The Angry Exile: Arrested for honesty

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 2 April 2009

Arrested for honesty

The relationship between police and public relies a lot on the public seeing the police as behaving reasonably and therefore being willing to help the police, but this been getting a battering as the police, either encouraged by government or on their own initiative, do more and more to piss the public off. The latest example of police fuckwittery is arresting someone for handing in a lost mobile phone he'd found.

A college student who found a mobile phone while out celebrating his 18th birthday was arrested after handing it in to police.
Teenager Paul Leicester was arrested for 'theft by finding' and detained for four hours....
The teenager was kept by Merseyside Police in Southport police station for four hours and had his fingerprints taken, along with a DNA swab and a photo for police records.
Officers then grilled him for 15 minutes about the alleged 'theft'.

Please be an April Fool's joke. Please!

A police spokesman explained the complaint of theft was subsequently withdrawn and Paul was released without charge.

Complaint? Who complained? As far as I can see there was never any complaint of theft made to the police. They just took it upon themselves to believe, bizarrely, that someone entering a police station of their own free will and handing over a phone they said they'd found was actually more likely to have nicked it.

Sefton Area Commander, Chief Supt Ian Pilling, said: 'Merseyside Police has contacted Mr Leicester in relation to the incident and he does not wish to make a complaint against the police. As a matter of course we are reviewing the circumstances of the arrest.'

A Google search for "Chief Supt Ian Pilling" and "Chief Superintendent Ian Pilling" shows that this is a real person and currently the Sefton Area Commander, which makes the possibility of it being an April Fool prank much less likely. And even if it was a joke the fact that it's just so fucking plausible says everything you need to know about the state of the police-public relationship, i.e. it's in tatters.

Meanwhile Paul Leicester goes free but will no doubt have his DNA retained by the police just in case. Just another one of the millions arrested but never charged whose DNA has been retained. Whether there really is a conspiracy to nick as many people on the flimsiest and most trumped up of charges so that slowly but surely the whole fucking country ends up on the DNA database, or whether the police have simply employed too many fuckwits as officers is irrelevant. The results come out much the same.

Cunts,

2 comments:

selsey.steve said...: Reference the arrest for handing in a lost phone ... This would not be done other than on the orders of an officer not below the rank of Inspector. The principal qualification for this rank is a BA in Onanism.
Please don't blame the real Coppers. A complaint wasn't made because the arrested person probably felt that he didn't want to drop honest men and women in crap any deeper. He more than likely 'overheard' the comments being made by them regarding their 'senior' officers!; 2 April 2009 at 07:01
Angry Exile said...: I'm blaming the police service for this stupidity. I'm sure that there are plenty of decent coppers about and I could even believe that they're in the majority. Unfortunately when a particular police force or the police in general start acting like tits and/or authoritarian bastards you all (I'm assuming you are a police officer yourself selsey.steve) get tarred with the same brush. The relationship between police and public is heading for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, and only one of the two is able to prevent this.; 3 April 2009 at 14:02