After humiliation in Hartlepool, where now for smalltown detective DI Starmer?
The Labour party is now mainly an argument about which wing of itself was worse. Come on, guys – you’ve got so much in common! Let’s face it, you both tank elections. The Tories promise frequent bin collections, Labour promises frequent binfires.
The Conservatives have won Hartlepool, a seat Labour held since its creation in 1974, with a candidate so invisible she might have been an urban myth. Impressively, Labour’s remainer candidate was an even more batshit choice. We will of course have to wait whole days to discover all the various stripes of local results, not least what’s happened to Labour seats on Hartlepool council. If you’re not sure how many weeks/hours/seconds of postmortem on it all you can stand, remember: you can always run off and join up for the war against France. I guess the key questions I’ll be asking before I head for the front are: do you have to quarantine on return? And please tell me there’s indoor seating?
But whichever way the other key races go, on the Hartlepool result alone the Tories have once again manoeuvred Labour into the wounded postelection realm of abstract nouns. We’ll no doubt be hearing a lot more twoway anguish about things such as “belonging”, “identity”, “home”, “patriotism” and “heart”. All of this sounds like stuff that the moderator would write on a whiteboard at some insufferable office awayday. The Tories have once again caught Labour with the Offsite Trap. Any minute now some terrible prick is going to say “retail offering”.
Increasingly, Labour’s stated mission to rekindle with its lost heartlands feels a bit maudlin and entitled. It’s got the flavour of one of those stories where a man sets up a piano beneath his ex-girlfriend’s window and vows to play it until she gets back with him. Journalists who don’t really get it cover the story with headlines like “The last romantic”. All normal women who read it are just thinking: I know exactly what kind of guy he is. I hope she and her new boyfriend will eventually be able to relax in witness protection.
In Hartlepool, anyway, the media pack will soon sweep out of town, like arena rock acts bidding farewell to Boston with the words: “You’re welcome, Philadelphia!” On the plus side, at least that means we’ve got a few weeks off from the excruciating spectacle of people being vox-popped to see if they have ever heard of someone called Keir Starmer. I don’t know why the field producers don’t just go the whole hog and get Attenborough to voice the reports. “And here … approaching the watering hole … is a local female. Unaware of the wounded Starmer, her instincts centre on the big shop she needs to do later. Nature is vast – and indifferent.”
Anyway: Starmer. Let’s hope last week’s attempt to graft a sense of humour on to him in the wallpaper department of John Lewis was successful, because he’s going to need a laugh. To my eyes, the procedure was a botched lawyer-o-plasty. On the eve of polling, the Labour leader was out there telling the cameras: “We are fighting for every vote going into those elections tomorrow!” Life comes at you fast. You’ll note that a leader’s office that last week briefed that Boris Johnson’s dispatch box performance was the PM’s “Kevin Keegan moment” was by this week still fighting for this title. It is now
Starmer who’s going to have to go to the Tees Valley and get something.
Speaking of the dispatch box, perhaps we could now hear much, much less about people’s perception that Starmer “performs well at PMQs”. This is the equivalent of saying he performs well in his secret diary, or in a mid-afternoon repeat of mid-00s horticultural detective series Rosemary and Thyme. To be clear: NO ONE WATCHES THIS SHOW. If it was shown on a US network, at least two New York executives would lose their jobs, and it would be pulled before the first commercial break, with affiliates switching to a 90s sitcom just to recoup seven minutes of ratings apocalypse and head off the threat of armed insurrection from their advertisers.
As someone who has probably watched PMQs twice in the past year, I’m afraid Starmer always has the look of a person who’s weary of having to explain something to you twice. He has slightly frightened eyes (like Peter Lilley used to – I know he likes references to early-90s British politics). Most still photos seem to show him giving a thousand-millimetre stare.
Wherever he campaigned during this local elections run, he looked like the classic smalltown detective battling his demons, who’s been transferred there from somewhere else in circumstances he doesn’t like to talk about. I quite like Angela Rayner as his earthy, big-hearted local DS, but she doesn’t seem to get any screentime. You get the feeling that DI Starmer is still haunted by the case of a drowned socialite he failed to solve 15 years ago. Boris Johnson, meanwhile, was shagging the socialite and probably accidentally drove the car off a pier then left her to die. And at some level, an aspirational public respects the work.
I’m trying to imagine the writers’ meeting at which the concept of Starmer was pitched. “Can you give me a character note?” “Er … He sometimes carries his suit jacket over his shoulder? He prefers to keep his counsel on the big issues, but looks like he would have an opinion on what makes ‘good’ coffee. He seems weary, like it’s a huge effort to tolerate the world.” I am now picturing general incredulity. “But … he gets the job done. Right? RIGHT? I mean, the thing about that character is that he has to get the job done?”
