"This man, Norman Bettison headed up the liaison unit responsible for orchestrating the lies and black propaganda that was the police response to the deaths of 96 people at Hillsborough. Attempting to cover up the police's role in causing the tragedy, the liaison unit perpetuated false stories of drunken football fans and hooligans kicking police officers as they tried to help the wounded and dying. He was still blaming fans behaviour on Thursday when he said it "made the job of the police in the crush outside Leppings Lane turnstiles harder than it needed to be.” Today he was forced to apologise in a desperate attempt to keep his job. This man truly is scum. 'Sir' Norman Bettison, is now "one of the country's most experienced officers and responsible for overseeing the policing of domestic extremism" according to the Guardian. He is the police national lead on the PREVENT strategy, and the vice chair of ACPO's Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee. This puts him at the heart of state snooping against Muslim, Kurdish and Tamil communities, as well as 'counter-terror' strategies against LWX (left wing extremists) and anarchists. In his PREVENT role he has shown evidence of some rather unpleasant views. When the Met was found guilty and fined in a corporate prosecution for the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, he described it as "a triumph for health and safety, a lucrative new territory for lawyers, a disaster for common sense." He has also claimed that that schoolchildren as young as 13 are being groomed for terrorism, said that it will “probably take 20 years” to prevent the “infection” of extremism spreading within Britain’s borders", and blamed Muslim communities for not doing enough to prevent terrorism. He's not averse to a bit of the high life. In July he was criticised for spending £300,000 of his force's money on seven high performance executive cars for the 'personal and professional use' of senior officers, including himself, despite moaning on about police spending cuts. His crusade against 'all forms of extremism' has also taken him on all-expenses paid trips to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Abu Dhabi. He should be behind bars serving a lengthy 'deterrent sentence' for perverting the course of justice. Sadly the worst thing likely to happen to him is that he'll have to draw his not insubstantial cop pension a bit early and take a lucrative directorship in the rapidly expanding counter-terrorism industry." - Winckel

:-( - Winckel