Christmas time, don't they?

So, in essence what has happened in this case? Well, an 81 year-old who can barely walk is attacked by a pair of young thugs who haul him out of his car. He defends himself and, since they are, like most such thugs, inveterate cowards, they need to call in more thugs to help them push the old man around: two young healthy men against one disabled OAP proving worryingly close odds, as far as they're concerned. In any decent society, these young thugs would be arrested and given a good thrashing by the police, and would ultimately end up in prison. However, in Britain, these thugs are the police. And so it is the octogenarian who finds himself handcuffed and locked in a police station cell. Subsequently, he is subjected to a campaign of legal harassment, being chased through the courts by the police thugs, and their friends in the Crown Prosecution Service. Despite the long backlog of cases awaiting hearing, the police, who are delighted to give a mere caution to the common run of young thugs who have actually done something wrong, persist in their harassment and malicious prosecution of Mr Gibson.

On the side of the law-abiding? What a joke! The police have time and again shown themselves to be the enemies of decent members of the public, and the friends of criminals. Only when we recognise that they are far worse than useless, and begin a mass campaign of both actively resisting the police, and enforcing the law ourselves, will we be able to do something concrete to challenge the real criminals and thugs destroying our communities.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's simple why the police felt able to behave like this:

Old: Not a victim;
White: Not a victim;
Man: Not a victim.

Anonymous said...

Yup, the donkeys are just freakin crap.
That's why there is a wall of silence
Why should communities believe a word they utter?
Words are cheap.
Actions tell the story.

Anonymous said...

OT, OT
In the past month, American naval and air forces have intercepted two North Korean vessels clandestinely en route for Iran with cargoes of enriched uranium and nuclear equipment. The shutdown of Pongyong’s nuclear facilities has made these items surplus to North Korea’s requirements and worth a good price to the Islamic Republic.

On July 12, the second intercepted North Korean freighter was sunk in the Arabian Sea by torpedoes fired from a US submarine 100 miles southeast of the Iranian naval base-port of Chah Bahar. Delivery of its freight of enriched weapons-grade uranium and equipment and engines for manufacturing more fissile material including plutonium in its hold could have jumped-forwarded Iran’s nuclear bomb and warhead project, lopping off at least a year of work. For this Iran’s rulers were ready to fork out $500 million.

The shipment was brought forward by several weeks to evade detection by UN nuclear watchdog inspectors who were to descend on Pyongyang this week to verify the dismantling of its nuclear facilities.

US airplanes had been tracking the freighter and picked up signs of radioactivity, indicating the presence of nuclear materials aboard.

President Bush had the option of ordering US Marines to board the vessel or sinking it. He decided on the latter - both because the North Korean freighter was approaching an area patrolled by Iranian naval units and seizure of the vessel by American marines might have provoked a clash; also so as not to expose US troops to radioactive contamination. He therefore first ordered American naval and air units in the Persian Gulf, Middle East and seas opposite North Korea to go on a high state of readiness and torpedo the North Korean vessel without delay.

After the attack, US warships raced to the spot where the ship went down. They picked up three lifeboats. Most of the North Korean sailors aboard were either injured or dead. Twenty in all died in the attack. They all bore symptoms of contamination. After the episode, the area was cordoned off and underwater equipment dropped to salvage the cargo from the sunken ship.

All the parties to the incident, the United States, North Korea and Iran, have kept it dark. The situation in and around the Gulf is inflammable enough to explode into a full-blown Iranian-US clash at the slightest provocation. There was also the danger of North Korea aborting the closure of its nuclear facilities at the last moment.

In Feb, 07 the Central Intelligence Agency warned the White House that Iran had offered North Korea a billion and a half dollars in secret negotiations for key components of its dismantled nuclear industry.

In March or early April, Kim Jong-Il decided in the interests of prudence to spurn the offer. He feared that if the deal leaked out to US intelligence, he could say goodbye to the rewards and benefits promised for giving up his nuclear weapons.

But on second thoughts, the North Korea ruler decided it was worth taking the risk of a limited deal with Iran and he therefore agreed to -

1. Subtract for Iran a portion of enriched uranium from his stock.

2. Make up some of Iran’s shortages of high tech equipment for manufacturing weapons.

3. Lend Tehran dozens of nuclear engineers and technicians who have been put out of their jobs by the shutdown of North Korean’s program. With their help, Iran can speed up its program

Three senior North Korean engineers were due in Tehran by August 20 and another nine in December, 07. By then, North Korea expects the IAEA certificate confirming the closure of its nuclear program to be safely in the bag.

Tehran is also giving North Korea three years’ supply of free oil.

The CIA knew about the North Korean deliveries and knew they would be disguised as iron shipments, but were not clear how many ships would be used.


Over several weeks, the Americans cast a dense net of maritime and aerial surveillance, co-opting friendly Asian and European air and naval forces, to keep tabs on every vessel departing North Korea with freights of iron.

The first North Korean vessel was caught in the net on June 25.

Suspected of carrying radioactive materials hidden behind a cargo of iron, the vessel had entered the Arabia Sea and was two days voyage from Iran when, according to our sources in Paris, President Bush and French president Nicolas Sarkozy had a quick conversation over secure lines. That exchange resulted in a decision to rush US and French naval units in the neighborhood to intercept the suspect North Korean freighter and blow it out of the water.

It is not clear whether the ship was sunk by an American or a French submarine and, even after the event, it is not certain that the doomed ship did in fact carry nuclear materials or equipment.

Three days later, on June 28, the US Navy released this statement:

US sailors helped rescue the crew of a North Korean-flagged ship on Monday. The incident occurred in the Arabian Sea when the ship reported it had engine problems, no food or water and was in danger of sinking. The USNS Kanawha and the French ship Dupleix helped evacuate the ship’s 16 crew members to safety. None of the crew was a North Korean citizen.

The US and French ships are part of Combined Task Force 150, which conducts maritime security operations in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, the North Arabian Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

The Military Sealift Command ship in the US Naval Fleet is the USNS Kanawha Auxiliary Force.

The last time the US Navy or Air Force directly attacked a North Korean vessel was in December 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq.

That operation was also carried out in conjunction with a European naval force. The CIA located in the Indian Ocean a North Korean freighter carrying a disguised freight of Scud missiles bound for Saddam Hussein’s army in Iraq. The missiles were to have been unloaded in Yemen and smuggled into Iraq. The ship was boarded by Spanish marines under the cover of American helicopters.

Fulham Reactionary said...

Elbow:

Nicely put.

Also, he would have appeared unable to fight back, which is always a bonus for the police and their kind.