prepared for the worst

The cops interviewed on local TV after the arrests in Bolton earlier today seemed very keen to distance themselves from the Met. Not surprising really. They didn’t turn up in battalion strength, weren’t waving guns about, and, I believe, didn’t even tip off the TV people till it was all over and they got who they wanted. They may even have conducted one of those investigation things, rather than responded full on to a disaster movie pitch.

Meanwhile a poll of Muslims reveals more than a little dubiety over the Metropolitan police’s idea of what constitutes viable intelligence, and what constitutes a suitable response to that intelligence. This is not surprising, since the Forest Gate raid was based on supposedly credible information that chemical weapons were being constructed over the kitchen table in a tarraced house in east London provided by a man whose powers of reasoning were, shall we say, somewhat limited. Then 250 cops turn up waving guns, accompanies by the massed ranks of Her Majesty’s Media. The general clusterfuck commences after a target gets shot, apparently by a cop trying to control a pistol through industrial safety gloves.

What next? A man with a barely functioning lizard brain tells the cops that a cobalt bomb is being made over a baby belling in a bedsit. This time 500 cops turn up, along with the Metropolitan Police brass band and a bunch of tea ladies from the staff canteen. The entire population of the neighbourhood is killed, smashed to ashes, freeze dried and sent into geostationary orbit around Mars. Later on, a senior officer issues an apology. Newspaper columnists of the bedwetting type set their jaws and affirm that it’s all very well criticising the police, but things like this have to be tolerated if the worst is not to happen.