The IPCC report says that the Nottinghamshire police failed murdered couple, John and Joan Stirland.
‘The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) criticised the missed opportunities to protect the couple and described the lack of co-ordination between Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire police as “unacceptable”.
It emerged that on the day of the murder in August 2004, Mrs Stirland rang Nottinghamshire Police at 11am to report there had been a prowler outside her bungalow in Trustthorpe the night before.
She spoke to another officer at Nottinghamshire Police at 2pm but it took the second officer an hour to fax their information to Lincolnshire Police.
By the time the Stirlands were visited by officers, they had been murdered by men dressed in boiler suits. ‘
The report also points out that the police were guilty of that great crime, failing to do a health and safety assessment;
“There is no evidence of a proper risk assessment being carried out at the Trusthorpe address at any stage. A risk assessment would have included a visit to the premises and advice on suitability and security.”
Now, while the report does point out a number of failings, it is, to my mind, such a whitewash that it makes the Hutton Report look like an in depth critical analysis. Why?
‘A national newspaper yesterday reported that an undercover operation by Notts police against Gunn and his associates revealed that John and Joan Stirland were being earmarked for assassination.
It claims that although detectives were aware guns had been placed near the Stirlands’ home in Trusthorpe, Lincolnshire, and had been given the name of their intended killers, they did not intervene for fear of compromising an operation into corruption within Notts police. Officer suspicions were later confirmed when PC Charles Fletcher and PC Phil Parr were jailed for passing on information to Colin Gunn via third parties.’
Got that? Right, well now let us see the reaction of Master of all that is Wrong with today’s police force, Nottinghamshire Chief Constable, Steve Green.
‘Notts Chief Constable Steve Green accepted the findings of the report but said his officers deserved praise, not criticism.
“These are the men and women who, day after day, night after night, week after week, month after month, pushed themselves beyond all normal limits of exhaustion to hunt down the violent, evil criminals who were perpetrating wave after wave of turf war killings and shootings,” he said.
“I am the Chief Constable. I take responsibility. If you want to judge my officers, I ask you to remember one thing.
“These are the officers who saved our city.”
Really Steve?
So, if we ignore, for a moment, the serving officers, under your command, who night after night, week after week, passed information to gangsters in exchange for some designer clothes from a city clothing store, and assume they were just the odd bad apple, let us examine what a utopia Nottingham now is. Whilst I agree with the Evening Post reporter to some extent ~ Nottingham’s ‘gun city’ reputation is skewed by the City boundaries encompassing all of the trouble spots, and none of the nice areas (like wot I live in), it contains a single damming piece of information;
‘In almost three years there has been only one fatal shooting in the city - and there were none last year.
Problem solved?
Of course not.
Easy access to firearms and ammunition remains a worry and, as we reported earlier this month, there was an increase last year in the number of firearm discharge incidents. Sooner or later, one or more of those rounds was going to hit somebody.’
But then as Steve Green appears more keen on getting his chubby face in the paper by calling for bans on legally held replica and toy weapons, draconian licensing restrictions, etc, I can see how he might be too busy to realise that a situation where we see an increase in ‘discharge incidents’, and serving officers being involved in the murky underworld is nothing to be proud of at all.
[all bold emphasis mine]
Filed under: plod & law
So if it’s now plainly obvious that even when the police know someone is trying to kill you they can’t or won’t protect you, can we have our guns back now?
Do I understand this correctly - the police thought it was more important to continue with their investigation into whether some officers were corrupt, and less important the fact that these people were in all likelihood going to be murdered?
I feel really terrible. That murder could have been prevented. What were the police doing during that one hour? This actually reminds me of the bombing incident that happened at one of our premier malls last year. According to the police, it was a tank explosion but some sources say otherwise. Anyway, long story short. The police head also claimed that the men and women of the force should in fact be promoted because they have never handled such a case before and that they spent a long time dealing with it. The problem is that they didn’t even deal with it well.
Obviously only difficult to obtain a gun if you are a law abiding citizen, unlikely to use it for crimal reasons. Impossible to own a hand gun legally for target practice.
Not difficult to own one for offing people who diss you though…