Still think there isn’t a two-tier policing system in the UK? Well, ask yourself, which should demand more police resources and attention? Teenagers allegedly posting meant tweets, or a black man running around for hours, stabbing one boy and threatening many more people?
If you’re at all familiar with British policing these days, the answer probably won’t surprise you, though it will – and should – absolutely disgust you.
As I’ve previously reported, UK police made multiple visits to the home of a British woman and her daughter, repeatedly demanding that the woman hand over her daughter’s mobile phone. The police neither had a warrant, nor, as their own conduct and statements recorded on video showed, any right at all to do so.
In the end, the police forced their way into the house and took the phone. When a solicitor acting for the woman demanded its return, police at first said they’d “lost” it, before eventually returning it.
Compare, though, the zeal with which the police pursued a teenage girl over things she isn’t even supposed to have posted, to their astonishingly casual approach to a rampaging stabber.
On Friday 31 October at 7.10pm, a 14-year-old boy was stabbed by a man with a knife in the city centre on Henry Penn Walk in Peterborough. He was taken to hospital with minor injuries and was later discharged. Cambridgeshire Constabulary have said the offender had left the scene when the call was made and despite a search of the area by officers and a police dog, the offender was not identified.
On Friday 31 October a man with a knife entered a barbers in Fletton, Peterborough around 7.10pm. This was reported to Cambridgeshire Constabulary two hours after the incident occurred, who have updated that at the time of reporting the man was no longer there and had not returned, so they did not send officers, but a crime was raised.
Those two locations are around a mile, a 10 minute jog, apart. Police have stated that the two incidents are related, so the identical times likely refer to an overlap between when the first call was made and the alleged suspect walked or ran the short distance across the river Nene and down the road to the barber’s. Or, just a badly-written police statement.
Whatever the case, somehow police couldn’t find a black man carrying a bloodstained knife, running around the area. Worse, when they were notified that the knifeman was still in the area, they didn’t even bother going back.
It gets even more mind-boggling.
On 1 November at 00.46am, British Transport Police (BTP) officers received a report of an incident on a DLR train at Pontoon Dock where a 17-year-old victim suffered facial injuries after being attacked with a knife. The suspect had left the location before police arrival. BTP subsequently identified Anthony Williams as a suspect and took steps to locate and arrest him that day.
Not many steps, apparently.
Pontoon Dock is about an hour-and-a-half away from Peterborough. So, was the knifeman still wandering around Peterborough for the three hours or so that police couldn’t be bothered looking for him?
On 1 November at 9.25am, a further incident was reported to Cambridgeshire Constabulary again by the barbers in Fletton while the man was still at the scene. Cambridgeshire Constabulary have stated their officers were deployed to the location and arrived within 18 minutes. Upon searching the area, officers were unable to locate the man or identify him.
So, by now they had multiple reports of stabbings and knife incidents. They surely knew he was using the train system. Yet, even in one of the the most surveilled societies in the world, they couldn’t find him? Instead, he was left free to wander for more than another 10 hours.
At 7.42pm on Saturday 1 November, officers were called to reports of a multiple stabbing on board the 6.25pm train service from Doncaster to London King’s Cross.
So, for 36 hours, despite repeated reports of a knife-wielding maniac attacking and threatening random people, a maniac whom they had identified and whose home address they had within four hours, police were completely unable to find him?
Speaking in the House of Commons, [Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary,], suggested BTP had been aware of Williams’s identity thanks to the use of facial recognition technology and questioned whether more could have been done to apprehend him before the attack.
Sorry, gov, we ’ad some mean tweets to respond to. Someone even said they love bacon: now that’s a real emergency.
