Agents of the State

I hate it when we descend into the classic Scottish "Aye, but whit aboot" type of discussion.

So, for no particular reason, I've been musing on the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. Innocent Brazilian electrician going about his business when brutally slain by the Metroplitan Police force, quickly followed by an orchestrated media campaign to distort the story, including a classic smear campaign against De Menezes good name (rape allegation!).

In the end, after 2 seperate police enquiries, the first of which absolved everyone of any blame, the 2nd of which slammed the police command structure. The crown prosecution service couldn't bring itself to bring charges against anyone, but a corporate action under the Health & Safaty at work act was successfully brought against the police, who were then fined... presumably, we the tax payer would eventually be ok with giving a public service vast sums of money in order to fine it back of them after paying out other vast sums to lawyers...

In the final wash out, the Metropolitan Police paid undisclosed compensation plus legal costs to the family in order for them to drop their ongoing litigation against the force. No member of the Metropolitan Police force faced prosecution. No member of the Police has been dragged off to die in a foreign jail. The payment of compensation has been deemed enough to satisfy the Brazilians demands for justice.

I wonder how we'd react if things were the other way about?