The police care more about dogs than humans

08Jul09

originally published: 4th July 2009

After the death of Ian Tomlinson, there was no talk of devastation, of lessons learned, of sadness and shock – just a lot of denial.

The contrast couldn’t be greater. Commenting on two deaths apparently caused by police malpractice yesterday, a Chief Superintendent said that everyone in the force was “devastated” by the incident. “We will certainly take any lessons we can get from this process and make sure we put them in place so this sort of thing never happens again. It has caused immense sadness and immense shock.” The police reported themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and have launched their own investigation.

The local police authority immediately swung into action too. Its chairman announced that “We are requiring a guarantee from the force that measures are being put in place immediately to ensure that an incident like this can never happen again.”

So who had the police killed? Well, not “who” exactly. This breast-beating is about two police dogs which were left in a car on Tuesday and died of heatstroke. Ridiculously, the BBC decided that this merited a top headline yesterday afternoon. Nottinghamshire police flailed themselves in public for their negligence. I agree that it was a sad and stupid mistake and I’m glad that the police want to make sure it won’t happen again. But their response suggests that they care more about dogs than human beings.

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