Tuesday, August 09, 2011

333

Again, via Ian Welsh who is on top of riot context like no other, we learn that 333 people have died in UK police custody since 1998. Sadly, there are reasons the police themselves are being targeted by rioters.

2 comments:

Jim said...

Not quite the massacre it appears to be. The Guardian story indicates that three quarters of the deaths were drug or alcohol related. While this may arise from negligence of the custody officers, it is not quite the same as "beating them to death" as the blogger you are quoting suggests.

In fact, some 16 deaths are attributed to police restraints, which may in some cases give rise to more serious charges.

Boris said...

Good point, Jim. I would be interested to see numbers from other police forces.

Police restraints do not include various undocumented beatings or failures to bring a drug or alcohol victim to prompt medical attention. We've seen that here and there's no reason to suspect police culture in the UK is any more civilised( although I will give them credit for their relative restraint when faced with actual rioters.).

In any case, a number like that feeds mistrust especially if one class of person is over-represented.