Foiled Burglar Sues Store Employees for 'Emotional Distress'

This galoot's claim is unlikely to succeed but in Britain it would have quite a good chance of success. In Britain, the store employees could well have been arrested

A man who was beaten by employees of a store he was trying to rob is now suing. Police say Dana Buckman entered the AutoZone in Rochester, New York, last July, brandished a semi-automatic pistol and demanded cash. That's when employees Eli Crespo and Jerry Vega beat him with a pipe and held Buckman at bay with his own gun. Buckman escaped when they retreated into the store to call 911, but he was arrested a week later. He pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery and was sentenced to 18 years in prison as a repeat violent felon. Now Buckman is suing the auto parts store and the two employees who beat him, claiming they committed assault and battery and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

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So whose fault is it really that innocent Muslim men are being arrested?

A television series I worked on in the 1980s employed an adorable, gentle and handsome researcher called Dermot who was fancied rotten by everyone in the office, and came from Northern Ireland. He travelled back and forth between London and Belfast to see his family by a variety of means, and on almost every journey was stopped, questioned, sometimes searched, when other English passengers were not. He was also, I recall, the only person whose accreditation was questioned and treble-checked when we were issued with press passes to enter a function attended by Princess Diana. Dermot was quiet, polite and unassuming and we were always furious on his behalf. Our producer put it to him that he must hate the British police force for this terrible discrimination. No, he said. He hated the IRA for forcing the police to discriminate against people like him on legitimate grounds of security.

This seemed a particularly generous response, especially considering the police's habit at the time for incarcerating entirely innocent men for the crime of speaking with Irish accents or being called Patrick, as in the Birmingham six who served 16 years, and the Guilford four who served 15 years, all for terrorist atrocities they did not commit. But Dermot's philosophy was that the perpetrators of the terror were the ones directly responsible for his harassment. With Muslims angered over the heavy-handed counter-terrorist raid on London's Forrest Gate, furious they are being targeted by security forces, does Dermot's angelic forgiveness and understanding translate into this contemporary and parallel situation?

Let's imagine for a moment that a small but potent cell of ginger-haired, freckled people began a terror organisation and started slaughtering their fellow citizens with suicide bomb attacks in the name of some red-haired god. Would the police be right or wrong in such circumstances to regard all ginger-haired, freckled people as potential suspects? The logic would surely be that not all red-haired people were terrorists, but that all terrorists were red-haired, and not to act upon such knowledge would be folly. So what must the police do when the same situation exists in reality, the fact being that not all young Muslim men are terrorists, but all terrorists are young Muslim men?

Should they perform a dawn raid on a few Jehovah's Witnesses, or place a family of Quakers under surveillance just to show how even-handed they are? What would we think of such policing?

The problems here are many, complex and seemingly insoluble. For a start, as demonstrated by the shocking undercover documentary last year that saw four police officers sacked, the British police force is harbouring more than its fair share of racist and bigoted idiots. The harassment of black and Asian people, not just Muslims, has been going on largely unreported for many years and has resulted in the loss of co-operation with the authorities across a whole variety of communities containing ethnic minorities.

But just as all Muslim men are not terrorists, not all police officers are racists or bigots. We have to believe that the majority of them, in common with the majority of British Muslims, are people who want to preserve peace and security and not to cause conflict and strife. With that in mind, the residents of Forrest Gate seem to be forgetting the fact that suicide bombers kill indiscriminately, blasting the legs off bus and train-riding Muslims as happily as they tear apart infidels. There is no "us and them" when it comes to terrorism. The police, one would like to think, care just as much about the safety of the Muslims in Forrest Gate as they do of the residents of Hampstead or Chelsea.

The difficulty is that it is the police's job to discriminate, to act on hunches and preconceptions, and sometimes to judge quickly on appearances or tip-offs to try and bring their suspect before court. They are paid to be suspicious. Then it becomes the judiciary's job to be blind to anything except hard evidence. One cannot police effectively with political correctness. If young religious fanatics are the ones who blow us up, then young religious fanatics who have no intention of blowing anyone up will nevertheless continue to be of more interest to the police than young farmers from Fife.

So why do Muslims not take to the streets in furious demonstrations, not against the British police but against the psychotic killers that have made innocent Muslims the subject of police suspicion and non-Muslims afraid of their fellow citizens? Let's hope that the answer is that it's asking far too much for everyone to be as forgiving as lovely Dermot, and that the years of being made to feel like second-class citizens in the country of their birth has quite understandably taken its toll.

That's the good answer, because their ire would be justifiable and it would present society with a horrible wrong that can be righted with time. The bad answer would be that they don't demonstrate because the core aim of the terrorists, that of bringing about an Islamic Britain, is one shared by a majority of Muslims, even moderates who might despise the suicide bombing route but nevertheless wish it to happen peacefully and without bloodshed. If this were true, and let's hope it's not, for the implications are uncomfortable, it might explain the deafening silence from the Muslim community concerning terrorism committed in their name. After all, there are countless Jewish groups who protest constantly, noisily and vigorously against the policies of Israel, which they not only despise on the behalf of Palestinians, but they also feel stoke up anti-Semitism and hatred. Where is the Islamic equivalent?

