Editor's Blog Jun 01st 2012
Ed has a run in with the LAW
The wild frontier
Well like most things that are neglected it was only a matter of time before something, like the serious incident that occurred yesterday, happened. Many people have been complaining for months, if not years, about the state of the border standing security, and the illicit activity that occurs daily in these areas and by the airport.
Gibraltar, like every other border area around the world, is also a sump where the scum collects in large groups of unemployed rabble hanging around making the place untidy. The unsavoury characters that do this have done so with impunity for so long that any curtailing of their lucrative activity results in them taking offense to something which they believe has become their right.
So why has it taken so long to plug the Rat Run that is the tunnel works, that these people have been using? And why the over reaction of police officers this morning when I took a walk down to the East Side of the Airfield on eastern beach to take some photographs?
I arrived there at around 0750hrs, walked all the way up to the fence and took a couple of stills, when I noted two officers running towards me waving their arms. At the same time I heard Sirens behind me.
The officer who spoke to me through the fence did so in measured tones, explaining that the beach area I was on is now a restricted area due to the events yesterday. I told him that I was aware of the occurrence but not the restriction on Eastern beach itself. I had also not noted the lack of any kind of physical barrier that prevented me to walking right up to the last groin.
As I was identifying myself to the officer through the fence, two other officers on the Eastern beach side arrived and one other on the airfield side. What followed, is exactly why the call for armed officers by the public should be placed at the bottom of any wish list.
Forget that one of the officers was semi dressed, black pants, white short-sleeved shirt and a black sleeveless puffer jacket, and nothing that identified him as a police officer, other than his mouthy threatening tone. No, this officer, young as he looked, became extremely excitable when I told him to calm down and that I had already identified myself to his uniformed colleague.
The younger officer, unable to stop butting into the conversation, made the officer that was dealing with me in a very measured and polite way, tell the new arrival to keep quiet, more than once.
Concluding my business as a Law abiding citizen, I was allowed to go on my way, with the photographs I set out to take, feeling somewhat bemused.
I commend the officer that dealt with me personally, giving the right amount of respect that any member of the public deserves, however the agitated and down right rudeness of the other officer, is something that in times of high tension should be trained out of our officers, as this could only make a bad situation worse.
So why the delay? Well, for something that generates, I have been told some 50 million pounds of revenue in taxes, I can see why the previous government and the current one have been slow to stem the flood of tobacco across our border.
All these laws governing the amount of cigarettes that can be purchased by one individual are as weak as our border security. Daily I see traders sell tobacco by the cartload to Spaniards, who are then aided in the concealment of those cigarettes in the shops themselves.
A law is only worth its weight if it is upheld.
Ed.
