Another Regrettable Occurrence
The Government is to regret officially, through the European Court of Human Rights, the death in police custody of Christopher Alder, who choked to death in the presence of five officers in Hull thirteen years ago. Alder was an ex-paratrooper and a decorated Falklands veteran, which makes the indiscretion slightly more embarrassing than the normal run of these things. He took eleven minutes to die, and afterwards "monkey-like noises were detected on the audio tape"; Alder was black, and no doubt it was all just a bit of harmless fun. The inquest jury gave a verdict of unlawful killing but the judge, as they do, threw out the manslaughter case and an internal disciplinary hearing decided, as they do, that no neglect of duty had occurred. Even the release of Alder's body to his family was botched somehow, and his sister still has questions about other injuries which the Government presumably hopes, on behalf of Humberside police, to leave unanswered for good. The Government has also agreed to pay the family £29,000 which, in the spirit of its proposed reforms for restricting litigation to the rich, will include legal costs; and the ECHR will be "invited" to forgive and forget.
2 Comments:
At 10:36 am , Michael Greenwell said...
Good to know we are still showing our american cousins the way with these things what with their recent pepper-spraying incident.
At 6:10 pm , Philip said...
I always assumed our American cousins were the ones who originally discovered that Being Caught Red-Handed and Then Apologising With Ill Grace™ was the perfect substitute for doing nothing wrong, or at least (which is much the same thing, morally speaking) for getting away clean.
I could be wrong, though. Maybe it was Boris who discovered it, that time he had some helping hands and a flashlight.
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