Last week (March 2018), Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, famous for her supervisory role in the execution of Charles de Menezes in 2005, chose to ignore the huge cuts to police budgets by the Tories and blame crime rises on the effect of social media. Her motivation was obedience to the Tory narrative of apportioning blame for any ill on anything but the real cause, namely, Tory policy.
Cressida Dick’s obsequiousness to the Tories is understandable. Despite her clear culpability in Menezes’ death and her assistance to the ensuing cover-up she was not prosecuted or sacked and has been promoted several times since with lucrative pay rises each time.
In Dick thoughts, reported by Fiona Hamilton and Rachel Sylvester in The Times, the commissioner said “there’s definitely something about the impact of social media in terms of people being able to go from slightly angry with each other to ‘fight’ very quickly” and “it [social media] makes it harder for people to cool down. I’m sure it does rev people up.” Those comments may seem stupid and a distraction but it is also disturbing and threatening that a commissioner of a police force has indicated a desire to restrict access to social media for young people.
According to The Times’ reporters, Dick also compared “the speed at which youths with no previous or very limited criminal record can become killers to the way some Islamic extremists become radicalised in a matter of days.” The commissioner of one of the largest police forces in the world said those words. Even an editorial in The Sun would hesitate to be so moronically idiotic. Such a stupid analysis exposes Dick’s incompetence and enforces the belief that her intent is to create a mindset that social media use should be closely policed.
Cressida Dick’s real intent
All of her comments are idle and uninformed. It is not analysis. Her remarks are twitter-style utterances designed to grab media time with the subsequent intent of preparing the groundwork for interference in the privacy of citizens’ social media interactions. Restrictions on social media and/or internet use and enabling the police to demand access to private social media accounts of “suspects” are the intent of Cressida Dick’s comments. An obedient servant of the Tories, she is happy to assist them in their plans to monitor and shut down social media use.
The rapidity of the flow of information via social media is a challenge to the status quo. The Tories are fearful of its success and they are determined to stifle the mass sharing of knowledge. The spectre of crime has been introduced as part of the scare narrative to demonise online communications.
Related blogs
Tories preparing to censor revolutionary politics: Fake News
Tories preparing to censor revolutionary politics: Intimidation of politicians
Tories preparing to censor revolutionary politics: Bew Report
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