chickenfeet

So the CPS has decided that no individual officers should be prosecuted over the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes but the Met is to be prosecuted for Health and Safety violations. I'm not surprised that there aren't any individual prosecutions. It's damnably difficult to get a conviction against a police officer and the CPS was no doubt under considerable pressure not to prosecute. I'm very suspicious of the H&S charges though. What purpose do they serve? It seems pretty clear that the IPCC has concluded that the Met was massively incompetent and then that senior officers tried to cover up what happened. If the government isn't prepared to accept and act on the IPCC report then what is the point of having such a body?

So what purpose is served by an H&S prosecution? I submit that the purpose is to buy the government a year or two during which it will be impossible to release the full text of the IPCC report and therefore give the government an excuse not to act on it. After all suppose there is a trial and the Met gets convicted and fined. The taxpayer picks up the bill for the fine which then gets paid into the treasury anyway! We won't learn anything that we wouldn't have learned with the release of the IPCC report but the government will have won some more time for inaction. It's not like they've been rushing this thing. The CPS has already had the report for 6 months and Menezes has been dead for a year. You can bet if Menezes had killed a cop they wouldn't have taken a year to decide whether to bring charges. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. I foresee the usual official reaction when the Met is convicted two years from now. "Procedures have been changed to prevent a recurrence of this unfortunate event and no useful purpose would be served by disciplinary action at this late stage."

It seems pretty clear that the government would rather save face than fire the callous, incompetent and malicious bastards responsible for a completely unnecessary killing.