Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick will receive the Queen’s Police Medal from the Prince of Wales at an investiture ceremony later.
Her award is for what, exactly? Being in charge of a botched operation where an innocent man got shot in the head countless times… Yeah, give that woman the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished inept service. She’s already been promoted!!!!!
During the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, Cressida Dick was asked by Michael Mansfield (representative for the de Menezes family) whether this could happen again she replied:
I’m afraid, sir, I do believe that this or something like this could happen again.
Bodes well, doesn’t it? Hey, give that woman an award!
Furthermore, she was asked by Mansfield about what precisely went wrong that day and this is her response:
Well, sir, you have started with the 21 July. I would start with two weeks before that. I think one thing that clearly went wrong was that we, as a nation, did not manage to prevent those attacks on 7 July or indeed Hussain Osman’s and others’ attempts on the 21st. Going on from that, I think Mr de Menezes was the victim of some terrible and extraordinary circumstances the day afterwards. He was extraordinarily unfortunate to live in the same block as Hussain Osman had been, he was desperately unfortunate to look very like Hussain Osman.
There are some things that happened, for example, the fact that the first surveillance officer was indisposed and only able to get a relatively short glance. Mr de Menezes waited only a very short time at the bus stop, so as I understand it — I didn’t know that at the time but as I understand it — therefore a surveillance officer again would not have a great ability to look at him properly. Some of the things that Mr de Menezes did in all innocence, the way he behaved, the way he came off the bus and on the bus,contributed to our assessment — my assessment of him asa bomber from the day before, and someone who might beintent on causing an explosion today.
Finally, the thing I would say last is he had the great misfortune of entering the same tube station that three of the bombers had entered the day before. So lots of things happened, any one of those you might describe as went wrong. If you ask me whether I think anybody did anything wrong or unreasonable on the operation, I don’t think they did.
Michael Mansfield coined the phrase when describing the behaviour of the top brass in the police as ‘institutional denial’.. Their ‘justification’ being that Jean Charles was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’, ‘acting edgy’ and ‘suspicious’… Not once do they examine their own behaviour or simply, to admit they were wrong. No admission of fault, or mistakes from senior ranking cops like Cressida Dick.
Her evidence at the inquest exposed the sheer level of incompetence, cock-ups, negligence and above all the contradictions in their stories…yet not once does she admit that there were serious flaws, from the start, in this surveillance operation such as no useful identification of the suspect to technical problems with the police radios, contradictory orders from the command centre to the officers on the ground, Mistakes, fatal murderous mistakes, were made that day…but not one of these people will take any responsibility for the fact an innocent man was fatally shot, executed in the name of ‘war on terror’ by wound-up cops with their trigger itchy fingers. Their behaviour that day more akin to the Keystone Cops.
No chance of mea culpa!
Rather perversely the state along with a archaic, feudal, anachronistic (a terrible hangover from the bloody brutality and racism of colonialism), establishment friendly and class-ridden system which should have no place in a democratic and transparent society (unfortunately we don’t seem to have either) honour someone like Cressida Dick.
Why aren’t I surprised!
Indeed pretty typical for a Royal to reward minions for killing brown people. In keeping with the general drift in Western nations the 21st century if one of regression, repression.