DAMILOLA, LIBERALISM, & CORRUPT POLICE. (The Telegraph)

Member Name: Aang

Product:	The Telegraph
Date:	03/12/00 (54 review reads)
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"Police corruption in Britain is now so widespread it may have reached levels which normally only occur in unstable Third World countries, according to a confidential document obtained by The Telegraph...The document is the minutes of a meeting organised by the National Criminal Intelligence Service." Daily Telegraph 27/9/98. Well done The Telegraph for telling us about corrupt coppers!

Is that why Damilola died? The police are so busy helping the drugs barons that they no longer bother to keep our streets safe? Surely not!

Detective chief inspector Elsmore Davies of Merseyside police sold information to drugs baron Curtis Warren according to The Daily Telegraph 27/9/98. "In 1992 it became clear to Sir James Sharples, the Chief Constable, that some of his officers were selling vital details of police operations against drug dealers - details such as the identity of undercover informers, the date and time of proposed arrests...A joint operation by Customs and the regional crime squad...found notorious drug dealers ...were ringing numbers inside Merseyside police drugs and fraud squads...

(And outside Merseyside?) 'Finding a cop who'll help out is not a problem,' said one drugs smuggler...A contact in the Crown Prosecution Service...could ensure that vital pieces of evidence were 'lost'."

(In London)"Detective constable Neil Putnam said that senior-ranking officers were involved in protecting junior officers from being investigated...Mr Putnam, who was involved in stealing drugs and accepting money for nearly a decade, said he had protection from senior officers across the force who have not been convicted...." Sunday Telegraph 3/12/00.

SO, IS POLICE CORRUPTION THE REASON WHY IT IS NOT SAFE FOR TEN YEAR OLDS TO WALK HOME FROM SCHOOL? Are the police too busy counting their ill-gotten gains?

I'm sure it's not as simple as that. I'm sure most of the polic
e are honest decent citizens. In the Sunday Telegraph 3/12/00, Dr Theodore Dalrymple writes:

"The brutality of daily life in Peckham is the result of every social trend that 'progressive' thinkers have applauded:

the weakening of the police...the constant mockery of all forms of social restraint and convention; the undermining of all forms of authority, from parental to educational and judicial;

the breakdown of the family and the rise of mass illegitimacy and fatherlessness; the tolerance of the most blatant public disorder; the indifference posing as openmindedness about the mass consumption of drugs;

AND the admiration accorded to the vicious, depraved, vulgar, brutal and deeply stupid British popular culture..."

YES!!!!!

The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph have got it right.

I have poured over the Guardian, The Times, The People, The Mail etc. BUT the best coverage of what led to Damiola's death has been in The Telegraph.

AND what's life like in Lagos where Damilola used to live? Dalrymple, in The Sunday Telegraph 3/12/00 writes:

"Lagos is very violent. Expatriates feel obliged to sleep in strong CAGES set up in their bedrooms, so that armed burglars (ARMED , SO IT IS SAID, WITH WEAPONS HIRED FROM THE POLICE) do not molest them as they clear out all their possessions."

And to be fair to the British police- when they do arrest young thugs, the punishement of the courts is often a slap on the wrist.

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