Tuesday 7 July 2020

I'd love to know which side is lying.

From the BBC:

The police statement said that at about 13:25 BST on Saturday officers from the Territorial Support Group "witnessed a vehicle with blacked-out windows that was driving suspiciously, including driving on the wrong side of the road. They indicated for it to stop but it failed to do so and made off at speed. The officers caught up with the vehicle when it stopped on Lanhill Road. The driver initially refused to get out of the car."

After searching Williams and Dos Santos, and the vehicle, nothing was found and no arrests were made. The incident was first raised on social media by their coach, 1992 Olympic 100m champion Linford Christie, who accused the police of abusing their power and institutionalised racism.

Williams, the fifth-fastest British woman in history over 200m, and Dos Santos said that a written report given to them by police did not mention driving on the wrong side of the road, and that where they stopped is a single car-width road.


Inconsistency 1

Williams and Dos Santos say they were stopped because they are POC. I have no doubt that this happens more often than it should, but you can't work backwards and say that every time a POC is stopped, it's because of institutional racism. White people get stopped as well.

The police say that the car's windows are blacked out. If true, the police wouldn't be able to tell what the people in the car look like, which rules out institutional racism as a reason for stopping them. But we know that the police sometimes twist things to cover their own arses.

Inconsistency 2

Dos Santos emphasises that the road on which they actually stopped is single car width. This appears to be undisputed.

However, that is not the question. The question is, how wide is the road on which they were initially flagged down and on which they didn't stop?

13 comments:

L fairfax said...

If the police recieved a tip off that car x had criminals presumably they would have to make up a reason to stop them - otherwise their informants would be in danger?
If the information was wrong that would cause the police a problem.

Mark Wadsworth said...

LF, if it was a tip off, it was a lousy tip off!

Dinero said...

Neither has to be lying, it could be two different accumulated perceptions of three events.

benj said...

Needs to be more BAME police. In fact, in London, only BAME police.

Anything to stop these complaints, be they fair or unfounded.

Sobers said...

Anyone who follows the Crimebodge Youtube channel will know that the police lie habitually. About what happened, what they said, what the suspect said, what the law is. They make up 'public order' offences in order to make people comply with their 'requests'. In short they are out of control. So I'd guess the police are more at fault in this situation, if one could view the entire interaction from a neutral position. The other bit of evidence to support my thesis is that it was the TSG, who are notorious for being heavy handed and thuggish.

Robin Smith said...

Why no concern about victimhood in any of these cases? And how our children are being taught to be a victim will deliver a more fulfilling life than to be a hero in spite of the injustices, true or not.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Din, few people remember things in perfect detail. But these accounts are more or less oppposite.

B, yes, good idea.

S, I know that, but the police do not lie *all the time about everything*. I'm open minded in this instance.

RS, as usual, I have no idea what you mean or why you left that comment.

Bayard said...

"police say that the car's windows are blacked out. If true, the police wouldn't be able to tell what the people in the car look like, which rules out institutional racism as a reason for stopping them."

AFAIK, you are not allowed to black out the front windows or the windscreen, so either these weren't blacked out, in which case the police could see who was driving perfectly well, or they were, in which case the car was not road legal and the police had a perfectly good reason for stopping it.

Robin Smith said...

@MW all you need to do is think freely. That is, free from the ideology informing ones thought.

The post alludes to the culture of victim-hood. (race, economic, sex, whatever helps one be deemed a victim of nature etc). But no one is talking about that. Just being drawn into the political battle the left are clearly winning.

Mark Wadsworth said...

RS, I do think freely, but bound by earthly things such as facts, logic and numbers and, in the instant case, trying to guess which side is lying.

Robin Smith said...

BTW what are people's opinion on how the stamp duty holiday will affect house prices and transactions?

And how about second homes - the policy states "all purchases" so seems to include them but it's not explicitly stated so is not clear?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, I hadn't thought of that. Which suggests the police were lying.

But there are degrees of tinting and blacking out, it doesn't take much tinting (within legal limits) for the occupants to be obscured, esp in middle of day when sky is reflecting off the windscreen.

Robin Smith said...

MW are you sure about that?

i.e. you talk about say, the speed of light as a constant as a fact. Yet, measurements show it to be a variable.

So your "facts" are just an image of actuality which science declares either religiously or for convenience, as truths(probably a bit of both). I've noted many more similar examples of your 'facts'.

Yours, concerned.