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Outrage of the Day- Police Took 4 Years to Arrest Serial Rapist
10:05 AM Posted In injustice , international , rape , sexism , violence Edit This 1 Comment »"Police chiefs apologised today after it emerged that a man convicted of sex attacks against women was not arrested until four years after he became a suspect.
An independent investigation has been launched into police handling of the case against children's football coach Kirk Reid, 44, who has been found guilty of stalking and attacking women for more than 12 years.
Police left Reid free to attack women for four years, despite identifying him as a suspect in a notorious unsolved series of sex attacks in 2004. A litany of errors, inaction and oversights was revealed during the nine-week trial at Kingston crown court.
Following Reid's conviction, Commander Mark Simmons, of the Metropolitan police's territorial policing unit, said: "It is clear from the evidence heard in court that the standard of investigation was not what we as an organisation, or the victims, should have expected. Reid should have been arrested sooner and I, on behalf of the MPS [Metropolitan police service] and as head of Sapphire [the police sex-crimes unit], am sorry those women who were subsequently attacked by him have been caused unnecessary suffering.""
Why did it take four years for them to get around to arresting him? My theories are as follows:
1. He's an average, somewhat good-looking guy.
2. He's a children's football coach.
It's the highschool football star syndrome: he's cute and athletic so there's no possibly way that he could be capable of such heinous acts. Throw in the fact that he works with children and he's practically untouchable. No one would want to possibly sully his reputation with false accusations despite the evidence and testimonies because we have to protect the poor men.
I am glad that they're coming down hard on the police for having their collective heads up their asses.
1 comments:
Must be a difference between U.S. culture and British culture. Here in the U.S., the fact that he works with children would have immediately resulted in his trial and conviction by the press as soon as he was named as a suspect by the police, because here in the U.S. it is widely assumed that any male who works with children is probably a pederast and pervert until proven otherwise. When I was teaching I had to be very careful to never be in a room alone with any child (of either gender), and if it were necessary for some reason, such as retaining a child in the classroom during recess due to poor behavior, I kept the classroom door opened and stood in the classroom door so that I was not actually within the same room as the child. Male teachers here in the US do that sort of thing simply as a matter of course, because false accusations are rampant due to parents having discovered that this is a way to get rid of teachers that they do not like (teachers who were "mean" to their perfect little brat).
Interesting, how the U.S. and Britain can on the surface seem so similar, yet be so different...
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