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Matters Arising From The Death of Stephen Lawrence

catsmate

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catsmate
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21 years ago a 18 year old black man named Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack London (wiki).
The case became, and still is, a cause célèbre and had spawned a number of enquiries into the London Metropolitan Police, it's attitude to crime involving non-whites, it's incompetence and self-protection and it's failures to properly investigate police misconduct.
The LMP was declared to be "institutionally racist" in one of those enquiries, in 1998.

The case also triggered to elimination of "double jeopardy" in the UK, allowing a person acquitted of a crime to be re-tried, if new evidence was obtained, with the consent of the court.

The case also, eventually, triggered an investigation into long running complaints of police corruption, that at least one of the investigating officers had corrupt ties to the family of one of the murderers.

Last year there were further revelations of police misconduct when an undercover officer admitted that he'd infiltrated one of the groups support the family of Stephen Lawrence and that he'd been pressured by superiors to "smear" the credibility of the family to put an end to their efforts to obtain a proper investigation into Lawrence's death.

Today we have the next phase of revelations (report link) and a public enquiry is to be set up to examine the behaviour of undercover LMP officers.
BBC link
 
[Nitpick: double jeopardy has not been eliminated, it has been permitted. Double jeopardy means the possibility of being prosecuted - put in jeopardy - twice for the same crime. It used to be prohibited, but is now no longer prohibited. Double jeopardy is now allowed. What has been eliminated is the prohibition on double jeopardy.]

Rolfe.
 
I've just seen a police spokesman on TV say that there was no undercover officer attached to or infiltrating the immediate Lawrence family, and the Lawrence family never met or came in contact with such a person. He said that the officer was attached to a "violent protest group" and was kept away from the Lawrences.

You know what? I don't believe him. We'll see what the inquiry reveals.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
[Nitpick: double jeopardy has not been eliminated, it has been permitted. Double jeopardy means the possibility of being prosecuted - put in jeopardy - twice for the same crime. It used to be prohibited, but is now no longer prohibited. Double jeopardy is now allowed. What has been eliminated is the prohibition on double jeopardy.]

Rolfe.
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:o Sorry, my bad. I used the term in the common (and erroneous) colloquial sense.

Rolfe said:
I've just seen a police spokesman on TV say that there was no undercover officer attached to or infiltrating the immediate Lawrence family, and the Lawrence family never met or came in contact with such a person. He said that the officer was attached to a "violent protest group" and was kept away from the Lawrences.

You know what? I don't believe him. We'll see what the inquiry reveals.

Rolfe.
Click to expand...
Especially as such as officer has testified in contradiction to this statement and the Home Secretary doesn't seem to agree.
 
Rolfe said:
I've just seen a police spokesman on TV say that there was no undercover officer attached to or infiltrating the immediate Lawrence family, and the Lawrence family never met or came in contact with such a person. He said that the officer was attached to a "violent protest group" and was kept away from the Lawrences.

You know what? I don't believe him. We'll see what the inquiry reveals.

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

Hell apparently even the people involved in the inquiry didn't believe it when the Met told them they had no documentation. It's as if the police sat down and worked out every way they could screw this case up and worked their way down the list.
 
The Met commissioner has spoken (BBC) declaring the effect of the report was "devastating". Though he's been accused of complacency by a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, who said policing was now "scraping the bottom" and called for a Royal Commission on policing.
Also several people convicted of various offenses where members of the Met's SDS unit are planning appeals due to revelations on the spying.
 
One thing that concerns me is that this was all around the time when the Met's anti-terrorism branch was supposedly running an investigation into the involvement of Heathrow airport in the Lockerbie bombing. Very little is known about that operation, and it was never mentioned at the trial.

Of course the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. The Met have rebuffed attempts to find out what they investigated and what they knew. There is some reason to suspect that officers in the Met may not have wanted Heathrow to be a serious contender for the scene of the crime because they already had the IRA to worry about and didn't want the work of a major Middle Eastern terrorist atrocity landed on them as well.

I just wonder if there is another scandal waiting to be uncovered there. Nothing to do with undercover officers of course, but once trust is lost, everything starts to look fishy.

Rolfe.
 
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Is this really so serious? Or is it one of these enormous lurches to which the cops seem so prone? Like the lurch into investigating phone hacking after completely ignoring it just because of the Millie Dowler affair and the lurch into prosecuting old men for sexual offences allegedly committed decades ago after completely ignoring numerous complains about Jimmy Saville. It comes on top of the laughable fall out from pleb gate featuring the elite cops charged with protecting Downing Street no less. Whatever happened to basic integrity and decency? Or the lurch that abolished (the ancient and sensible rule against) double jeopardy when the right thing to have done was investigate and discipline the cops who screwed up the original Lawrence investigation?

Were the Lawrence's actually discredited? I didn't hear about it if they were. Were they being used by the sort of subversive elements the cops have been infiltrating and monitoring for years?

We have gone to the dogs.
 
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anglolawyer said:
Is this really so serious? Or is it one of these enormous lurches to which the cops seem so prone? Like the lurch into investigating phone hacking after completely ignoring it just because of the Millie Dowler affair and the lurch into prosecuting old men for sexual offences allegedly committed decades ago after completely ignoring numerous complains about Jimmy Saville. It comes on top of the laughable fall out from pleb gate featuring the elite cops charged with protecting Downing Street no less. Whatever happened to basic integrity and decency? Or the lurch that abolished (the ancient and sensible rule against) double jeopardy when the right thing to have done was investigate and discipline the cops who screwed up the original Lawrence investigation?

Were the Lawrence's actually discredited? I didn't hear about it if they were. Were they being used by the sort of subversive elements the cops have been infiltrating and monitoring for years?

We have gone to the dogs.
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Have the police (as a force) ever had that?
 
It's the "as a force" that's the killer there. There have always been police officers of the highest integrity. But when you look at this, and Hillsborough, and the West Midlands stuff, what can you conclude about the forces as institutions?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
It's the "as a force" that's the killer there. There have always been police officers of the highest integrity. But when you look at this, and Hillsborough, and the West Midlands stuff, what can you conclude about the forces as institutions?

Rolfe.
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I have serious doubts that a police force organised the way they are in the UK can ever be honest and have integrity.

I seriously think we should use our (now much better) understanding of human behaviour to try and craft a policing system that tries to negate the worse aspects of organised human behaviour.
 
commandlinegamer said:
IIRC, another recent attempt to find out what happened in that case was abandoned recently. Can't remember exact details but Private Eye has been covering the case extensively. Does not paint the Met in the most favourable of lights.
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Last I heard they were going to open an independent inquiry into the whole business.
 
Rolfe said:
[Nitpick: double jeopardy has not been eliminated, it has been permitted. Double jeopardy means the possibility of being prosecuted - put in jeopardy - twice for the same crime. It used to be prohibited, but is now no longer prohibited. Double jeopardy is now allowed. What has been eliminated is the prohibition on double jeopardy.]

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

What?? Does that mean that if a person is acquitted in the UK -- found not guilty -- he can be tried again for the same crime? How did that happen? The principle of "no double jeopardy" has been a foundation of Western jurisprudence -- at least in the English-speaking countries -- for hundreds of years. Who promoted overturning it, on what basis?
 
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