I KNOW the Metropolitan Police get a lot of stick these days but sometimes you do wonder why they bother. A report in the Times a few days ago proved, once again, that they are not on your side. I’ll explain that concept in a minute, but write it down: they are not on your side.
The Times reported that Myglor Yambuya, 17, plunged a large knife 11cm (4.3ins) into the chest of 16-year-old Renell Charles in Walthamstow, east London, on the eve of the King’s coronation in May last year.
CCTV footage showed the masked killer leaping from a taxi which passed Renell as he left Kelmscott School and stood with friends at a bus stop. The defendant chased after Renell and slashed his chest before delivering the fatal blow by holding back the victim’s arm as he lay defenceless on the ground. Renell died at the scene.
If that isn’t bad enough in the middle of London in daylight hours, the critical part comes here: ‘Yambuya was on bail for a machete attack at the time of the killing. He has previous convictions for possession of a knife and attacking an emergency worker.’
At Snaresbrook Crown Court Yambuya admitted carrying a knife for protection but denied murder and possession of a bladed article without good reason. He was convicted of murder by a jury last month and on Thursday he was jailed for a minimum term of 19 years and 55 days.
What this means is that at some point Yambuya came before a youth court accused of being involved in a machete attack. It was not at trial stage but the court had to consider whether to remand Yambuya in custody or grant him bail. We know that the court was told that he had previous convictions for possession of a knife and attacking an emergency worker, both serious offences. This is the very minimum information that must have been before the youth court when they had to decide whether to remand this man in custody or release him on the public at large after he was involved in a machete attack. Not just a knife attack but an attack that involved a machete. So what did the youth court decide to do? Release him on bail. Of course they did.
This meant that Yambuya was free to hunt down Renell Charles once he left school and kill him as he lay defenceless on the ground. Lord have mercy.
The judge told Yambuya: ‘This was a brutal murder in broad daylight in a busy London street. It seems like you believed you could do anything you pleased without any consideration of the consequences for others.’
And that’s the point. They believe they can do anything they want, because those in charge, those who are charged with preventing this kind of evil, do not seem very interested in protecting the public.
If you come before a court because you involved yourself in a machete attack and had a conviction for going around armed with a knife and had attacked an emergency worker, and the court says ‘We will grant you bail, off you go’, then yes, you will feel invincible. What do I have to do to get a jail sentence, you might ask yourself. Murder someone?
So when I say they are not on your side,I mean the people who you think care about your safety and protection, the very basic things that the State should provide, do not care. Or at least they do not care enough to lock up clearly dangerous predators. The problem isn’t institutional racism, it is institutional uselessness or institutional fecklessness. And it is making me institutionally very angry indeed.
If the powers-that-be did care, they would not grant teenagers who had convictions for possessing a knife and then became involved in a machete attack the freedom to go out and murder a 16-year-old. What kind of clown show is London right now? This is not an isolated case. I wrote about a similar case a few months ago.
This is why I feel so sorry for the families of Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, who lost their precious children, and Ian Coates, who had worked all his life only to be killed on retirement, a precious grandfather, father and husband. They were killed by Valdo Calocane, found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and sentenced to indefinite detention in a high-security hospital.
He was quite literally a knife-wielding maniac. Again, the very basic role of the State is protecting the law-abiding public from obvious knife-wielding maniacs. They can’t even do that. They are not on the side of the law-abiding public.