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bbcbreakingnews · 4 years

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PC Andrew Harper’s mother blasts £18.99 ‘blue lives murder’ T-shirts sold on Amazon

PC Andrew Harper’s disgusted mother has slammed ‘blue lives murder’ T-shirts being sold on Amazon after her son was killed in the line of duty.

Deborah Adlam has started a petition to stop the online store from selling the £18.99 T-shirts which are emblazoned with the slogan ‘Blue Lives Murder’.

The slogan, which gained popularity after George Floyd, a black man in the US, died at the hands of the police, is a play on Black Lives Matter and suggests that policemen commit murders.

PC Andrew Harper’s disgusted mother has slammed ‘blue lives murder’ T-shirts being sold on Amazon after her son was killed in the line of duty

Deborah Adlam started a petition to stop the online store from selling the £18.99 T-shirts which are emblazoned with the slogan ‘Blue Lives Murder’

Ms Adlam wrote: ‘Please sign share the hell out of this… stop Amazon. If this goes again I will. Never buy from them again’.

The T-shirt has previously come under fire from The Police Federation, which represents rank and file British officers, who branded the shirt ‘deeply offensive’ as it shows an officer with a raised baton, appearing to attack a member of the public.

Amazon has refused to remove the merchandise from its site and a spokesman told The Sun: ‘Amazon has strict guidelines in place and follows the local laws of every country we operate in. We also have public policies for third-party sellers, so that they understand the standards we expect of them.

‘We have policies governing offensive and controversial materials which are posted publicly, and we invest significant time and resources to ensure our content guidelines are followed.’

A jury’s decision to clear the three travellers who killed PC Andrew Harper, pictured left, of murder is ‘two fingers up at the criminal justice system’, the chairman of the Police Federation John Apter, pictured right, has said

It comes after the Police Federation said a jury’s decision to clear the three travellers who killed PC Andrew Harper of murder is ‘two fingers up at the criminal justice system’.

John Apter’s comments come as a family friend of the officer claimed the teenagers ‘knew exactly what they were doing’, adding that ‘they were just preoccupied with their escape at all costs.’

Henry Long, Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole hugged each other yesterday as they were cleared of murdering the police officer by dragging him to his death behind their car – but were convicted of manslaughter.

The verdict left PC Harper’s widow, Lissie, ‘immensely disappointed’ and sparked fury from his friends and colleagues.

Police mugshots of (left to right), driver Henry Long, 19, and his passengers Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, both 18

PC Andrew Harper and his wife Lissie celebrating their wedding at Ardington House in Oxfordshire in summer 2019

The 28-year-old officer had tried to stop the thieves stealing a quad bike and his ankles were lassoed by the trailing loading strap as the teenagers tried to escape in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in August last year.

For over a mile he was towed helplessly behind the Seat Toledo by his feet as the car reached speeds of up to 60mph with driver Long, 19, swerving violently to try and release the stricken officer.

Long and his two friends Bowers and Cole, both 18, were all accused of murder but convicted only of manslaughter and were seen joyfully embracing each other via a videolink from HMP Belmarsh in London.

John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation, which represents more than 120,000 officers up to the rank of chief inspector in England and Wales, said: ‘What we see far too often is offenders who assault police officers or any emergency worker, who are then let off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Albert Bowers arriving at Reading Magistrates’ Court on September 19, 2019 for an appearance over PC Harper’s death

The post PC Andrew Harper’s mother blasts £18.99 ‘blue lives murder’ T-shirts sold on Amazon appeared first on BBC BREAKING NEWS.

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humansizedshrimp-blog · 7 years

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Reflection

“West Africa’s contribution to the African diaspora lies not merely in specific ritual symbols and forms, but also in the interpretive practices that generate their meanings.” Apter 180

“As I will argue throughout this book, as discursive objects, ‘origins’ are fundamentally emergent in nature and can be studied ethnographically as they arise.” Palmie 46

These two quotes represent a dialectic between two different ethnographic understandings of religious practices connected to the African diaspora. The first, from Andrew Apter, demonstrates what is often termed an “Afro-centric” understanding of diasporic practice. Apter believes that ethnographers cannot deny the connection between new world religious practices and their African “counterparts”. He argues that beyond just simple linguistic and practical similarities, religions of the African diaspora have retained a central interpretive framework that originated in West African communities. Stephan Palmie falls on the opposite side of this debate, viewing such religious systems as syncretic amalgamations of different cultural influences. He argues that to treat Africa as the sole point of origin for a religion like Santeria emulates a long history of cultural colonialism and that Santeria must be understood according to how it has been shaped by various contextual factors.

This dialectic is complicated for a variety of reasons. As Palmie concedes, his ideas are made problematic by the way in which several movements started by practitioners within the Americas have taken an Afro-centric perspective as the basis for constructing a cultural origin. Apter’s ideas are also difficult to deem wholly credible as they are similar to the extremely racist ideas of anthropologist Melville J. Herskovitz and conflict with how many diasporic communities would define their own origins. Herskovitz’s stance has plagued scholars like Apter since it was popularized in the 1950s. He was the first to argue that scholars need to recognize a connection between religions like Santeria and West African religious practices, using that to discuss broad “cultural carryovers” all of which related to a deeply racist perspective. In their different stances, Palmie and Apter demonstrate an incredibly complex globalist discourse about the applicability and purpose of the cultural origins.

