It is by the way only for the sake of grammar that I end the title with a question mark, my opinion of Leicester Plod having been given previously in these pages.
Chris Eyre the Temporary Chief Constable, said “I can assure you that at no time were statements withheld and not passed on.”Oh really? must have just misplaced the Gaspers statements then, yes that must be it, misplaced, what other reason could there possibly be for waiting half a year before passing them on to the Portuguese Police?
The statements of Katherina Gaspar and Arul Gaspar.
In light of this latest nonsense from Leicestershire Police I thought I would repost this very insightful article by Dr Martin Roberts.
Now far be it for me to tell you to pay attention and consider the implications of what Dr Roberts is saying here, but do pay attention and consider the implications of what Dr Roberts is saying about the involvement of Leicester Plod.
What is writ below is but a short extract of a more comprehensive and thought provoking article.
By Dr Martin Roberts
14 October 2009
CHAPTER AND VERSE
.........As a younger man I once enjoyed the company of a mathematically adept colleague, whose principal out-of-hours interest was the 'Sport of Kings'. He would study The Sporting Life assiduously, and wasn't so much in the habit of placing a bet as making a calculated investment. When assessing the odds, this individual typically thought 'outside the box', well before that phrase was ever coined. He had a sharp eye for the unusual, and one memorable observation of his has stayed with me ever since: 'You won't find a trainer in the North of England sending his horse all the way to a small track in the South if he doesn't have a very good reason for believing it will win.'
Now, this is not quite the irrelevant anecdote it may appear. Soon after attending at apartment 5A of the Ocean Complex on the night of May 3, 2007, the GNR decided they were out of their depth and called in the PJ, an organisation the McCanns would go on to criticise in no uncertain terms, Gerry making it perfectly clear that, in his view, the British had more experience in handling child abduction cases. So there he was, a visitor to the Iberian peninsular, whose child was inexplicably missing from a resort of little consequence and, as the local police, recognising the potential seriousness of the crime, defer instinctively to their senior investigative colleagues, what does Gerry McCann do? By way of bringing the full resources of the more experienced British police to bear, he encourages the PJ to collaborate, not with Scotland Yard, but a provincial constabulary.
Are we to suppose that the expertise to which Gerry McCann was necessarily appealing was particularly well represented by Leicestershire Police? Simply observing the law of averages, as well as the highly skewed distribution of the UK population, specialist expertise in all manner of things is most likely to reside in or around London and the South East. So was experience in the handling of missing child cases a Leicestershire forte or the criterion which singled them out as the most appropriate authority to co-ordinate the UK contribution? If not, what made their affiliation to the enquiry so important for the McCanns? Like the horse being sent a long way to compete in a small race meeting, the specific engagement of a provincial police force on a case with international parameters cannot have been without purpose. And that purpose cannot have been simply facilitating subsequent liaison back home in the UK, since no-one, outside of the protagonists, can pre-determine the length of time for which a missing person might remain so. It could all have been over inside a week. Still, there is no denying the quality of the liaison, with guidance, in the form of police manuals, later finding its way onto Gerry McCann's bedside cabinet. more
An old pic or two to brighten the place up a tad.
Footnote:
In the few minutes it took to locate the Gaspar's statements at The Maddie Case Files, three things became extremely apparent.
The staggering, and truly it is, the staggering amount of work and dedication that has gone into translating, producing and cataloguing the case files is without doubt beyond the pale.
Add to this all the other material that has been collected and archived there and it is a testament, a testament to the grit and determination of those involved and that this case will never ever go away until those people primarily involved in this sordid affair face some kind of justice.
Having witnessed the fruits of all that work and dedication, I feel somewhat ashamed of my hissy fit of yesterday, a tirade born out of frustration, that's all I can offer for an excuse.
