It all started with a couple of things that I found a little odd, and then it got worse. I’m talking about the Nottingham killings that took place almost one week ago.
Within hours of the killings occurring, and with the alleged culprit under arrest, the Nottinghamshire Police tweeted out this image of a white arm with handcuffs on it and the reassuring message that they had made an arrest.
But at that point the Police knew the alleged suspect was a West African migrant, so why use an image that was demonstrably misleading. When I challenged on this, the point was made it was simple a “stock” photo that had been swiftly put out to reassure the public. But that implies that there are NO stock photos of ethnic minorities under arrest. Were this to be true that would be denying the reality that there is a significant amount of serious crime carried out by ethnic groups with the black community disturbingly involved. But it seems someone in authority in the Police felt it was fine to signal that the murders had been committed by a White man.
The second curiosity emerged from the University of Nottingham. Again with a few hours of two of its students being savagely stabbed to death, it tweeted the following.
This struck me as a sanitised and somewhat inaccurate representation of what had happened. The two students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar had been murdered and the suggestion that they had a “sudden and unexpected death” seemed either extremely sensitive or a little deflecting.
The one thing that Nottingham University was careful NOT to say was that the murders had been allegedly carried out by a recent graduate of that very University. Again, this is perhaps understandable in the context of not jeopardising the police case, but it is now well understood that the suspect concerned, Valdo Calocane, who is understood to be from Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in mechanical engineering last summer. So, he must have been well known to the University authorities which then raises further questions.
Sources in the mainstream media raise questions about Calocane’s ability to fit in with the students he shared a house with in the town and he is described as being sullen and difficult. Other sources insist that he had a violent temper and there may have been incidents that involved the Police. So, was this suspect known to the Police and if so, when?
Then there is the issue of how he ended up in the UK in the first place, how he got accepted and funded his university course, and what happened after he supposedly graduated. It is suggested that Calocane went by the alias of Adam Mendes. Why? He is reported to be a former pupil of St Thomas Picton School in Haverfordwest in Wales. How did he get from West Africa to Wales? Who determined he should be afforded settled status in the UK and on what grounds.
The next anomaly is the media conferences held by the families of the next of kin. These happened very quickly in full media glare. Some will wonder how the next of kin could even speak publicly of the loss of their loved ones so quickly. They seemed to also say the same soundbites that echo what was said after other atrocities such as that in Manchester in May 2017. “Don’t look back in Anger” “Love is all that matters” “We must stand united’. Do we detect the hand of media trained Policing Liaison Officers in some of these statements? The one family that has been afforded a low media profile is that of Ian Coates, the 65 year old school caretaker also killed on that night. Here is what his brother Phil, had to say on social media.
The anger is discernible and organic. It is also unwanted by the Politicians and the Media. Why might this be? Isn’t the life of Mr Coates equally valuable?Something feels wrong about what we are seeing following these sa
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Good article, an excellent summary of this story and the way it’s been used by the media to push a ‘no blame’, ‘focus on the positives’ agenda. I noticed we moved very quickly away from the “crime” part of this story to the “celebrate the lives of the victims” part. Question, did he actually graduate or did he drop out, given his decline into crime and his extremely concerning ‘alleged’ behaviour while at university, it seems very unlikely he passed the exams successfully.