We now know his job hasn’t got done in Hartlepool. So the rest of the plot may be tactfully regarded as “developing”.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
the following year. But in practice, accessing the footage remains difficult, according to advocates and attorneys.
California police are allowed to withhold footage even in critical cases, if they can demonstrate that the release would interfere with an ongoing investigation, or violate privacy. Rarely does the department release all footage available.
“[California police departments] really do everything and go out of their way to make it difficult,” said Shaleen Shanbhag, an attorney representingBen Montemayor, who filed a federal lawsuit against the LAPD alleging excessive use of force during a Black Lives Matter protest.
“Typically, we ask for the video. And first, they’ll refuse because there’s an ongoing investigation into the incident,” said Shanbhag. Then, she said, the police department may give a legal team access to some footage, but won’t provide all of it or release it to the public. So attorneys continue to file requests, she said, and might end up going before a judge who can rule to order the footage released if the department continues to refuse the release.
Montemayor, Shanbhag’s client, was hit with “less lethal” projectiles fired by LAPD officers at a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles last June. The ammunition rupturedone of his testicles into multiple pieces.
Montemayor’s case is one of many calling into question the LAPD’s use of violence during BLM protests last summer. BWC footage released by the LAPD last September shows Montemayor holding a sign and quickly giving in to officers as they pull it away from him. Then, Montemayor suddenly crumples forward and screams in pain. A freeze frame shows a projectile hitting his genital area.
Shanbhag described the footage as “a little one minute snippet”. It is chaotic and Montemayor is obscured for much of it, she said.The legal team is now working to get access to footage from other officers who were involved, and who approached Montemayor from other angles.
Montemayor remembers feeling “unbelievable pain and confusion” during the incident. In his suit, he said he in no way resisted the officers, and does not remember hearing a dispersal order.
Without the footage, Shanbhag said, “it’s hard to tell what happened”.
Monique Alarcon, another attorney in Los Angeles, said that in addition to withholding some footage, the LAPD sometimes edits their releases in a way that can be misleading.
Alarcon’s client, CJ Montano,alleges that he was hospitalized with head injuries after an LAPD officer shot him in the head with a projectile as he was holding his hands up and backing away during a BLM protest last summer.
Video of the incident released by the LAPD includes a heavily produced introduction and a recorded phone call of officers requesting backup and saying protesters were throwing rocks and bottles at officers.
Alarcon, however, says she has seen additional footage of the incident under a protective order, meaning that this footage is not publicly available, and that none of that footage shows protesters throwing rocks and bottles at the time of Montano’s shooting.
In Montano and Montemayor’s cases,theLAPD was forced to release the initial footage under the critical incident mandate. Antone Austin’s 2019 interaction with police did not fall under that category, and in addition to suing the LAPD for racial profiling, wrongful arrest and excessive use of force, his legal team had two options to access footage of his arrest:a public records request or a lawsuit.
Public records requests for BWC footage are routinely denied, according to a search of the LAPD’s public records website. Lawsuits require time and money.
After Austin filed his suit last year, his legal team also fought to have the images of his arrest released. The footage the LAPD was forced to release in Aprilshowed that Austin had calmly greeted officers before he was told to turn around and was forcefully detained. Police arrested Austin, who is Black, while searching for a white suspect.
The release of the video sparked controversy on social media, where many argued Austin was racially profiled.
Alarcon, the lawyer in the Montano case, said she had spent as many as six months working pro bono to get access to BWC footage in some criminal defense cases.
John Burton, an attorney who specializes in civil rights litigation in California, said that the lack of transparency when it comes to BWC footage is “outrageous”. Burton said that because getting footage released to the public is such a hassle, lawyers agree to accept a protective order – which only allows legal teams to see the footage.
“The business of the police should by default be in public,” he said. “We don’t have secret police, we don’t have death squads.”
An LAPD spokesperson said the department cannot comment on cases undergoing pending litigation or on related policies.
As police departments across the US reckonwith cases of excessive force, BWC policy is evolving. Several states have legislation pending that would require greater transparency with BWC footage. And as police shootings and deaths continue to occur, public calls for access to footage grow ever louder. Protesters in Knoxville, Tennessee, are now pushing for BWC footage of police shooting and killing a high school student to be released.
Despite the legal battles, increased transparency in California has made attorneys’ jobs easier, Shanbhag said.
“I’m really glad that BWC footage is becoming so widely used,” she said. “I think without it, a lot of folks wouldn’t see how out of control these police officers are. When they take their oath they are sworn to serve and protect. And some of these videos show that what they’re doing is torturing and abusing people. It’s changing the narrative.”
The business of the police should by default be in public
John Burton, attorney