Miranda Devine, crime, cops, Islamic terrorists, the story of A and out with the baseball bat

(Above: the miniseries Blue Murder, set back in the good old days when a cop was a cop, a crim was a crim, and a joke was a brown paper bag full of cash in the paw).

Mention criminals and cops, and Miranda the Devine immediately drops any thought of niceness.

So her recent dedication to niceness comes to an end with Police too afraid to get tough on our criminals.

Ah the cops as scaredy cat syndrome.

It only takes the Devine a skip - from the Four Corners report of the Mumbai terrorist attack - a first rate pick up of a UK Channel 4 program by Dan Reed - to a hop to the raid on alleged terrorists in Victoria, before a snide reference to the cops being incapable of protecting Indian students emerges.

As if the cops are somehow the only agents for dealing with incoherent racism within the community, and its expression in violence. Next thing, the cops will be blamed for the Cronulla riots.

Most of the cops I've known have hungered for the quiet life, but do the best they can when confronted with criminals and criminal actions. Some turn to the dark side, and the impact on morale of the joke, the chuckle, the tickle and the brown paper bag should never be under-estimated.

But the good cops don't want to alienate any of their clients, who can provide intelligence and help them sort out the bad guys. Which is no doubt why Victorian police chief Simon Overland sensibly went out of his way at a press conference to present a calm community orientated front (especially as the source for nailing the alleged terrorists came from within the community). 

Here's how the Devine twists that:

At a press conference about the raids, Overland was preoccupied with apologising to the Islamic community for having arrested Muslims, telling journalists: ‘‘Don’t blame the Muslim community.’’ As if they were.

Well actually and predictably some of them were. Here's Tim Blair getting agitated about the plot:

As Kofi Annan would say, Australia has “recently acquired a significant Muslim population, and is not yet sure how to adjust to it.” Just an idea: how about the adjustment – or satisfaction “with our systems” – works the other way? (here)

Oh you wretched unhappy Islamic community. So unocker.

But back to the Devine ravaging Overland:

He declared the obvious – the accused men were entitled to the presumption of innocence – and attacked the media for reporting the raids.

Actually he was coherently explaining that a newspaper hitting the streets at 1.30 am with details of the raids on the front page - before the raids had taken place - and went on to suggest this didn't actually help the cause of his men or the business of nailing the baddies. 

This wasn't reporting the raids, it was pre-empting them, and for whatever the reason the fuck up took place, the media - in this case The Australian - deserves all the contempt heaped upon it.

But suddenly the right wing commentariat doesn't want to know about a Murdoch rag potentially giving aid and comfort to terrorists. Thank the lord they were either heavy sleepers or not part of the paper's demographic, anxiously standing on a street corner awaiting the delivery of latest ramblings from Greg Sheridan on the dangers of Islamics.

Never mind. It's a perfect excuse for the Devine to do a rant about Overland being the model of a modern Australian police commissioner, with a politically correct spin. No doubt she'd prefer the old days when a cop would take a suspected crim out the back, beat the shit out of him with fists or phone book, and fit them up for the job. It was a form of policing, but give me politically correct spin any day.

What's caused the Devine's agitation? Well she's a late breaking arrival on the news that a "linguistic realignment" is taking place, and the cops, along with Attorney-General Robert McClelland would prefer not to implicate the entire Islamic community in terrorist activities.

But where would the media be without a headline like Islamic extremists and Muslim terrorists? Bereft. But of course there are regular headlines about Christian terrorists, aren't there, especially the ones that think bombing abortion clinics or killing abortion providing doctors is the way forward for civilization.

Never mind. The Devine is reduced to a tragic case of Kafka blues. Come on down Mr. K and listen to the story of O, sorry A:

Unfortunately, even if we are no longer permitted to mention them by name, Islamic terrorists continue to kill innocent "infidels" and Muslims alike.

But this is Australian policing now. Faced with a threat from A, our authorities feel compelled to defend A from what they imagine the populace is thinking, and from any police officers who might mistakenly believe their role is to protect the populace from A.

Right, gotcha. And I thought I was metaphorically incoherent. But I do get the drift. The entire Muslim, Islamic community is involved in fundamentalist terrorism. As if the cops could ever snatch away the right of journalists to shriek about Islamic terrorism.

But then the real purpose of the column stands revealed - it's to promote the latest work from Tim Priest, Enemies of the State, launched today and with a foreword by the Devine, and apparently yet another whinge about the Wood Royal Commission.

Miranda the Devine's conclusion, after running through the standard shock horror catalogue of horrors, worthy of Akkers when he gets on to conspiracies in Queensland? 

Now policing is about placating and appeasing the bad guys. But what about the days when policing was about taking the brown paper bag? Sure it led to good shows like Blue Murder, but if you want a more balanced insight into the ups and downs of the Wood Royal Commission at broadsheet length, why not duck back to Malcolm Brown's Holding judgement.

Even so, this is a welcome return to form for the Devine. Lordy, me putting in a nice word for cops and Islamics, she does have the power to move. The frothing and the foaming is first class, and things can only get better as she forgets niceness and picks up the baseball bat and cudgels the politically correct ...