
I base these posts on Fandango’s Who Won the Week posts, and I use the opportunity just to look at my own newsfeeds.
I want to highlight a desperately sad story this week. Up in Liverpool, 9-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead. It appears she was caught in the crossfire when shooters entered her house, chasing the intended victim. I mean, it’s a terrible story but there are details all over the media, so I won’t discuss it further. There are probably fewer murders in the UK than you might think, and somebody this young… never.
What surprised me was the level of mistrust there must be up there, between the police and the public. Where you’d expect to take co-operation for granted, police are having to spell out that first step: “please come and talk to us”. Because, normally, people obviously don’t. The police have been at pains to stress ways that the public can get in touch indirectly, if they don’t want to speak directly.
There seems to be an attitude “us and them”, where there’s little communication between the two sides. And somewhere in the middle is this poor girl.
Whether this is through fear or simple unwilling, how bad must the policing have been in the past, for things to have become this dysfunctional?

RIP little Angel🕊️. Did not see this coming when I clicked. 😞
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Very very sad
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Its tragic! Really heart breaking!
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🥀 🖤
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What a tragedy. 😰
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Trouble is, that area is probably the most heard-of in terms of guns. Guns are illegal but people still get hold of them. I suspect if I wanted a gun, the first thing I’d do is head up there. My parents lived up there and there was a shooting once 5 mins from their house – that’s usually as bad as it gets here. The only weapons you hear around here are shotguns.
And when you have guns, there will be “accidents”.
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I have seen pleas like that from the police in Australia. I didn’t take it as the relations between police and people being bad. I just thought it was trying to make sure that people thought about whether they had anything to share… and to make the contact options really obvious and easy. It’s not often I see it but when I do, it’s usually about a case that has really attracted the attention/sympathy of the public. For example: quite recently in Western Australia a little girl was stolen from her family’s tent on a camping trip. There was a huge outcry on social media and on traditional media and that kind of call for information went out. They found her within a few days. So that had a happier ending than your story possibly can.
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It surprised me a bit because I thought it would have been obvious. It struck me as strange to hear people saying it, not once but several times.
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So sad 😞
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