'Here we go again' is a phrase that we find ourselves using all too often on this blog; and despairingly we must begin today’s business with those four rotten words. As you remember, back in December we wrote about the shameful case involving Munir Hussain.
Now, the Saturday edition of the Telegraph has reported an equally bewildering and almost identical incident.
Sal Miah, 35, who owns a restaurant in East Sussex, heard a noise in his cellar and on closer inspection discovered two teenagers who had broken in to his property. They subsequently fled but he trailed them to a park and dragged them back to the restaurant.
He was pursued by a gang who were in cahoots with the two hoodlums and when they became aggressive and began intimidating diners, he pushed them away and locked the door. Needless to say, when the police arrived, the gang accused Mr Miah of attacking them and he was duly bundled into the back of a squad car. He was released after five hours in a cell and had his DNA, fingerprints and police photograph taken.
Cases such as this are appearing more and more frequent and such injustice only bolsters the idea of Britain having a ‘broken society’.
Academics, MPs and political commentators often cite a society void of individual social responsibility. Such claims are unsurprising given the fact that now not only do we live in fear of mindless yobs, but also those appointed to protect us from such malevolence.
Only last month Grandfather Gurmail Singh was beaten to death with a hammer as he tried to defend his shop from four teenagers stealing cigarettes and chocolate.
If we cannot defend ourselves where the state fails, then it will be harder to deny that our society is well and truly 'broke’.
By James Stannard
It's much easier for the police to arrest a restaurateur than a bunch of surly burgling youths. As long as the police are driven by central targets, that's what's going to happen.
Posted by: Eamonn Butler | 16/03/2010 at 03:41 PM
Ditto what Eamonn says. And the same will/is happening with social work ... social workers chasing all the easy cases i.e. loving parents who use corporal punishment, or a child who called another child gay in the playground, or parents who smoke etc. Much easier than chasing the likes of Baby P's "carers".
Posted by: Rebel Saint | 16/03/2010 at 05:28 PM
Gordon thinks that targets are good though because he can then recant them 'tractor style' before all and sundry and show how everything is world class.....
Every area of public service is skewed, perverted, corrupted and otherwise buggered by unthinking 'managers' in thrall to these targets which inevitably as in the case of the Mid Staffs Trust lead to promotions, glowing reports....crap treatment, dirty wards and lots of unnecessary dead people who have been tormented in their final days by the institutionalised 'care' from health staff eager to ensure that their dear leader receives some spurious gong and the de rigueur CEO bonus.
It truly makes one proud to be British.
Posted by: zorro | 16/03/2010 at 09:30 PM
This entire issue make my blood boil.
Police (CPS, magistrates and judges) need to recall common sense and legal principals divorced form political correctness and abandon political posturing and target chasing.
Posted by: Kay | 20/03/2010 at 12:23 AM