Within this ethnographic debate lies a central tension expressed within Stuart Hall’s essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. Hall’s central idea, that one both cannot outright dismiss nationalism and must reckon with the fact that diasporic identity is related to an semi-fluid process of internal and external definition, does not seem to be present in this debate. Within the discourse between Palmie and Apter, one can see one of the most important functions of globalization: the intense awareness of definitions or cultural “borders” coupled with an imaginary breaking down of such barriers.

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paralleljulieverse · 7 years

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Julie Andrews Fantasy LPs #9

Super-cool-Dame-Julie-sings-the-punk-songs-of-Sid-Vicious! Even though the sound of it is something quite suspicious, If you play it loud enough you’ll always sound seditious, Super-cool-Dame-Julie-sings-the-punk-songs-of-Sid-Vicious! Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle oi! Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle oi!

____________________________________

When Julie Andrews was honoured with a Special Lifetime Achievement Award at the 53rd Annual Grammys in 2011, media reports took considerable delight in the incongruous sight of the genteel Dame alongside fellow honorees, pioneering US punk band, The Ramones. Photos of Julie sandwiched between Tommy and Marky Ramone, the latter draping his bared, tattooed arm proudly around her shoulder, featured in online and print news stories around the world with commentaries typically drawing amused attention to the “diversity” of the year’s honorees.

Despite the apparent novelty of the odd juxtaposition of “Mary Poppins” and a hardcore punk rock band whose catalogue of hits include numbers like “I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”and “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment,” there is in fact something of a history of associations between Julie and punk rock.

One of the earliest recorded instances is a parody piece from 1980 by British comedian Mel Smith, made in collaboration with Queen drummer, Roger Taylor. Titled “Mel Smith’s Greatest Hits”, the song is a comic pastiche of the angry male punk anthems of the time with Smith growling about wanting to “jump up and down to my favourite sound...Julie Andrews Greatest Hits.” Elsewhere in the song, he snarls:

Julie drives me frantic Cos I'm a bit of an old romantic And she sounds so nice and she's so precise I'm in paradise with me Edelweiss

Released as a 7″ single, the front sleeve featured cover art of Smith dressed in full Adam Ant-style punk regalia, striking an air guitar pose in the middle of a bedroom bedecked with Julie Andrews memorabilia. The rear sleeve had a similar shot of Smith drooling in mock-lasciviousness over a poster of a beatifically smiling Julie. While clearly tongue-in-cheek, the Smith song signalled an irreverent collocation of Julie and punk culture that would find other, more authentic, expressions as well.

Indeed, in the very same year of 1980, a post-punk experimental outfit “The 49 Americans” released a self-titled EP with a brief track called, simply, “Julie Andrews (A Tribute)” (1980). Engineered by Andrew "Giblet" Brenner, “The 49 Americans” was a collaborative group that developed out of the London Musicians Collective in Camden (Reynolds, 187-188). Inspired by the DIY experimentalism of punk, the group placed a premium on unregulated improvisation with an open, fluid membership and a single rule that players had to swap instruments -- which could be anything from a piano to saucepan lids -- from number to number with the result that they’d often be performing with little or no technical proficiency. The “Julie Andrews” track was allegedly inspired after the group spent an evening watching tapes of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and consists of a discordant version of “Do Re Mi” played on a children’s xylophone with non-verbal vocals, (Masters, 112). It was re-released as part of the group’s debut 1982 LP, “Too Young To Be Ideal”, which was honoured in The Wire magazine’s list of “100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)” (Barker et al, 1998).

Other examples of Julie references in punk rock include: “Topless Mary Poppins”, recorded in 2004 by London-based Celtic punk group, Neck; the summarily titled “Julie Andrews” by the Liverpool pop-punk outfit, The Down and Outs, released as a limited run single in 2007; and, most recently, a 2017 release also called “Julie Andrews” by Noose, a self-described four piece rock punk band from Nottingham. Sporting lyrics like, “I wished my baby was like the girlies in the porno movies, But it turns out she was just like Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music,” these songs turn on a kind of shock tactic of mixing the sacred and the profane, arguably something of a stylistic signature of punk.

Dick Hebdige (1979) famously theorises punk as a “revolting style” whose subcultural disaffection was expressed through a spectacular “bricolage” of appropriated cultural “signs” (106-112). The disordered cacophony of punk music or the riotous mish-mash of punk fashion effect a representational rebellion of “semantic disorder,” he asserts, wherein categorical boundaries are dissolved and ordinarily discrete elements are thrown together in perverse combinations that contravene received “rules” of taste and decency (90). Like a portrait of the Queen with a safety pin through her lip, the family-friendly wholesomeness of Julie Andrews was a resonant symbol of mainstream culture ripe for punk subversion.

