Calling someone ‘English’ is racist in Hull but making monkey noises to a dying black man is ok?
That’s racist! The Telegraph reports on an incident in Hull:
A motorist has been prosecuted for racially abusing a traffic warden by calling him “English”. Mohammed Akhlaghi swore at traffic warden Robert St Paul by telling him he was “English” during an argument over a parking fine.
Go on…
Humberside Police charged Akhlaghi, 35, with being racist during the incident which also saw him push Mr St Paul in the back.
The police are so hot on race issues.
He pleaded guilty at Hull Magistrates Court to racially aggravated assault by beating. In his defence Akhlaghi, of Hull, claimed he had been the victim of racial abuse. He said he has been subjected to abuse over the last seven years he has lived in the UK.
He’s from Iran.
Meanwhile, this is from 2002:
A tape capturing monkey chants made as a black man lay dead on a police station floor was missed by investigators for nearly four years, it emerged yesterday.Christopher Alder, 37, died handcuffed and face down in a Hull police station in April 1998 surrounded by police officers, after choking on his own vomit. Sections of the tape show the officers joking and chatting as the former paratrooper died.
Last month five Humberside policemen were cleared of manslaughter and neglect of public duty over the death.
Tapes from the custody suite cameras were seized in April 1998, but a section containing monkey chants and laughter was not investigated until March 2002, a fortnight before the trial began.
Mr Alder’s family are furious that this evidence was never put before the jury. The crown prosecution service said it never tried to have this evidence admitted because it could not be determined who was making the noises.
The officers were cleared of all charges on the orders of the judge.
In 2006, the case was updated:
Four police officers were guilty of the “most serious neglect of duty” over the death of ex-paratrooper Christopher Alder in 1998, a watchdog has ruled.
Mr Alder, 37, who was black, died while lying face down and unconscious in a pool of blood in a police custody suite in Hull, as a group of officers stood chatting nearby.The police watchdog said the officers had been guilty of “unwitting racism”.
Humberside Chief Constable Tim Hollis apologised following the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s report.
It gets better:
No-one will be prosecuted over a mortuary mix-up that led to a woman’s body being buried in the grave of a man who died in police custody. Grace Kamara, 77, was buried in Christopher Alder’s grave after he died at a police station in Hull in 1998.
His body was discovered in a Hull mortuary in 2011.
Mr Alder’s sister, Janet, said the family was “devastated” at the decision made by South Yorkshire Police, who investigated the mix-up. In a statement, the force said there was “no realistic prospect” of conviction for misconduct or the prevention of a lawful burial. Following an exhumation, Ms Kamara’s body was discovered in Mr Alder’s grave in the city’s Northern Cemetery.
Mr Alder, a former paratrooper, choked to death at Hull’s Queen’s Gardens police station after being arrested in 1998.
A group of five police officers charged with neglect of duty following Mr Alder’s death were cleared by an independent inquiry in 2003 after their trial for manslaughter collapsed the previous year. Mr Alder was believed to have been buried in 2000 at Northern Cemetery but his body was found in the mortuary in November 2011.
Both bodies have since been reburied.
In 2015, it was revealed that the police had spied on Mrs Alders sister, who is campaigning on his behalf.
The evidence of surveillance came to light after all police forces were asked to check their records following claims the Metropolitan Police spied on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
And…
The operation was mounted “in anticipation of potential public disorder as a result of the tensions to which it was perceived your brother’s death had given rise”.
So, about that racism…
Posted: 13th, March 2016 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
