If you’ve never understood what the Thin Blue Line does, then read on
One thing any blogger will tell you: it doesn’t do to have a go at the Constabulary. They appear to have no time at all to solve real crime, but all the hours it takes to watch every website in the country. They probably tap into the GCHQ monitoring system. That’s the one that Jacqui Smith ‘abandoned’, but it went ahead anyway – at a cost to you and I of £13.2 billion. Theresa May’s attempt the week before last to grant it post-construction planning permission on the sly went badly wrong, but it really makes no difference. For all I know, Plod has never even heard of it. They rarely get to hear about any sort of crime these days….especially cyber warfare.
But like I say, the Boys in Blue do not take criticism well. I’ve had the odd warning here and there – once from the Liverpool lads, and a few times from those leaders in cultural diversity, Devon & Cornwall Police. If you’re interested, by the way, the trick is not to mention any names. Really useful tip that, if you want the guilty punished. Foot off the irony pedal, Slog: move on laddie, nuthin’ ter see here.
One Force that seems to get more stick than most is Greater Manchester, the infamous GMP. These are the folks, so Private Eye reported in September 2011, happy to let the Spanish Courts ‘deal with’ a bloke engaged in a fraud involving billions of euros, and in which rather a lot of northerners had been fleeced.The miscreant, John Sparrow, allegedly told investors in a scam that he had £270m in a Spanish bank account. But later, he insisted to Spanish police that he knew nothing about the money side, and thought the scheme entirely above-board. He still thinks it is today.
He got off with two years suspended, and a small fine. A GMP eyes-and-teeth front man spokesperson said, “We hare satisfied that the hobtainin’ hof bonds was fraudulent squire, but hon this occasion we shall be remainin’ hin a northerly location, hon account hof the fact that Johnny Dago his hon the case, Ithangyoo.”
No of course, they didn’t use those words – but that was the gist of it. Sparrow’s two chums in the scam, I’m told, should be residing in Strangeways Nick, but they aren’t. They’re in Altrincham. They do, however, seem quite loquacious about the fact that Sparrow knew everything, got paid a load of wonga, and is a very lucky boy. But GMP regard John Sparrow as small fry…they have bigger fish on their minds. ‘You can’t catch a sparrow when you’re frying a fish’ by the way, is an old police maxim.
So how do the GMP’s finest pass their time? Well, in the case of Pc Troy Van-Eda, 44 (I learn from the stalwarts at the Manchester Evening News) some of their duties seem to involve arresting girls and then giving them a good seeing to.
Our Troy nicked Joanne Pinder for not wearing a seatbelt, but then 24 hours later (presumably in lieu of Court Proceedings) they had sex in the boiler room of Littleborough Police Station. This could become the Eye’s new Ugandan Discussions – ‘Court Proceedings’.
Anyway, a GMP panel didn’t believe Troy’s protestations of innocence, so they fired him. That’s it. No charge of arresting citizens with intent to roger. Just, um, gone. The allegations made in relation to PC Van-Eda involved five instances of what looks suspiciously like a sex-for-acquittal scam. But not in the eyes of GMP’s elders.
All that was last January. Just over a fortnight ago, however,
The Sun updated us on what others in the Force do: fart about with guns. There’s a brilliant shot of the jolly jest, which involved one armed officer sticking a gun up his colleague’s anus, while posing jauntily on the bonnet of a GMP Range Rover. Laugh? I nearly got arrested.
The GMP commented: “Their conduct let themselves, their colleagues and the rest of the force down.” Hmm. Do we really think it did? I only ask this because, three weeks before this incident, an armed GMP copper appears to have become a little over-excited while arresting drug-dealer Anthony Grainger. The bloke was sitting in his Audi when the officer concerned (whose name of course we must not know) shot him dead with a sub-machine gun.
Well, I suppose it saves time and money wasted on Court Proceedings, er no, I mean ‘a trial’. Not even the GMP can blarney their way through this one, and the officer is to be charged. Grainger was, allegedly, a lowlife: a defendant in a collapsed multimillion pound drug trial (it led to a juror being jailed for contempt of court after exchanging Facebook messages with an acquitted co-defendant) Grainger was subsequently cleared of conspiracy to supply drugs on this technicality.
So it will be interesting to hear the officer’s explanation when the Court case kicks off. “Wull yer ‘onor, I ‘ad the gun up me mate’s arse and it went off in me ‘and, ricocheted off the Rover’s bonnet and ‘it poor Anthony in the chest” might not entirely cut it. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, over at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport, the GMPs are struggling a bit on the case of a serial insulin-nutter who has killed seven patients there. Stepping Hill nurse, Rebecca Leighton, 28, from Heaviley, Stockport, spent six weeks in GMP custody last year, after being held over allegations she had tampered with the saline bags. But in September, she was released and cleared of any wrongdoing. So, they got the wrong person. Oh dear. I say “Oh dear”, because the cops are still struggling with the basic arithmetic involved: they just decided
to review the cases of 21 other patient cases – six of which were fatal.
So we’ve got 13 bodies from one hospital. It’s a finite place, a hospital. It doesn’t take long to talk to everyone there, and not that much manpower to keep an eye on stray bods with hypodermics strolling in and out. The GMP recently arrested another nurse, but he’s now been bailed without charge.
But apart from ignoring fraud – and hiring sex maniacs, playground infants, and shooting people, and arresting the wrong people – what are the policemen and women of Greater Manchester doing for the community?
C’mon, fair do’s: they must be getting something right. And indeed they are: In a ground-breaking case during March 2007, they seized two golliwogs from a shop, following a complaint that the dolls were racially offensive. As far as I know, the dolls didn’t get off, and neither of them was shot.
So that’s a result.
The Slog 