I rate Martin Samuel as a sports journalist. You don't. I can respect that. Doesn't mean i think you sound like a ****. I am old enough not to argue by using smileys or by being rude. Good night and good luck.
Read this piece of Anti-northern biased, unfactual, personal bias driven muck and you will understand just why I scoff at your using Martin Samuel as an example of a good media mouthpiece
What's the problem with it? Seems pretty much on the money, to me. Pop in a few smileys, write your reply, and I'll read it in the morning. I'm off to bed. G'night.
Your condescending attitude merely betrays the fact you know you have been shown up. It seems that the only time something is not biased is when it conforms to your biased view on life. That doesn't make you a very good judge so your opinion has sort of become irrelevant.
Same as any job, some of them are tossers and others are alright. I find soldiers worse than coppers, they all think they r mega-hard coz they have fired a gun and can polish shoes.
Nah, you're just a sad, old underachieving snotbucket, with as much gumption as a teenager's fud as to how the world really works. Just my opinion like
You misunderstand. At no point have I defended any of the newspapers you say are right wing and biased. In fact, I have gone on record as agreeing with you (apart from the Martin Samuel column, which I thought was excellent). My point was that the papers that you claim are the "last bastion of fair reporting" are, in fact, also agenda driven and biased. I try to read a broad section of the news from all spectrums, then make my own mind up. That's all.
i had almost exactly the same experience. i'd been trying to pull my mate out of a brawl and got a bit of a doing (not my proudest moment, i never even threw a punch and it included getting hit in the head with a high heel). they basically lifted me because they didnt want to deal with the riot going on around the corner. "do you understand why you've been arrested" "no" "its in connection with an assault" "mine?" (i was bleeding everywhere) arseholes
That sucks. Worth it for the amusing anecdote though. I still maintain British Injustice is the best in the world.
i dont think the police in the is country are overly brutal, i think you need to be aggressive when carrying out public disorder stuff and other police forces around the world are far more confrontational than the ones we have here, however, they're still arseholes
If you're talking about Ian Tomlinson, that's ****ed. He was walking past and got pushed around, nothing to do with him whatsoever. On the 'biased' front, all newspapers/news reports/... will always be slightly biased, it just depends on how much. The Daily Mail is way too far down the scale on the opposite end to the Guardian, you just can't compare them. If you ever read it you'd realise it's not a communist propaganda machine. How the **** can you compare you looking for a fight to students going on a march to protest tuition fees? There's a massive difference between a peaceful protest march and a hooligan fight. Dumb people think the students went there for a fight, but there were 250000+ of them, only 0.01% (AT THE MOST) caused trouble. You're incredibly wrong on that point. Hitting women and students is a pussy thing to do, and that's what the cops were doing all day. Kettling large groups is going to piss people off, and if you start hitting them too, of course a small minority is going to kick off. The problem is they behave in the same way for a student march as they would for an EDL demo, horse charges and all... Never been kettled in another country so can't tell you, at least in France they don't beat you up for protesting...
West Midlands Serious Crime Squad 1 November 1999 Police unit to blame for 'dozens more injustices' Miscarriages of justice emerge 10 years after break-up of group that tortured suspects Police face calls for a full and independent inquiry as the West Midlands force prepares for revelations of at least seven new miscarriages of justice. Lawyers last night predicted that the notorious West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, which was disbanded more than a decade ago, could be responsible for dozens of wrongful convictions that have yet to come to light. So far 30 convictions have been quashed by the Court of Appeal because of evidence that the squad fabricated evidence, tortured suspects and wrote false confessions. The scale of the continuing scandal emerged as Keith Twitchell had his conviction for manslaughter and robbery overturned by the Court of Appeal last Tuesday. Mr Twitchell remembers every detail of what was done to him by members of the West Midlands squad. "Somebody put this bag over my head and it was clamped tight around my mouth and eyes. I remember struggling and heaving but then I must have gone unconscious," he said. Under those methods, described to the Court of Appeal as "a scenario of torture that beggars belief", he signed a confession that led to him serving a 12-year jail sentence for manslaughter and robbery. Last week he became the latest victim of the squad to have his conviction overturned. Now 63, he savages the squad's officers as "lazy, incompetent and careless". He was by no means the first, or the last, victim of their actions. In the summer of 1980 a group of ruthless armed criminals, nicknamed the "Thursday Gang" was wreaking havoc throughout the West Midlands. The gang had just made its biggest hit - £280,000 from a post office van in Dudley, near Birmingham - and the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was under pressure to get some results. The breakthrough appeared to come when one of the gang's number, Keith Morgan, agreed to become a supergrass, followed by a second member of the outfit, Richard "Mad Mac" Mackay. Based on information provided by Morgan and Mackay the squad set up a joint operation with the West Mercia police, called Operation Cat, and in Easter 1982 they carried out a series of raids that led to 29 people being charged. Among those jailed were the brothers Donald and Ronald Brown, Patrick Gaughan and Michael Dunne. Despite the convictions being based almost entirely on the uncorroborated evidence of Morgan, a disputed confession by Gaughan and a semi-confession by Donald Brown, the prosecutions seemed to be another successful case for the squad. But Operation Cat started to unravel because of the conviction of another supposed member of the gang, Derek Treadaway. Treadaway's conviction was later quashed after it was revealed he was forced to sign a confession after detectives tortured him by placing plastic bags over his head. During a successful civil action by Treadaway, who received £70,000 in damages from the police and won an Appeal Court victory, the police were severely criticised, and the supergrass handlers and their informants were discredited. After Treadaway's case the Criminal Cases Review Commission re-examined the cases of the Brown brothers, Dunne and Gaughan and referred them to the Court of Appeal. The Browns' cases had previously been turned down by the Home Office. All four men refused to admit to the bank raids and served out their sentences. Dates for the appeal hearings have yet to be set. The origins