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Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences are not alone in needing answers....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/26/duwayne-brooks-lawrences-answersThirteen years ago Duwayne Brooks walked free from court after a charge of indecent assault (reduced from attempted rape) was thrown out before the defence had to utter a word. It was the culmination of years of smears, arrests and spurious charges against Brooks, who was attacked with his friend Stephen Lawrence when Lawrence was murdered by a group of racists in 1993.
I followed Brooks over the seven-month period from when he was arrested until he was cleared, and the Guardian published a story stating that Brooks had been the victim of a police vendetta. The Guardian's lawyers weren't too happy with the word vendetta, but the police didn't sue.
Now we know why. Thanks to the revelations of the former undercover police officer Peter Francis we have discovered just how systematic that vendetta was. Francis worked for the Metropolitan police's Special Demonstration Squad, a unit tasked with spying on "political groups", and was asked to dig up dirt on the Lawrence family and associates.
Brooks was the surviving witness to a murder that the police had failed to investigate properly because it couldn't, or didn't want to, believe that a young man could be killed simply because he was black. Of course, he was ripe for a good smearing – the police wanted to show that Lawrence and Brooks were bad boys.
I followed Brooks over the seven-month period from when he was arrested until he was cleared, and the Guardian published a story stating that Brooks had been the victim of a police vendetta. The Guardian's lawyers weren't too happy with the word vendetta, but the police didn't sue.
Now we know why. Thanks to the revelations of the former undercover police officer Peter Francis we have discovered just how systematic that vendetta was. Francis worked for the Metropolitan police's Special Demonstration Squad, a unit tasked with spying on "political groups", and was asked to dig up dirt on the Lawrence family and associates.
Brooks was the surviving witness to a murder that the police had failed to investigate properly because it couldn't, or didn't want to, believe that a young man could be killed simply because he was black. Of course, he was ripe for a good smearing – the police wanted to show that Lawrence and Brooks were bad boys.
more@link
Apologies if someone else has posted this-- I've only just learned of it and haven't seen any prior discussion on DU.
