The police are not on your side...

Dead man in Glastonbury was an ex-copper who had murdered his own wife.

The TL;DR:

What the press are reporting:

• A man was stabbed to death by a woman in a town in Somerset, England

• The woman was taken to hospital and treated for knife wounds

• The woman was charged with murder

What the press are not reporting:

• The dead man was an ex-sergeant with the Metropolitan Police who had a history of dangerous mental health problems and had served a life sentence for stabbing his own wife to death

In the western world, there’s no doubt that people who backed the police just a few short years ago think about things in a whole different way.

There are a million stories I could pick that demonstrate why but in a world of intersectionality, I think this one is particularly interesting, and it happened last week, just a year after Met Policeman Wayne Couzens was jailed for abducting a woman from the streets of London, raping and murdering her.

It started in the sleepy, historic town of Glastonbury, Somerset, where the world famous music festival is held.

Through friend of friend I found out all about this story. And I found out that the police and media are keeping the lid on a dynamite fact about the case.

The name of the victim was soon confirmed by the local plod:

So what are we not being told? We are not being told that the ‘victim’, Glenn Richards, is THIS Glenn Richards:

AN ex-police officer who stabbed his estranged wife to death after sending her a series of obsessive threatening letters, has been given a life sentence for the killing.

Glenn Richards plunged the eight-inch blade of a kitchen knife into his wife's heart in front of witnesses, before calmly walking away.

Mrs Karen Richards, who was in the process of divorcing the ex-Metropolitan Police sergeant, died at Watford General Hospital on Monday, May 7, last year, the same day as the attack.

Letters written by Richards found in the kitchen of her home included one promising to give her "a goodbye present", a clear reference to the knife.

Richards had been imprisoned for harassing his wife while serving with the London force. He had breached a series of court injunctions ordering him not to make any contact with her.

The anti-harassment orders were imposed to protect Mrs Richards.

The sergeant had a history of depression, had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act to Watford General's psychiatric ward, and was living in a St Albans care home at the time of the killing.

By this time he had retired from the Met with a pension on medical grounds.

He was considered a sufficient threat by police for them to install a panic alarm in Mrs Richards home - which for legal reasons can only be identified as "in the Watford area".

That’s right. Avon and Somerset police are not telling us that the man who somehow ended up dead in an altercation with a middle-aged woman was a former Met Police sergeant, who had been released from prison after serving a life sentence for stabbing his wife to death. He had a recorded history of mental health issues, and prior to stabbing his wife to death he had been subject to a variety of legal measures designed to protect her from him.

My ears on the ground in Glastonbury tell me that the woman who has been charged with murder was a good Samaritan who had known Richards for a long time and wanted to help him get back on his feet after his release from prison, so gave him lodgings while he did so.

And now he’s turned up dead and she’s turned up with multiple stab wounds and has been charged with murder.

What I don’t know is how or why it happened. Perhaps he was a drunken arsehole who had a mental health episode, picked up a kitchen knife and tried to do her in, but ended up coming off worse due to his drunken state. Maybe. Perhaps she was taking revenge on him for killing his wife - a blow struck for the sisterhood made by a bitter, calculating catlady. Maybe.

What I am pretty sure of is that Avon & Somerset Police are colluding with the Metropolitan Police to keep a lid on these inconvenient aspects of the case, because sooner or later, it will inevitably turn into another PR shitstorm for the police.

I’d like this to be sooner rather than later, please. I want the righteous anger that came out of the hideous Wayne Couzens matter to be harnessed in focusing on this case. I want tenacious women with access to resources to ask very awkward questions of the police in this case.

If push comes to shove, I shan’t be sad if this woman gets off scot-free. No doubt she will be punished by the process, which is by design. She’ll probably be held on remand while the forces of evil hoover up all of her money, assets, cats and everything she had to live for but in the end, after her day in court, she’ll walk away a free but destitute woman.

I’ll be very happy if some senior people in the Met Police are defenestrated or, better still, we get to see that those who could and should have protected the wife of Glenn Richards are now sitting in the House of Lords, making the laws that benefit their friends and screw us all over on a daily basis.

So what I want most urgently and most of all is for the righteous wimmin in the press and the women’s movement to know about this and to get their ravenous fangs into it.

Because Fuck The Police. A few bad apples, my arse.

AJ