Since I wrote a few days ago about the inept way the Portuguese police have investigated the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, I have received a steady stream of comments, some of which i have not published because they are in poor taste, from Portuguese people claiming their police have done everything correctly, that their police are the best in the world and that it is all the fault of Madeleine's parents and therefore the police cannot be blamed.
However, The Sunday Times today has a well researched article showing that police incompetence, particularly in missing children cases is not at all uncommon. Indeed a case of a missing girl three years ago was investigated by the same police investigator who is running the McCann case and in 2004 it took the police 5 days before they even sealed off the crime scene to take forensic tests. by this time it was too late.
The McCann case appears now to have lost direction too, with a focus on Robert Murat seemingly taking the police down a dead end. Insiders told The Sunday Times there was "no evidence against him at all".
Sadly, a series of cock ups and policing techniques more suited to 1973 and "Life on Mars" seem to mean that this enquiry is going nowhere.
Portuguese people reading this ought to first think about what has gone wrong before blindly commenting that their police are "the best in the world". This isn't a football match where you blindly follow your team, irrespective. Only by the Portuguese police being pressurised in to admitting their mistakes and reforming themselves can the Portuguese have faith that the next child who goes missing will be found. Had this been done in 2004 following the abduction of a Portuguese child then, perhaps the Madeleine McCann investigation would have been done properly.
No comments:
Post a Comment