Cops are dying to be cops

Close to retirement after 30 years in frontline policing, Sgt Matiu Ratana sought a safe haven. He had done his bit of hazardous duty.

His new job, at the Croydon Custody Centre, definitely seemed safer than patrol duty. Or so Sgt. Ratana thought.

Two days ago he was shot dead at his station by a Muslim terrorist suspect. Those shots ought to reverberate throughout the whole society, not just law enforcement.

Actually, they did reverberate, and it’s those echoes that reveal the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of our woke modernity.

The BBC reported the murder an hour or so after the shooting. Following the usual waffle about Sgt. Ratana’s sterling character, about half the space was devoted to a mendacious argument against armed police.

After helpfully informing us that only 17 British policemen have been shot dead since the war, the report explained that: “The fact is that there are very few criminal guns in circulation – and the culture of policing has never seen it as acceptable to be universally armed.”

I recall American bumper stickers, saying: “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” and “It’s better to have a gun and not to need it than to need it and not to have it.” Both can easily cross the ocean and work just as hard in Croydon and other such places.

Handguns were outlawed in Britain in 1996, making it impossible for law-abiding citizens to protect their families from vicious felons. The latter, however, have no problem obtaining firearms. Apparently a handgun can be bought for as little as £30 in the mean streets of Croydon.

Thus that first bumper sticker applies here as well. What about the second?

The BBC shows how easy it is to deceive by choosing arbitrary subsets of data. The impression they seek to convey is that a gun is only ever needed as protection against other guns.

But that’s a fallacy. A man stabbed or clubbed to death is just as dead as a victim of a bullet. Similarly false is the idea of proportional defensive force peddled by the ‘liberals’.

Their assumption is that a man being attacked with a knife or a baseball bat (British sports shops do brisk business in those, even though no one plays baseball) shouldn’t be allowed to defend himself with a gun. Instead he too should grab a knife or a bat, however making sure he doesn’t really hurt the attacker. If he does, he may well end up being the one in the dock.

True, our policemen don’t have guns. But don’t they need them?

They don’t, says the BBC. After all, they are unlikely to be shot. Fair enough, British criminals don’t see guns as essential accessories. Unlike their American counterparts, they are more likely to favour stabbing, slashing or clubbing weapons.

It’s with such implements that 10,399 police officers were injured in 2018 (I have no later data), with a further 20,578 assaults that didn’t result in injuries. How many could have been prevented had the officers carried something heavier than a truncheon and a Taser? Most, I dare say.

However, our police are disarmed in even more vital ways. They are prevented from doing their job, being encouraged instead to act as a branch of social services. Here’s how our anti-terrorist police describe their Prevent programme on their official website:

“We work with local authority partners and community organisations to help find solutions and work to support and protect vulnerable people… Following assessment, many referrals to Prevent do not result in any further police action. In some cases other organisations such as health, housing or education step in to provide support.”

The vulnerable people the anti-terrorist police should protect aren’t potential terrorists but their future victims. Steering youngsters away from recruitment by terrorist Muslim cells may involve taking care of their health, education and housing, but that’s not the natural purview of the police. If they simply stuck to investigation, apprehension and isolation, they’d be more successful.

Then another question arises: how could a suspected terrorist carry a concealed weapon into a police station? Didn’t the arresting officers search him?

Er… they did, but they didn’t do it very well – partly because they didn’t know how, and partly because they are scared stiff of being too zealous in searching BAME suspects – a charge of racism is looming.

A police patrol stopped the Sri Lankan, already known for terrorist links, in the street and performed a cursory search. They found his pockets bulging with drugs and revolver rounds. Unlike the former, the latter have no useful purpose in the absence of a gun from which they can be fired.

Hence the police must have assumed that such a weapon was secreted somewhere on the chap’s person. So it was, in his trousers at the base of his spine, but a pat-down found nothing — pathetically. Now, I realise that our police are laudably encouraged to learn nothing about handguns, but even small ones are sizeable, hard metallic objects.

Not finding it while patting a man down is a zenith of incompetence, crying out for an explanation. A Met spokesman duly provided one: “He would never have been placed in a van and taken to the police station had they known he was still armed.”

That’s comforting to know. You mean they would have taken the revolver away from him? I’m not sure about that. Might be a violation of the Sri Lankan’s human rights and yet another manifestation of institutional racism.

The only policeman authorised to perform a more thorough search is the sergeant on duty at the Custody Centre, in this case Matiu Ratana. Yet, when he entered the room where the Sri Lankan was held, the latter performed a contortionist feat.

Though handcuffed behind his back, he managed to pull the weapon out and, shooting from behind his waist, first kill Sgt Ratana and then wound himself in the neck. The second act seems well nigh impossible to me, but then I shouldn’t underestimate the athletic suppleness of young men.

The police officer paid with his life for the ideological emasculation of law enforcement, yet this never comes up in any reports. Not a single one, however, fails to mention the irrelevant fact that the murderer is autistic, and also that no terrorist motive existed.

Now, anyone who has ever shot handguns knows even the ability to hit the proverbial barn door requires regular practice. Firing accurate shots from behind one’s back betokens extended, serious training in the art of killing.

So here we have a Muslim suspected of terrorist links, who knows how to hide a revolver on his person so well that even a police search can’t find it. He has clearly received advanced pistol training (not easily available in the UK) and can hit a target even out of an acrobatic position. He then uses his training to murder a policeman.

Why did he do all that if not for terrorist reasons? Because he’s autistic of course. Need you ask?

Following this horrendous incident, people are beginning to talk, albeit cautiously, about the need to change police procedure. Empty talk, that. No procedural changes will work until society rediscovers its spunk, its commitment to defending itself from erosion and its members from crime.

Having said that, I begin to consider the moral, intellectual and political shift required to let the police do their job and I sigh hopelessly. It’s never going to happen, is it?