Read this in the Daily Mirror today: “The man arrested… was injured when he is said to have slipped on a wet stone while being taken to the metal quarry where he is believed to have hidden the weapon.” Well, really? Strange, he just slipped and fell.
This is just the latest example of people being beaten or dying in custody and the media reporting it as “Ooops”.
But it’s not oops. This guy is suspected of a terrible crime, but he’s not convicted. Even once he is, you can’t just assault him. I don’t know if you’ve ever been arrested, but at those times the state is in control of your body. And it’s scary. Cops cannot be allowed to torture, assault and kill people in custody. Someday you may be arrested, and even if not, this sort of policing is impacting somebody’s husband or child or friend.
It’s not fair, and it also introduces garbage information into our legal system. Torture and assault do not produce good intelligence – crap American TV tropes aside. People confess to anything under torture or under threat and it introduces a ton of lies into an investigation. It’s wrong and it defeats the purpose of actually solving crimes.
If you think it’s not real or it’s just bad people this happens to, you’re sorely mistaken. Sunil Perera used to supply balloons to our family parties. He was wrongly arrested over a bomb threat and he was beaten and killed in custody. He was just a family man that sold balloons.
The Sri Lankan media is part of this problem because, for the most part, they report the police’s side of the story without question, even when it makes no sense. The suspect fled from custody, in handcuffs, and jumped in a canal. The suspect went for a gun while showing cops the scene of the crime and was shot.
That’s the classic trick – taking the suspects to the scene of the crime and killing them there. Who even does that? Why would you take a suspect back to a crime scene? If that is happening for whatever reason they should at least have their lawyer with them, or body cameras on the cops.
There should be consequences if people die in custody and there simply aren’t. Sadly, the media is a big part of the problem. The fact that we read these stupid lies on the front page of a newspaper and go along with it should make us all ashamed.
Sri Lanka’s investigative journalism isn’t much better than the police investigations; both of which are based on “interviews”.
Serious point made here – we all tend to brush it off thinking ‘serve the guy right’ but the implications are far reaching and one day will turn against us.
For me there’s a line beyond which it’s just taking the piss. They guy tripped and fell on a wet stone? How can you write that?
It’s a class thing also. Posh people won’t get beaten to death or tortured because there’ll be a fuss, but the poor and disenfranchised are tormented by this shit.
whenever the SL police catch someone, their standard protocol is to beat/torture till the suspect says something. usually they hang people upside down at the local police station and start beating. or they do some fucked up stuff like feed people cement.
the media doesn’t understand the legal process either. look at what happened with the recent child rape and murder. they were ready to crucify that 17year old.
now they have a guy who confessed. given the track record of the SL Police, there is always the possibility that the guy confessed under duress. the papers have been baying for blood and now the popular opinion is to just lynch the guy. forget a court of law.
This is a side effect of the of the 30 year war and draconian laws that the cops have used against its own citizens with impunity all this time. You can’t suddenly expect them to be all civilised after allowing and tolerating this behaviour for so long?