Leicestershire police apparently failed to ‘link’ the 33 serious complaints made by Fiona over ten years, but how can that possibly be so? Do they not have a computer system, or even a paper filing system?
A friend of Fiona’s, a Barwell parish councillor who asks to remain anonymous, says the situation was hopeless.
‘We tried our best to stop what was going on, but got no support from the authorities whatsoever,’ says the woman.
‘Some of us contacted the police and council ourselves, but our pleas fell on deaf ears.
‘Fiona rang me two days before she died. She said they were outside her house again, and would I come and help her. She said she could take no more. ‘I went round there. The road was full of that rabble. They were urinating and throwing eggs and stones at her house and pushing dog excrement through the letterbox.
‘I can’t repeat the horrendous things I heard that night. I confronted them and they said them to me, too.
‘Fiona phoned the police and they said “We’ll get somebody out tomorrow”, but nobody came.’
But nobody came. Why do we pay them with our tax dollars if they can't respond, in ten years, to this families plight? She torched their car to end this abuse. How despondent does one have to be to kill themselves and their child?
Of course, now that this has come to light, it's being used for political gain.
Later, Gordon Brown will put it at the centre of his own last-gasp political fightback as he insists he is the right person to lead Labour into the next election.
Right. At least, sadly too late, the jury is getting the facts and making some correct rulings in this matter.
Delivering a rare ‘narrative verdict’, the jury answered a series of nine questions posed by the coroner.
The four men and four women concluded that Miss Pilkington, 37, started the fire, decided to end her life and unlawfully killed her daughter.
Crucially, they also said ‘Yes’ to the question: ‘Did the response of the police to calls made to them by Fiona Pilkington and her family contribute to the decision made by Fiona Pilkington on October 23, 2007, to act as she did?’ adding: ‘Calls were not linked or prioritised.’
When asked: ‘Did the response of the Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council to complaints made to them by the deceased contribute to the decision made by Fiona Pilkington to act as she did?’ they said: ‘Yes,’ adding: ‘Prior to February 2007, actions to control anti-social behaviour were not evident.’
Too late to help them.
And lastly, this little tidbit.
A brilliant and important observation appears in the latest column by Mary Dejevsky in the Indy. She’s writing about the horrors of the Fiona Pilkington case, in which a mother killed herself and her daughter after years of harassment from her feral teenage neighbours. Disgracefully, the police paid virtually no attention to her pleas for help, in the process providing proof of how far removed policing in Britain now is from its core job. That should to catch criminals so effectively that it puts off other potential criminals. But Dejevsky rightly identifies the failure of Asbos (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) as central to this crisis of policing. New Labour introduced them in order to show how seriously it took the kind of low-level crime which blights neighbourhoods, and particularly poor neighbourhoods. But the effect - it’s those old “unintended consequences of progress” again - has been the opposite to that intended. Instead, it has trivialised such behaviour to the extent that Asbo culture is endlessly laughed at on television rather than being treated seriously.
“There were, Alan Johnson said yesterday, “no excuses”. Quite so. But his specific criticisms and remedies should not go without challenge. First, there is the matter of anti-social behaviour. Mr Johnson said the agencies were wrong to regard such anti-social behaviour as the Pilkington’s experienced as “low-level crime”. But what, pray, does the description “anti-social behaviour” denote? By separating this sort of persistent petty crime from “real” crime, the Government has invited the police to treat it differently. And this was surely the purpose. The Blair government correctly identified this sort of persistent and neglected offending as something voters were worried about, especially in deprived areas. But the effect of classifying it as “anti-social behaviour” and slapping “Asbos” on offenders was that it was no longer treated as a crime. It was a nuisance to be tackled by cut-price “community” officers, not the fully paid-up variety. Mr Johnson regrets that perhaps ministers “coasted” on anti-social behaviour. But this is a direct consequence of separating it from crime.”
Over here, as we all recently saw, we have jackbooted thugs using LRAD and tear gas on students to help "protect" the G20 summit. These were police officers, doing unconstitutional acts against American citizens. They are supposed to "protect and serve", IIRC. Yet they were doing nothing of the kind.
AND WE PAY THEIR SALARIES!!!! What are we paying for? Harassment, tear gas, arrests - snatching college kids right off the street - and when one does finally, actually, need their help. they can't be btoher to show up until eight days later, as in the case of the knife incident with Fiona's child Anthony. Eight days later? Are you freaking kidding me?
I'm sick. Truly, I am sickened by all this. I know it's not the same to equate the U.K. to the U.S., but it's happening everywhere. It's the New World Order for you, guys and gals.
Better get used to it.
And don't call the cops if you need help.
Sources:
blogs.wsj.com...
www.dailymail.co.uk...[/ url]
[url]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6853851.ece
EDIT: Tried to fix that last link but I'm not sure what's wrong with it. Copy/past it if you need to. Sorry. Also fixed a spelling error.
[edit on 9/30/2009 by TheLoony]
[edit on 9/30/2009 by TheLoony]
