Getting my goat

Michael John Ashworth, 57, currently of no fixed address, has been arrested at the Channel Tunnel in France, having absconded from an open prison, which clearly was not a fixed address, in 1995. He will have to serve the remaining 18 months of his five-year sentence in prison, unless of course he chooses to abscond again. Another 22 or so years on the run will take him to the age of 79, at which point imprisonment might seem a good option. There is some uncertainty as to why he chose to return to he UK, perhaps he thought that all of his wardens had retired, or died, or both, and he would not be recognised. This is where computers come in. There had to be a use for them somewhere. Meanwhile, a police officer in Portland, Oregon, has shot and killed a seven-year-old runaway goat named Volt. The goat’s owner, farmer Matt Minnick, says the officer told him that “it was either me or the goat”. Even if this was the case, the officer appears to have acted in an arbitrary manner, for many observers would have voted for the goat had they only been given the chance. The officer claims he felt threatened by the goat’s size and horns. It has been revealed that Volt was a male breeding goat, so it may be that the officer misinterpreted his intentions. Mr Minnick also claims the goat was of a rare breed, known for its calm temperament, which cannot be said of the Portland Police. He told officers at the scene that his young children could deal with these goats, but they are too young to join the police department. It seems tragic that a goat named Volt was not Tasered. It is rumoured that the officer’s computer has been confiscated, and investigators have found a number of searches under ‘North Wales Traffic Policing’. This incident of police violence pales into insignificance when compared to recent raids in Manila, in the Philippines, where officers killed 32 ‘drug personalities’ and spared but detained 100 more in what was “the bloodiest night” yet of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. The misleadingly named Supt Romeo Caramat says: “We wanted to shock and awe these drug personalities,” and it is reasonable to suppose that most if not all of the fatalities experienced these feelings at some point before they died. Promotion for Romeo might be just around the corner, as Duterte has praised the operation, and urged officers to continue to kill dozens of drug suspects every day. He is committed to putting drug-dealers in funeral parlours, not prisons, while dismissing the deaths of children as “collateral damage”. President Duterte has admitted that the police force was “corrupt to the core”, but has vowed to protect officers who kill drug suspects under suspicious circumstances. Not withstanding how such leadership would be viewed elsewhere, the President continues to ride a wave of populism of which ‘noble cause murder’ is an extreme measure. Talking of extreme populists, President Trump has praised Duterte for an “unbelievable job” in his anti-narcotics campaign while our seemingly anti-populist British Government failed to show awe to the tactics and has sent the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, to meet Duterte, to negotiate post-Brexit deals. Perhaps Mr Fox has offered a College of Policing distance learning module on the Code of Ethics in exchange for the vast sales of ammunition that could be made. Yours, Stitch