Arrest in the Keith Blakelock murder case

[max_tranmere]

I remember this when it happened. PC Keith Blakelock was machete-ed to death on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, London, during a riot in 1985. It lead to the biggest manhunt in British history, over one thousand officers were on the case. I hope they have finally caught the bastard/bastards who did it.

From what I remember at the time some rioters had set fire to a building to try and lure the Fire Brigade onto a certain part of the estaste. When the Fire Brigade got there they were savagely attacked by rioters. They barely got a chance to get their fire hoses out to try and tend to the fire before the machete's appeared.

Keith Blakelock and his colleague went to help the Fireman who were being viciously attacked and Blakelock's colleague took a machete to the head. Luckily he was wearing a very strong Police helmet which saved him (after the riot was over he took the helmet off and it fell in two like a large Easter egg - that is what would have happened to his head if he was not wearing a strong helmet).

PC Keith Blakelock was machete-ed and knifed to death. He was stabbed and machete-ed an unbelieveable amount of times. His jacket, which hung in the Scotland Yard crime museum for years after (I think it is still there) had narrow strands of yellow tape put on it in the lab afterwards - a slit of yellow tape either side of each stab wound. His black jacket is so covered in yellow tape that it is one large yellow blob, you can hardly see any black material colour anywhere on it apparently.

There are some real scum people in this society, and I hope they finally have caught the person/people responsible. They should bring back hanging for this sort of thing!

[number 6]

They tried to fit Winston Silcott up with it.

[one eyed jack]

I used to go to school near there and spent a lot of time at a mates house around the corner. There was always some drama on that estate and I remeber one morning us all looking from the class window at a woman covered in a red blanket who committed suicide. Blood was all over the pavement.

The re was no need for that level of violence on PC Blakelock and the person(s) need to caught and given the same level of justice as far as Im concerned.

I remember it being a really weird feeling around Broadwater Farm after that incident and how everyone thought it was Silcott as well because of the pictures The Sun used to publish.

He looked well violent so therefore he must have did it and that shows poor judgement on the police back then who wanted someone quickly to be the posterchild for that crime so they could get quick closure but ultimately screwed it up for themselves in doing so.

I fear they will never catch the real killers or they might even have the killers in custody or in prison for another crime as this level of violence always ends up with those kind of people doing time anyway.

[welkram]

Only picked up a little of this on the late news yesterday.

Did I hear correctly that the arrested man was 40 years old, that would have made him around 15 when the crime was committed.

Did I also hear that the suspect had been released on police bail, I guess that can only mean that full prosecution evidence is still not available.

I will be surprised if this gets to a full a trial, a 15 year old boy - egged on by the crowd, cought up in the rush, been followed and tracked by Police for 25 years etc, etc.

If the Police push it and get the CPS to prosecute and it all goes tit's up it could be worth at least 50k to this scumbag.

Who knows, he might even get Max Clifford to represent him.

[Sarah Kelly]

I fear without a reliable witness testimony and an overwhelming proof of evidence placing the perp at the scene,then this will come to very little...If the police even have (one of ) the right guys,they need him loose,and see whose nerve fails them into making a mistake that might open up a fresh line of enquiry-They met with a wall of silence last time....Same thing happened in the Lawrence case,and in manchester with that boy (Jon Evans?)who was shot riding his ,tho thankfully ,a "friend" ratted them out eventually ..... Its sad when you think our police and the British Justice System used to be the envy of the world..Both seem pretty toothless now..

[justincyder]

I eagerly await for someone to post a message insinuating that he got what he deserved or it was Margaret Thatchers fault or some other twaddle.

I was about 12 when this happened and remember reading about it in the news paper, it's one of my earliest memories of being really upset as for me at that age a policeman was someone you went to for help and they were the good guys (before they got turned into beaureucrats and administrators(although I still think on the whole the average copper still is/ wants to be, a good guy )).

I seem to recall reading that he was that badly attacked his head was near severed.

[Jonone]

Unless they have some great evidence it's not worth proceeding with as a case. What are they going to rely on? The word of someone who has been 'padded up' with the accused and to whom he confided his guilt ?

If they had a decent lead would it have taken this long ?

[Jonone]

Justin, news reporting of the time was a dark art. Remember Hillsborough ? I imagine you were quite selective about the things you got 'really upset' about, for example you could have got upset or angry about Blair Peach .. but probably didn't.

This is in no way to suggest that things even themselves out, and both incidents are heinous. This is more a point about memory being a very dynamic thing, and what you remember of that incident and that time is a kind of selective synthesis of what you've read and seen subsequently over the ensuing 30 years.

[max_tranmere]

I never understood why the Broadwater Farm riots occured. I can understand, to a point, why the Brixton Riots of 1981 occured though. That was in the days of the 'suss laws' where the Police could just stop someone, harass them, pin them up against a wall and pat them down with no evidence at all. Apparently, although I was only 12 at the time, if you walked along Coldharbour Lane in Brixton in south London in 1980 or 81 you saw nothing but young black men pinned against walls being hassled and searched by the Police. The term 'overkill' (as a description of what the Police were apparently trying to do to prevent streets muggings) was almost an understatement. The local community erupted and set the neighbourhood on fire.

What happened in Tottenham, at Broadwater Farm, three years later, is something very differnt though. From what I understand the community went berserk because someone had been ruffed-up in a house search, then someone had apparently died in another house search by the Police - not things that are acceptable and certainly should have been investigated by the MET's Internal Affairs department and any wrong-doing by the Police should have resulted in that officer/officers being tried - if proven to have done wrong - but the occurances which followed from the local people were very savage, totally unacceptable, and very very wrong. A Police officer machete-ed to death, the same being attempted on another, Firemen being savagely attacked, buildings burnt down, and so on. It was all way way over the top.

I feel for Keith Blakelock's family, although I read that his son has now joined the Police himself - so even though the evil that was done to his father having happened, the son still saw the Police as a great institution which he sees as a good career to get into. Brixton was excessive to the point where I think most people would have considered rioting - although I think the more 'softly softly' approach by the Police since, and the introduction of PACE (the Police And Criminal Evidence act) has been a bit too 'softly softly' on everyone in society and has brought about a whole range of problems where the Police seem to be on the back-foot now and the criminal can almost laugh at the Police these days.

Broadwater Farm involved savagely we have hardly seen for generations, was way in excess of the reposnse from the community that could ever be regarded as justified by any decent thinking person, and is a something that will not be forgottten for generations. I hope, with this recent arrest, they can finally end their investigation and the culprit/culprits can be sent down for the rest of their lives.