‘The establishment closing ranks against those seeking justice gives police impunity’

• THE US police shooting of Jacob Blake – seven shots in his back, in front of his children – is horrific and spurs on the movement to end police violence everywhere.

The UK is not innocent. Previously we mentioned the UK police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician shot seven times in 2005. He’d been wrongly identified as a “terrorist”.

Police lied about the victim afterwards, and Cressida Dick, commander of the bungled operation, said later that she “would not have done anything differently.”

Instead of being demoted, sacked or prosecuted for her fatal mistakes, she was promoted and later appointed Met police commissioner.

When Sir Keir Starmer’s role is mentioned, some rush to point out that he was not Director of Public Prosecutions when the Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute anyone; but he was appointed to head the CPS as the case came up on appeal.

He upheld the decision not to prosecute any police officers. The family were distraught: “We condemn the CPS decision and reject the logic of their argument.”

Mr de Menezes’s family and many others who demonstrated for justice with them were devastated that nobody was ever charged: “The inquest put the truth out there for all the public to see, but the authorities want us to forget the truth to stop us getting justice. But we will never forget.”

The establishment closing ranks against those seeking justice, beginning with women in the family and the community struggling to protect loved ones, gives police impunity.

This attracts the most violent, extreme racists into the police with powers to use lethal restraints, tasers and guns against those of us they fear and hate.

SARA CALLAWAY
Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike,
NW5