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Food for thought: 28 years later...
Friday 26th July 2013 | Funmi
Man is arrested for a murder 28 years later
After a 28 year interval, Nicholas Jacobs has been arrested for the death of PC Keith Blakelock.
The death of a Black Caribbean female Cynthia Jarrett, who had a heart attack and died after police raided her home in Tottenham, sparked off the Broadwater Farm riots in north London 1985. As the streets of Tottenham displayed their dismay over the death of their former neighbourhood resident, during the hectic acts of rebellion, PC Blakelock was attempting to protect fire fighters as they took out a supermarket blaze when he was approached by a gang carrying machetes. He was attacked and stabbed 42 times as the mob surrounded him and chanted “Kill the pig!”
Although he was only 16 during the time of PC Blakelock’s death, at the present age of 44 prosecutors have justified the arrest of Jacobs by explaining that this decision conforms to the Code for Crown Prosecutors. Based on this verdict, Westminster Magistrates Court are keeping Mr Jacobs remanded, as he awaits his trial on July 26th.
This image of Jacobs contradicts his arrest as we see a man who appears to be innocent, as he cries for help but also submits to the fact that he is up against a team that is much stronger than him.
The image was released the day after Jacobs appeared in court by Stafford Scott, who is an active member of Tottenham rights campaign group.
Mr Scott explains that “a friend of Jacobs I am concerned that justice is done. Our community has never received justice.”
“They are doing this out of desperation because they need a scapegoat after spending hundreds of millions of pounds in one of the most expensive investigations in the history of British policing”
Furthermore, if we are to expand on Mr Scott’s claims, then it leads one to question why this amount of money was invested and lead to a settlement of only one arrest out of a gang of suspects. A discussion that contributes to this matter is the correlation between this case and Stephen Lawrence’s. The similarities between the two cases lie in the distribution of justice. 20 years after the tragic murder, Gary Nobson and David Norris have been convicted for the death of Stephen Lawrence out of a group of five suspects. It has been said that regardless of the fact that informants identified the five murderers, officers failed to make any arrests. Even with an knowledge of the perpetrators’ and a £3.8 million forensic investigation, a lack of substantial evidence means that sadly, it may take another 20 years before the three remaining suspects are convicted.
This raises the question of what justifies the arrest of Nicholas Jacobs 28 years after the case but the majority of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers still walk freely even though the police know they did it?
Funmi @Feoblack