of the West Midlands Police Serious Crime Squad can be traced back to February 1952 when the old City of Birmingham constabulary embarked on an experiment to tackle organised crime by assembling a group of "seasoned and experienced" officers driving "wireless cars". The Birmingham "Special Crime Squad" proved so successful that it provided the inspiration for the now infamous West Midlands unit, which was founded in 1974. In 1985 a series of complaints prompted an investigation by the Metropolitan Police. The ensuing Hay report, which was never made public, criticised the squad's interviewing techniques, failure to properly use pocket books and the inordinate amount of time that officers were allowed to remain with the élite unit. Although the report was seen by senior West Midlands officers, nothing appears to have been done to improve the practices of those serving in the squad. The complaints continued and a succession of the squad's cases were thrown out of court amid allegations of fabricated confessions. Many of these were exposed because of the coincidental emergence of a vital new forensic technique, the Esda (Electrostatic Document Analysis) test, which revealed that officers were making up statements. Up until 1986 members of the 25-strong squad would write out false confessions and force the suspects to sign them. On 14 August 1989, the force's Chief Constable, Geoffrey Dear, disbanded the squad, and an investigation was set up by the independent Police Complaints Authority and conducted by West Yorkshire Police. The PCA investigation looked at 97 complaints against the squad made between January 1986 and August 1989. Ethnic minority complaints were disproportionately high, with 35 registered by African-Caribbeans and eight by Asians. Between March 1990 and October 1991 the inquiry passed a succession of files to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider criminal charges against some of the officers concerned. By then the Birmingham Six, convicted of the 1974 IRA pub bombings, had been freed by the Court of Appeal after an investigation in which the squad had played an important part had been shown to be flawed. But in May 1992, Dame Barbara Mills, Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, decided that there was "insufficient evidence to prosecute" a single officer from the squad. The PCA's final report was published in January 1993. It revealed that officers in the squad were working "totally unrealistic" hours. Officers were abusing the overtime system, with some working 100 hours overtime a month, mostly for visits to licensed premises to "meet contacts". The official report made no mention of the "plastic bagging" and other torture techniques referred to by the many victims of the squad whose convictions have since been quashed by the Court of Appeal. Nor did it highlight the repeated appearance in interview notes of key "confessional" phrases such as "That bastard's really put me in it" and "You're spot on". At the end of its £2m inquiry, the PCA recommended disciplinary charges against only seven officers. A further 10 officers would have faced charges but they had already retired, it was announced. In the event, just four of the squad's officers - Detective Superintendent John Brown, Detective Constable Colin Abbotts, Detective Chief Inspector Bob Goodchild and Detective Constable Tony Adams - were punished for minor disciplinary offences. Two years ago the three remaining members of the Bridgewater Four, framed by the squad in 1978, were finally set free as the Court of Appeal decided that the crucial confession had been forged. Gareth Peirce, a lawyer who was involved in the campaign to free the Birmingham Six, said yesterday that there were still dozens of hidden miscarriages. She called for a fresh inquiry into the scale of the corruption. "I have no doubt there are dozens of people who have served time in jail but were innocent. The Serious Crime Squad were operating like the Wild West, they were out of control." A PCA spokesman said: "We have retained all the files in the interest of justice. Everything was disclosed to the lawyers concerned. The Home Office who handled such appeals at the time were fully briefed of the technique that had been used by the squad." Officers named in disciplinary inquiries NO OFFICER from the West Midlands Police Serious Crime Squad has been successfully prosecuted. ****S
Can't say I've ever been treated with anything other than respect and professionalism in any of my dealings with the police - and I've been on both sides of the cell door, so to speak. You have to bear in mind that 90% of the situations they deal with, they're dealing with cretinous vermin without whom there would be far less need for a police force. Narrative convention would have you believe that they deal with everybody in the same way, but I find that if you're polite, respectful and honest then they're almost pathetically grateful to reciprocate. Doubtless there are some pricks in the police - I question the motive of anyone wanting to join the police in the same way that I question anyone who volunteers for the army - but I don't doubt that the vast majority of them are just normal people doing a difficult job and then going home to their families.
Hi all, First time poster, but have been a browser for a while. My experiences with the English police have been mixed really. A guy that used to drum in my band came home with one of his mates to fnd his mum having the **** kicked out of her by her scumbag fella of the time. Naturally as anyone would, him and his mate beat the bloke into a right state and when the police arrived they even gave the guy one or two themselves even though he was hardly resisting arrest, and didn't even arrest my mate. He still got charged and given community service later, but at least the **** got what he deserved and the police saw that. However, I still have a memory etched into me from when I was around six or 7, I was at White Hart Lane for the derby in the '93 season I think and after the game some old boy wearing a Spurs shirt swore and spat at me right in front of the police. My old man grabbed him by the collar, didn't even manage a swing and was then set upon by the police and received a blow from a truncheon. He protested and reported the bloke for spitting only for them to say something along the lines of 'Served him (me) right for wearing that shirt'. I was six!
I definitely think some Police officers are biased at football games depending on their allegiances and certainly in the 80s there were quite a few who were only too happy to join in the "fun and games".... I was called a cockney spastic by a Policeman at Anfield once (I dropped my ***s after he had searched me on the gate)and recieved a slap around the head for pointing out to him that people from Watford are not actually cockneys. I do agree that in very general terms if you are polite and co-operative then they are fine. Used to get stopped a lot as a youngster on the way home from the pub and they were always nice enough.
Meh, a minority of police are dickheads same as any profession. A far bigger minority of football fans feel they have the right to taunt and throw **** at cops for just standing there though.
