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COLIN MAC INNES
Claud Cockburn), the government ordered an inquiry-but a police
inquiry into a matter in which police behavior seemed to
be
much
involved. As to what may have happened, there are two theories. The
police one, predictably, is that Hal Woolf was more gravely injured
than was suspected at the first hospital, and had to be re-admitted for
brain surgery after his arrest by them-when they say he "became
iII"
in the police cells-which surgery would account for his mutilated
appearance after death. The theory of the suspicious is that something
must have happened to him in Savile Row police station between
his
two hospitalizations to account for the graver injuries that led to
his
death, for police silence about his being in the hospital, and for the
presence of police officers at his death bed.
These suspicions arise partly from the fact that a "purge" of
Indian hemp smokers is at present being conducted by the Vice
Squad. This addiction has now become quite general in various "fringe"
circles, and is not unconnected with the Afro-Caribbean presence here
-though the Cypriots and Maltese also make their modest contribution.
Unfortunately, in the public mind there is confusion between hemp
addiction and that to really dangerous drugs like morphia and heroin;
whereas in fact the hemp world and the junkie world move on quite
different levels, and it is just as unusual for a hemp smoker to be
"turned onto" junk as it is for a liquor boozer so to be. However, hemp
smoking is of course illegal, and since addiction to real junk on a
commercial scale is also regretta:bly increasing-that is, among persons
who are not the "registered addicts" whom our laws permit to secure
modest supplies from a doctor-public feeling against hemp is equally
severe. Hal Woolf, though an admitted addict, led an otherwise normal
and socially blameless life, as I can testify; yet since he was a "weed"
smoker, some sections of the public feel that if the police stepped out
of line, they were entitled to do so in view of the menace of "dangerous
drugs" in general.
Yet the police are having a bad press at the moment, and it
looks as if the hallowed myth that English coppers never use violence,
perjury, framing of suspects-let alone participate in crimes-is at last
being shattered in the public mind. Now, what has been foolish about
this legend is not that coppers
do
do these things-as all police forces
do and must-but that national vanity led many to suppose that our
coppers were far nicer men than any others.
If
the public-and more
specially juries-know what "police methods" really are, this fact will
