For once, I have to disagree with my friend and colleague James Macintyre. Yesterday James wrote that Angus Moat, brother of the dead gunman Raoul Moat, “should be heard” and he condemned the “trigger-happy police force in this country”.
Let me address both these claims, which I consider to be a load of rubbish. First, “trigger-happy” police? Don’t get me wrong. I condemned and castigated the Met for the death of Jean-Charles de Menezes at the hands of CO19, as well as over the 2006 shooting of the brothers in Forest Gate. I think the number of deaths in police custody is still far too high. But “trigger-happy”?
For a start, the British police remain largely unarmed. And in the case of Moat, Northumbria Police have confirmed that “no shots were fired by police officers” and that “the suspect shot himself”. I’m sorry to have to point this out to James, but policemen using Tasers against an armed, wanted man, after a six-hour stand-off, can’t be described as “trigger-happy”. If you want to know what “trigger-happy” police look like, see here or here.
Then there is the bizarre claim from Angus Moat that his little brother Raoul was the victim of a “public execution”. Is he having a laugh? Some might argue that his brother — on the run for a week, having killed an innocent, unarmed man and shot a police officer in the face — should have been shot on sight. He hadn’t relinquished his weapon, and yet, as I’ve pointed out, police officers spent six hours trying to negotiate with him and ended up using Tasers, rather than live ammunition, to end the stand-off.
Perhaps Mr Moat Sr should go to China or Saudi Arabia, where they carry out rather gruesome and merciless “public executions”, and see how different those look. And perhaps he should be sending his condolences to the family of Chris Brown, who his little brother murdered in cold blood, rather than extolling Raoul as a “friendly, generous soul — a very loyal individual, warm, with a great sense of humour, just a lovely, lovely guy”.
Yes, warm, friendly Raoul Moat, who, prior to his shooting spree, had been serving time for assaulting a nine-year-old child. In the words of the Independent on Sunday, “He killed a man he didn’t know, seriously wounded a woman and a police officer, and assaulted a little girl. But well-wishers wanted to grant him the sentimentalising gestures normally reserved for the victims of crime and accidents.”
Such “well-wishers” are, in my view, fools. And I, for one, won’t be weeping over his death. Yes, there are “serious questions” for the police to answer, such as “why Moat’s former partner was not protected after a warning from Durham Prison authorities, and the lack of surveillance at the homes of known Moat associates”, etc, etc, but the police are not responsible for Raoul Moat’s death. Raoul Moat is responsible for Raoul Moat’s death (and, of course, Chris Brown’s, too). Good riddance, I say . . .
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