It is now clear that Jean
Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian shot by
police in the London underground on
22 July, was killed with no shadow
of a justification – as The Australian and The Guardian report.
The scandal may well claim the scalp of Police Commissioner Ian
Blair.
Islamic terrorists, of course, killed 56 people with equally
little
justification. Does that mean the terrorists are 56 times more
dangerous than
the police?

I don’t think so. Terrorist come and go, but the
police are always with
us: they have much greater resources at their command,
and police
lawlessness poses a continuing, long-term problem in a way that no
group
of terrorists is likely to. When threatened by terrorists, we can
call
on the police to protect us, but who will protect us against the
police?
After all, terrorists are sometimes caught and punished, but
police
almost never.

More importantly, there is a difference
of principle involved. As I
remarked last month in the context of Philip
Ruddock’s bizarre
reinterpretation of human rights, there’s no moral
equivalence between
the government failing to protect people and the
government killing
people itself. The police are there to serve us: for them
to turn on the
innocent is a betrayal of trust.

As it happens,
I still think the terrorists represent a bigger threat
to civilisation than
the police. But the ratio is nothing like 56 to 1,
and it’s not getting any
better.