It would be Dermot-like idealists who'd imagine that Forrest Gate might actually kindle some kind of unity, where all are concerned finally connect in a shared hatred of violence. Instead, the best we can hope for is that the intelligence, that has so far delayed the next inevitable atrocity, is not thwarted by this error and the subsequent protests.

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Wave that flag with pride

Stephen Pollard sinks the boot into the sneering British Left who despise ordinary English people

Unless you've been stuck indoors all day - watching the World Cup, perhaps - you'll have noticed that the flag of St George is flying all over the place. What you may not have realised is that this has little to do with patriotism. The flag wavers are, in fact, supporters of the BNP celebrating their racial pride.

The deputy Comment Editor of The Guardian, Joseph Harker, noticed the flags appearing last month. And guess what also happened last month: the BNP won 28 seats in the local elections. Could it be, he asked (before making clear that the answer is basically yes), that "flag-wavers are in fact supporters of this racist party, glorying in their `victory' and celebrating their racial pride?" Mr Harker's evidence is overwhelming. He looked at the drivers of the flag-waving vehicles and - blimey - "half of them are in white vans, and the rest are white, male, tattooed, pot-bellied 35 to 55-years-olds: exactly the type I've been seeing on TV for the past month complaining about `our houses going to the asylum-seekers', or that `we're losing control of our country'."

It's not just Mr Harker who has spotted this. The Independent's Janet Street-Porter has noticed the same awful "white van men flying the cross of St George". Good God, they even take pride in their country! And - ugh - they are overweight: "Chubby fellows with paunches." (Lordy; she must mean me.) Ms Street-Porter has discovered something yet worse: they watch football and drink at the same time. "Why do we consider that slumping in front of a large screen holding a can of beer is an acceptable way to spend our time?"

One might ask why it is considered acceptable to spend time reading the witterings of two such dim-witted oafs. But their assertions do matter, because they typify the liberal Left's attitude towards its fellow countrymen: scornful disdain. Mr Harker and Ms Street-Porter's contempt for som many of their countrymen, represent the true cancer in Britain: the self-ordained liberal elite of self-declared cultural and political wisdom. From its place above the lower orders,the liberal elite considers it its duty to bring the Untermenschen to heel.

We must meet those who would politicise flag-waving on their own ground. Resist, comrades, resist: fly the flag with pride.

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Muslim scum gets compensation for jail diet

More "anti-discrimination" nonsense

A child-sex offender has been awarded $2000 compensation because he was not given fresh meat prepared in the Muslim way for most of his prison sentence. Sharif Mahommed, a Muslim of Pakistani descent, eats only halal meat - that which has been slaughtered and blessed by Muslim slaughtermen. Halal meat has not touched non-halal meat and cannot be prepared with utensils used on other meat.

Mahommed was the first Muslim Prisoner in Queensland to request halal meat in jail and as a result of his case, 12 prisoners now receive fresh halal meat.

Minister for Corrective Services Judy Spence has now directed her department to launch a Supreme Court appeal against the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal's decision to grant Mahomrned compensation. "I am concerned that this decision could open the floodgates to other prisoners requesting all manner of special diets." she said. "Prisoners' medical and religious dietary needs are met in correctional centres across the state within reason.

The list of special diets provided to Queensland prisoners includes vegetarian; no pork, ham or bacon; no seafood; Asian; diabetic; soft food; no mushroom; low fat; low salt; no salt; gluten-free; no curry; no pineapple; no lactose; high fibre; and vitamised.

Mahommed, a child-sex offender who was jailed for eight years in 2000 and released last year after serving five years, asked for fresh halal meat when he was first imprisoned. After being retused fresh halal meat he lodged a complaint with Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commission on the grounds that he was discriminated against on the basis of his religious beliefs.

At an Anti-Discrimination Tribunal hearing last year Mahommed said for his first 10 months in Wolston Correctional Centre he was given the general prison diet, and did not eat meat. He lost a substantial amount of weight while at the prison, the tribunal heard. In 2001 he was offered tinned halal meat if he paid 67c a meal. This cost later was waived but Mahommed stopped eating tinned beef and mutton as it was too fatty and salty. Four months after he was moved to Palen Creek Correctional Centre in 2002 he was given a vegetarian diet with supplements of nuts, cheese and eggs and tinned halal meat. He did not get fresh halal meat until November 2003.

Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Tribunal found Mahommed was discriminated against. Tribunal President Jean Dalton said Mahommed found the vegetarian diet unpalatable. "He received substantially more than his fair share of unacceptable meals because he was put on a vegetarian diet when he was not vegetarian and was not, until November 2003, ever served fresh meat. "At the time fresh halal meat was difficult to source and extremely expensive, so he was provided with canned meat instead."

The above report appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on June 11, 2006.