ROMAN HOLIDAY

(i'm posting this here because i don't think it can go on viceland with the esperanza aguirre libel, and i cant be bothered to work it much more)

My buddy Jared from the terribly titled, but fairly excellent house music blog FuckYouOnFriday posted the new Doves track Kingdom Of Rust with a satellite picture of Spain. Yeah I know, doves, whatever, but the second bit is spot on, and here’s why.
Let’s put aside the rampant favouritism, internal dealing, and the lack of distinction between public and private money for certain members of certain political parties and focus on yet another bent public service, the police force.

Last week 2 secret policemen called me an asshole and threatened to arrest me for harbouring ilegal immigrants. I found out later that they’d been staking out my building for 4 hours while my 2 fully legal romanian cleaning ladies did what I pay them to do, washing my cummy sheets, sweeping up fag ash off the floor, putting books back on the shelves and emptying ashtrays. Yeah, I know. I’m a pig.
The only time I had any idea of what was going on was when a fairly good looking 20 something dude with skinny jeans, a leather jacket and a beard knocked on my door, told me he was police and asked me if I lived alone. Which I do. 3 hours later I get called up on the intercom by his partner (bad cop) calling me a fucking retard for not telling them that the girls were inside.

I was a bit baffled by this, until today El Pais ran a story about how police forces are being given quotas of arrests they have to make. It’s part of a frankly racist crackdown on illegal immigrants. I’m not so naive as to suggest that there isn’t a link between immigrants and crime. If you have no papers and no money, it’s pretty obvious that in order to stay alive you’re going to have to do something shady. Whether this is out and out begging, fencing stolen goods, pushing top manta DVDs or drug dealing.

But it’s only when you realise how this policing is being done that you realise that the long arm of the law is actually a twisted tentacle made up of equal parts prejudice and boredom, reaching into our communities and fucking up lives without apology or restraints.
Acording to the article, a leaked internal memo describes how police are set targets on how many illegals they have to arrest each week in neighbourhoods based on the rate of “Problem delinquancy”, explicitily linking crime to immigration. The way this works is that an area with a high rate of delinquancy is set a higher quota than another. Vallecas for example was charged with 35 arrests in one week, with the memo further stating that if those arrests could not be made within the area, that police were authorised to venture into neighouring constituencies apparently at their whim.

What the fuck? What the fuck is going on, when not only anyone with dark skin can be explicitly linked to a rise in the crime rate, but can also be stopped and arrested because they look like illegals. How the fuck can you ‘look illegal’? does Esperanza Aguirre look illegal? Yeah, she actually sort of does. Bad example.

Not to mention the public funds spent on sending a team of undercover cops to stake out a building for 4 fucking hours because they ‘saw two girls who looked like gypsies’ go inside.

Yeah it’s a kingdom of rust alright. Totally fucking corrupt.