Proving Innocence
In response to another bungled police raid, the London Observer newspaper penned an editorial that made the bold claim that ‘it is better to occasionally kick down the wrong doors than to allow a tragedy for fear of causing offence’. There are few statements that express so succinctly the degraded understanding of human freedom that prevails today.
The Observer was referring to the police raid in Forest Gate, an East London suburb, which took places in the early hours of Friday, June 2nd. The Metropolitan Police had acted upon intelligence information provided to them by what they thought was a reliable source. The information pertained to the preparation of a bomb in a house in the Forest Gate area. One reason for the ensuing controversy is that one of the two suspects, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, was shot in the shoulder during the raid. The British Muslim community responded in anger, seeing the raid as another example of British Muslims being targeted, without the requisite proof, in the name of a preventative ‘war on terror’.
Since last Friday, no evidence of bomb-making activity has been found. The two brothers who were arrested have been released from police custody without charge. The Met are having difficulty hushing up this particular blunder, and are opting instead to pass the blame onto the MI5, the British intelligence service. Gareth Pierce, the lawyer for the brothers, has also said that they will sue the Met commissioner, Ian Blair, for damages. This mistake comes at a very bad time for Scotland Yard, as another British newspaper, the News of the World, releases a leaked copy of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report on the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian who died in an another case of mistaken identity. This report suggests that de Menezes was killed as a result of a series of informational and organizational police failures.
In such a context, we might be surprised to read that the Observer comes out so heavily in favor of the police and the government’s ‘war on terror’. Comments written in response to the op-ed suggest that many of the left-leaning Observer readers are shocked that the newspaper should endorse, so whole-heartedly, such a police blunder as the price to pay for living in a comparatively safe society. Most responses echo Benjamin Franklin’s pithy statement: ‘they that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety’. Granting the police ‘carte blanche’ in following up intelligence tips is generally regarded as too much of a trade-off of one’s liberty.
However, as has been argued on AWOT before, there are limits to understanding such blunders through the framework of a security-liberty trade-off. Rather than a trade-off, what we see here are the consequences of a much degraded view of liberty. Previously the presumption of innocence was considered to be a pillar of liberty. What this presumption reflects are the bonds of trust that unite society, and make up the foundations of social order. At the same time, the role played by the presumption of innocence in the functioning of our legal system expresses the extent to which legal institutions are founded upon free subjects, who willingly delegate power to the state. Only with the presumption of innocence can we understand law as something that we freely accept to be bound by.
The Observer’s editorial makes a mockery of such a presumption. What it implies is that we are all guilty, rather than innocent. Consequently, only once a police raid has trashed our house, and once we’ve been shot, can our innocence be properly established. The presumption of guilt has become as much a pillar of contemporary society as was the presumption of innocence. It encapsulates the role played by fear and suspicion today, where we view fellow citizens as threats to our own security. Our willingness to accept bungled police raids as a cost to pay for our security has little to do with a calculated trade-off. Rather, it is the logical conclusion of a society of individuals frightened of, and isolated from, one another.
The Observer was referring to the police raid in Forest Gate, an East London suburb, which took places in the early hours of Friday, June 2nd. The Metropolitan Police had acted upon intelligence information provided to them by what they thought was a reliable source. The information pertained to the preparation of a bomb in a house in the Forest Gate area. One reason for the ensuing controversy is that one of the two suspects, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, was shot in the shoulder during the raid. The British Muslim community responded in anger, seeing the raid as another example of British Muslims being targeted, without the requisite proof, in the name of a preventative ‘war on terror’.
Since last Friday, no evidence of bomb-making activity has been found. The two brothers who were arrested have been released from police custody without charge. The Met are having difficulty hushing up this particular blunder, and are opting instead to pass the blame onto the MI5, the British intelligence service. Gareth Pierce, the lawyer for the brothers, has also said that they will sue the Met commissioner, Ian Blair, for damages. This mistake comes at a very bad time for Scotland Yard, as another British newspaper, the News of the World, releases a leaked copy of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report on the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian who died in an another case of mistaken identity. This report suggests that de Menezes was killed as a result of a series of informational and organizational police failures.
In such a context, we might be surprised to read that the Observer comes out so heavily in favor of the police and the government’s ‘war on terror’. Comments written in response to the op-ed suggest that many of the left-leaning Observer readers are shocked that the newspaper should endorse, so whole-heartedly, such a police blunder as the price to pay for living in a comparatively safe society. Most responses echo Benjamin Franklin’s pithy statement: ‘they that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety’. Granting the police ‘carte blanche’ in following up intelligence tips is generally regarded as too much of a trade-off of one’s liberty.
However, as has been argued on AWOT before, there are limits to understanding such blunders through the framework of a security-liberty trade-off. Rather than a trade-off, what we see here are the consequences of a much degraded view of liberty. Previously the presumption of innocence was considered to be a pillar of liberty. What this presumption reflects are the bonds of trust that unite society, and make up the foundations of social order. At the same time, the role played by the presumption of innocence in the functioning of our legal system expresses the extent to which legal institutions are founded upon free subjects, who willingly delegate power to the state. Only with the presumption of innocence can we understand law as something that we freely accept to be bound by.
The Observer’s editorial makes a mockery of such a presumption. What it implies is that we are all guilty, rather than innocent. Consequently, only once a police raid has trashed our house, and once we’ve been shot, can our innocence be properly established. The presumption of guilt has become as much a pillar of contemporary society as was the presumption of innocence. It encapsulates the role played by fear and suspicion today, where we view fellow citizens as threats to our own security. Our willingness to accept bungled police raids as a cost to pay for our security has little to do with a calculated trade-off. Rather, it is the logical conclusion of a society of individuals frightened of, and isolated from, one another.
3 Comments:
As your recent posting on the "siege mentality" pointed out, Canada has just had its own jolt of guilt-before-innocence thinking. Although the arrests of young Canadians under terrorism charges have resulted in a court case rather than their disappearance into indefinite detention, the press has treated every prosecution allegation and leaked government whisper as 70-point front page material, while mumbling quietly on their editorial pages about the need for due process and avoiding a rush to judgment. Societies destroy their own trust relationships, and the free press, in the course of making deliberate decisions about what to emphasize and what to downplay, is a crucial part of this destructive chain.
Liberty depends heavily upon reason in discourse to protect it. Unfortunately, as I have commented on other blogs, reason is itself on the ropes across the West nowadays - and it seems to me that terrorism fears are just the beginning of that assault on reason.
As a wise Jedi once said, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." I can't speak for the Brits, but here in the States I'd submit that we moved beyond fear into anger and even hatred toward terrorists (not to mention criminals in general and certain types of criminals, such as sexual predators, in particular) a long time ago. We, or at least a large percentage of us, don't just want the bad guys to be stopped, we want to see them either humiliated and broken of spirit, or their broken, bloody corpses on the evening news. Reason doesn't stand much of a chance against such visceral, primordial desires. To the extent that such desires are prevalent, liberty will continue to be vulnerable.
The presumption of guilt . . . encapsulates the role played by fear and suspicion today . . . .
Actually, it is the leadership which is fearful -- fearful of being caught with their pants down and blamed for the next terrorist incident.
It's the leadership which has given the security services carte blanche, and we can expect those thugs to take full advantage of their newly discovered license.
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