Thoughts from London

Readers of an older generation might remember those black and white films of "The Keystone Cops" that bumbling, bungling band of uniformed policemen that brought mayhem into other people's lives and laughter into ours.

Of more recent vintage is that television series called the Police Academy where a group of assorted loonies end up as recruits at an American police training school and wreak havoc in the countryside not to mention distant Moscow.

For all their crazy antics those recruits individually had traits that in some bizarre way provided innovative approaches to policing.

Had the much-vaunted British police picked up a couple of those eccentricities it might have served them better in Prime Minister Tony Blair's so-called international war on terror.

Domestically, the same Blair blared forth his message of getting tough on crime and the causes of crime.

But to judge by the recent and not so recent doings of the Metropolitan Police including the Special Branch and other security services such as MI5 and the anti-terrorist police they make even the Keystone Cops look like sober, efficient policemen.

Police action has left dead bodies on the floor of tube trains, another dead body on a desolate pavement or a victim of police marksmanship bleeding on the staircase of an innocent household.

The enduring characteristics of recent police (and I use that word in its broadest sense) behaviour is to cover their indifference, inaction and inefficiency with bluff and circumstance or to shift the blame for such insouciance on the lack of policy directions and instructions from higher authority such as the Home Office which itself is in an unholy mess.

Where they have actually acted, often with heavy handedness, it has ended in fiasco and police brass reading out seemingly lachrymose apologies to the families of the dead and wounded.

Just eight days ago family and friends of Jean Charles de Menezes observed his first death anniversary. A young Brazilian electrician he was shot dead inside a tube train at Stockwell station by two policemen who pumped at least eight shots into his head and shoulder.

His crime was that he was mistaken for a terrorist suspect. He was trailed several miles from his home to the tube station and into the train when, any policeman with basic intelligence would have apprehended him before he entered the station and detonated a bomb inside.

Within hours the police knew they had got the wrong man. But Police Commissioner Blair (this one is Ian not Tony but they are both good at spinning) told a press conference that de Menezes who was killed in an anti-terrorist operation, had ignored police orders to stop and had run away.

Whether the Commissioner was misled or not, it happened to be a Blair- faced untruth, what Winston Churchill would have euphemistically called a terminological inexactitude.

The truth is that the police, realising their grievous error tried to lie their way out of the killing of an innocent man by doctoring the evidence. CCTV footage from the station later proved them wrong.

That is not all. The Police Commissioner tried to stop the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) from investigating the case by informing the Home Office that he will deny IPCC staff access to the scene.

An internal police document written shortly after the shooting obtained by The Guardian newspaper said the commissioner's move would be seen by the public as a cover up.

The tragic twist to the story is this. The Crown Prosecution Service to which the matter was referred to see whether murder or manslaughter charges could be framed advised against it but the Met police as an organisation would be charged with breaching health and safety at work laws.

That would be laughable if it was not so tragic. It is like saying that a man who broke into the house and committed violence will not be charged for that but he certainly would be for damaging the flowerbed while entering.

About two months or so ago there was another gaffe. Some 250 policemen, some armed with guns and others dressed as though for an invasion of Mars, surrounded a street in Forest Gate at the crack of dawn (or perhaps slightly before the crack) and smashed their way into a house and shot up an inmate in the process.

Even there the details of the shooting were fudged. Ultimately it was found to be a serious intelligence faux pas. No chemical weapons were found, the home was smashed up and the police ended up blaming each other for the mess.

Only three days ago the BBC made mention of police corruption in a 13 year old murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black boy which led to a widespread inquiry and findings of institutional racism in the Metropolitan police.

Now to the funny side of the Met police. A couple of months back some 100 policemen descended on a lone protestor against the Iraq war and removed him and his handful of placards from a pavement near parliament.

On June 18 Steve Jago was arrested for displaying a placard outside Downing Street and charged with mounting an illegal demonstration prohibited by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. He was searched and accused of carrying "politically motivated" material- three copies of a magazine article critical of Tony Blair.

The supreme irony is that last week when the LTTE organised "Black July" at Hyde Park in memory of the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots, a large cutout of LTTE leader Prabhakaran was mounted on the side of the stage. Several hundreds in the gathering were carrying placards with Prabhakaran's picture to judge by photographs that appeared in some websites.

The LTTE was banned by Britain as a terrorist organisation over five years ago. It is also bound by the more recent EU ruling proscribing it.

The UK law makes even carrying or displaying a picture of the LTTE leader or any symbols connected with the LTTE an offence.

But the Special Branch and the other rotten branches of law enforcement are like the three proverbial monkeys, insulting their own national law passed by an elected parliament by refusing to implement it when blatantly violated.

Public complaints were made to the spy masters including protests by some Tamil groups I am informed. Curiously the ace spies seemed to suggest that they had not recognised the picture as that of Prabhakaran.

Now if I were Prabhakaran (which of course I am not and could never be) I would have a word or two with Blair (Tony that is), you know as one leader to another for this supreme insult to Der Fuhrer.

Just imagine. After more than 20 years at the helm, having been captured on film and his picture printed several thousand times in newspapers and magazines around the world and Interpol circulating his photograph to police worldwide the stupid British coppers still cannot recognise him.

Would you really take such an insult without doing something about it.

Nearly 20 years ago when I was working in Colombo, I received a new year greetings card from Prabhakaran enclosing 10 photographs among which were a couple of his and the others relating to alleged IPKF crimes.

Those pictures were of him in military attire. That, I think, is the rub. The picture in the cutout was of him in safari suit. That reminds the British establishment too much of their murky colonial past and so they close their eyes when a native is dressed like the former colonial master (institutional racism at its peak!).

Mr Prabhakaran should quickly make amends if he is to be recognised by the wise guys in British intelligence whose intelligence has led to a ruddy mess in Afghanistan Iraq and wherever they poked their unwanted noses.

At this rate Prabhakaran could walk down Oxford Street and pass unnoticed. We cannot have that could we? The next time they won't recognise Osama bin Laden.

After all it is Perfidious Albion.