Police corruption shielded Stephen Lawrence murderers

The Government has announced that the UK’s equivalent to the FBI, The National Crime agency is now to undertake a major investigation into allegations that corrupt police officers shielded the murderers of Stephen Lawrence. The investigation will focus on the first police investigation carried out in 1993 murder of Stephen by a racist gang.

Police officers at the time were told within 24 hours of the murder who the suspects might be but information was acted upon until virtually two weeks later, once the parents had met with Nelson Mandela, who brought global attention to their son’s death.

At the heart of the investigation will be a focus on former detective sergeant John Davidson, who was a key officer in the 1993 murder investigation. It has been alleged that Davidson was on the pay role of the gang boss Clifford Norris, whose son David Norris was one of the gang members who killed Stephen.

Baroness Doreen Lawrence welcomed the news stating:

We still believe that corruption played a part in keeping Stephen’s killers free. We have had to fight to get this far, so we can finally have a criminal investigation into the former police officers we suspect.

We ask those that have any information, be they former police officers or criminals, to examine their conscience. They should come forward, so justice can be done. Police corruption has denied us, and others, justice. It is a denial of the trust the police and state have placed in them by citizens. Those who betray the trust placed in them should face justice, whenever it catches up with them.”

It is amazing after so many years the Lawrence family still have to fight for justice, not just for their son, but so all of us might be free from the pain added to pain because of a racist and corrupt police force.

Simon Woolley