Police Murder

Like Penny, I am as angry as I've ever been after the police killed a man, lied about it, and expected the rest of us to believe their disgusting lies.

Unlike Penny, I am not surprised. I became paranoid weeks ago after I attended a supposed police consultative exercise at my university.

The police, or at least their upper echelons, no longer feel part of our society. The war on terror has allowed them to progressively get their way and allowed them to become more arrogant, more brutish and more unaccountable. The police told us that the De Menezes case was an acceptable price to pay for stopping terror. They told us that the curtailment of all of our civil liberties was an acceptable price to pay for stopping terror. They told us that having spies on campus and treating protesters like cattle was an acceptable price to pay for stopping terror. They accused a human rights activist of being partially responsible for 7/7 and they told a Muslim student tired of being picked on by police for his colour that he had a "bad attitude". After that, I didn't flinch when I read Craig Murray's fears that much of the protesters' violence was a police setup.

I'm sorry that the police couldn't take criticism at a meeting where they had invited it. I'm even more sorry that a law had been passed weeks before forbidding us taking any photographs or film footage of policemen. But I'm not surprised, if the arrogance and illiberality of the high-ranking officers who came to speak to us has been passed down the food chain to the police on the street, that this murder has happened. It is not just the fault of an individual, though justice demands that the individual is prosecuted for his unprovoked act of murder. The police have learnt over these last years that they can get away with anything - they are above the law and human rights and even innocent life can be sacrificed in the name of preventing terror.