Quite.

Agreed.

“A generation ago, the behaviour of the police, and the methods they employed, were rather different to today: put simply, under pressure to solve the murder of one of their own, the Met fitted up three men for the crime: Mark Braithwaite, Engin Raghip and most notoriously Winston Silcott, who was already on bail for murder.”

The presumption of innocence is an amazing thing. Not one policeman has been convicted of wrong-doing. Not one. Some were charged. All were acquitted. So there is no more evidence the Met fitted the three up than there is that the three are guilty of the murder.

Let us be, at least, consistent.

After all, there is evidence Blacklock was killed. There is none that anyone was fitted up. At best someone found evidence that the interrogation notes were tampered with.

It is very poor that Mr Silcott was wrongly convicted… but also worth remembering that he was convicted by a jury, not by the police, nor the press.

The justice system has improved since then (at least in some ways), and cases such as this were the catalysts.

So much for subtlety:

Does tampering with interrogation notes not count as fitting someone up?

I was living just off the Broadwater Farm Estate in the 1980′s and I was involved in the defence campaign afterwards. In terms of being found guilty people should bear in mind that the jury was deceived by the police who had forged the interview notes. This was before recorded interviews and before solictors had to send a qualified lawyer to represent the person under interrogation. The police tore off a numbered sheet of paper from a pad and added the words that Winston Silcott was accused of saying after the interview. The “someone” who spotted the forgery was a forensic scientist paid for by the families of the 3 man convicted of the murder. Electronic tests were carried out on the sheet of paper that should have been under the sheet with the alleged confession that showed that nothing had been written on it when it had been torn from the pad i.e. it was a complete forgery.

The whole investigation of the events on Broadwater Farm that night were a travesty. The example that most clearly illustrates this is one man was accused of being involved in violence on Broadwater Farm that night was able to bring alibi evidence that he was in a pub in Windsor (40 miles away) at the time as the events came up on the TV news in the pub and people remembered him exclaiming that that was where he lived! The reason he was on trial was that someone else had been bullied into naming names by the cops.

I was also around on the night in question as I was trying to get home from a weekend in Wales. The behaviour of the cops was openly racist. Police vans were being driven at children being moved around in crocodile files. Any young Black guy was being treated to racist abuse larded up with F words and C words. The police had been out of control from the start. Certainly my impression was that they were out to get physical. They had already killed Mrs Jarrett and could have killed more people that day. They had degenerated into a right wing racist revenge mob.

This might seem not credible to people not around at the time or used to dealing with local cops on the beat. This was the era of orgreave, attacks on pit villages, routine frame ups and a legal system and general public that believed that the british police were always beyond reproach and indeed it was somehow morally wrong to question their actions or their word.

At the time in nearby areas of London you had entrenched corruption in Stoke Newnington police station and routine harassment of people guilty of driving whilst being male and Black. Indeed the story of what happened that night start when a copper called DC Randall stopped Floyd Jarrett for at the same time being Black and driving a BMW. When Randall was embarrassed to find nothing to justify stopping Mr Jarrett he got a raid on Mr Jarrett’s mother’s home in the vain hope of finding some illegal drugs. Mrs Jarrett died of heart failure as a result of the raid. The “riot” started as a result of the cops attacking a protest on Broadwater Farm against this injustice.

The blame for both deaths lies squarely with the racist policing of London at the time. Unfortunately the problem has only been superfically addressed even after the Lawrence enquiry. And of course more recently the G20 events indicate that the same attitudes and sense of entitlement to use violence still exist within the police.

Its important to get the facts and the context straight about this case. It was part of the culmination of events that have influenced policing policy and law in this country ever since. Much of the paperwork the police now complain about so much is to prevent miscarriages of justice such as this one.

In the 1970s and 80s the Met were seen by many as the uniformed wing of the National Front. The murder of Blair Peach and the failure to properly investigate the New Cross fire are still unresolved, though progress has been made on the New Cross affair. Of course there’s much more. Stephen Lawrence comes to mind.

It always strikes me that whenever a miscarriage of justice due to police corruption or incompetence is uncovered that there is a guilty party still amongst us. Its also notable how seldom the coppers that fit up the innocent have to face justice.

I remember when he was released many newspapers ran a “He is released but he is guilty” campaigns

By the way
Are you THE Jonathan Miller of beyond the fringe fame

5. 5cc – “Does tampering with interrogation notes not count as fitting someone up?”

It depends on the tampering. Not all tampering is fitting someone up, but it often is.

6. tonyb – “The behaviour of the cops was openly racist. Police vans were being driven at children being moved around in crocodile files. Any young Black guy was being treated to racist abuse larded up with F words and C words.”

The problem clearly remains the myth making and the lies of those who oppose the police. Claims like this are hardly worth taking seriously except to point out how similar they are to the parody they are trying to criticise. They reflect back the small minded, bigoted, one-sided, unthinking prejudiced assumptions that they claim to criticise. Just as for the NF all Blacks are criminals, so to for the Right One are all police racists. It is pathetic really.

“The police had been out of control from the start. Certainly my impression was that they were out to get physical. They had already killed Mrs Jarrett and could have killed more people that day. They had degenerated into a right wing racist revenge mob.”

And here’s the proof. They did not kill Mrs Jarrett. She collapsed in her home and died of natural causes. There is no proof to the contrary. But of course to the prejudiced mind the police, like young Black men to some other closed minds, are always guilty aren’t they?

And that is where the lack of control began. Rather than joining the police and the rest of the British community in offering condolences for Mrs. Jarrett’s death, some members of the community, and I am not merely singling Bernie Grant out, sought to make use of it for their own ends and encourage violence. To which the police then had to respond. Blakelock was not killed brutalising Black youths, but trying to protect firemen who had been assaulted by a mob while trying to protect the local community. It was the mob that was out of control, not the police.

“Indeed the story of what happened that night start when a copper called DC Randall stopped Floyd Jarrett for at the same time being Black and driving a BMW.”

For having a tax disc out of date actually. You invent what you cannot know.

And again it is nice to see the assumption of innocence only applies to those you like and not everyone.

“When Randall was embarrassed to find nothing to justify stopping Mr Jarrett he got a raid on Mr Jarrett’s mother’s home in the vain hope of finding some illegal drugs.”

So would you care to follow the line of logic that goes from a young unemployed Black man who can afford a BMW to assuming drugs at his home? Can you please tell us why you think this is prejudice?

“Mrs Jarrett died of heart failure as a result of the raid. The “riot” started as a result of the cops attacking a protest on Broadwater Farm against this injustice.”

Sorry but where is the injustice?

SmFS
You make some good points but the met police in the eighties was pretty racist.
I remember being at a wedding in the eighties when a DC from the met was joking to a group that current joke doing the rounds was “They found a man killed by an axe, one copper turns to other “Well this the first time we can’t fit it on a spade”
Also I had two mates who left the Met because of the casual racism. It is much better now.