There is however another, possibly more interesting, reading of punk’s incorporation of Julie Andrews as other than a simple target for anti-establishment iconoclasm. In a fascinating article, Ruth Adams (2008) argues for punk, at least in its influential British forms, as part of a long history of populist English cultural dissent. In punk, she writes,“[b]its and pieces of both officially sanctioned and popular English culture, of politics and history were brought together in a chaotic, uneasy admixture...that arguably spot lit the very institutions that it nominally sought to destroy” (469-70). The Sex Pistols, in particular, are interpreted by Adams as “inheritors of the English music hall tradition -- the heirs to the crowns of Arthur Askey and Max Wall, operating outside the ‘legitimate theatre’ and characterized by clownish outfits, silly walks, smutty jokes and cocking a snook at the Establishment” (470).

Far from seeing them as antithetical opposites, this reading places punk and Julie Andrews on something of an artistic continuum -- albeit at divergent extremes -- with both drawing performative and professional energies from the riotous traditions of popular English carnivalesque and working-class musical theatre. Indeed, it’s instructive that the two music hall comics cited by Adams as historical precedents for the Sex Pistols -- Arthur Askey and Max Wall -- actually performed alongside Julie during her long juvenile career on the British variety circuit (Andrews, 150-51). Even after she made the leap to “legit” theatre and Hollywood stardom, the topsy-turvy irreverence of music hall continued to form an integral part of her oeuvre and persona, as evidenced from My Fair Lady to STAR! to Victor/Victoria, from Heartrending Ballads and Raucous Ditties to The Julie Andrews Hour to Julie and Dick at Covent Garden.

It’s possibly for this reason that, alongside the more predictable deployments of Julie as object of punk’s anarchic negationism, she also features as a subject of acknowledged admiration, even inspiration. This seems particularly true of female punk artists, many of whom regularly cite Julie as an important influence. Gina Birch, founding member of post-punk British band, The Raincoats, singles out Julie as a major formative inspiration (Reddington, 27), as does Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill (Juno, 89). In her memoir, Laurie Lindeen (2007), lead vocalist for 1990s grrl punk band, Zuzu’s Petals, even jokes:

“‘What women have influenced you?’ is a very broad question that we are asked every day. We yawn the usual: ‘Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Deborah Harry, and Exene,’ when I should say, “Louisa May Alcott, Julie Andrews, and Carly Simon’” (202)

Pop superstar, Gwen Stefani, who rose to fame as lead singer of ska-punk band, No Doubt, makes no bones about her lifelong adoration of Julie Andrews. She loudly proclaims The Sound of Music as “her one true love” and is said to have cried with joy when Julie granted permission for her to riff vocals from “The Lonely Goatherd” for the 2007 hit single, “Wind It Up” (Apter, 27). Another current pop superstar, Lady Gaga -- who though not directly punk certainly draws heavily from traditions of punk rock -- is equally fulsome in her enthusiasm for Julie, as profiled in an earlier post here in the Parallel Julieverse.

All of which ultimately suggests that this imaginary LP of Julie singing the songs of the Sex Pistols is possibly not as far-fetched as it might at first seem! Oi!

Sources:

Adams, Ruth, 'The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia.” Popular Music and Society. 31: 4 (2008): 469–88.

Andrews, Julie. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

Apter, Jeff. Gwen Stefani and No Doubt: Simple Kind of Life. London: Omnibus Press, 2007.

Barker, Steve et al. “100 Records That Set The World On Fire (While No One Was Listening).” The Wire. 175, September 1998: 22-40.

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979.

Juno, Andrea, ed. Angry Women in Rock, Vol. 1. San Francisco: Juno Books: 1996.

Lindeen, Laurie. Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.

Masters, Marc. No Wave. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007.

Reddington, Helen. The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era. London: Ashgate, 2007.

Reynold, Simon. Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. London: Faber and Faber, 2009.

#julie andrews #punk rock #post punk #sex pistols #never mind the bollocks #mock lp #julie andrews fantasy lps #the parallel julieverse

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mhsn033 · 4 years

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PC Andrew Harper: Emergency worker killers ‘should get full life sentence’

Image caption PC Andrew Harper’s marriage ceremony took region four weeks earlier than he modified into once killed

The widow of PC Andrew Harper has referred to as for killers of emergency carrier workers to “utilize the rest of their lives in prison”.

Lissie Harper has launched a marketing campaign with the Police Federation for “Andrew’s Law” after her husband modified into once killed on responsibility in Berkshire.

PC Harper, 28, died when he modified into once dragged for more than a mile along a avenue by a getaway car in August 2019.

His killers were sentenced closing Friday after being convicted of manslaughter.

Driver Henry Lengthy modified into once jailed for 16 years, while his accomplices Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole were sentenced to 13 years every.

In a press open, Mrs Harper mentioned she hoped a alternate within the laws would allow folks to “get the justice that they rightly deserve”.

She vowed to fight in memory of her slack husband “so that somebody killing a police officer, firefighter, nurse, doctor or paramedic is jailed for life”.

Image copyright FamilyHandout

Image caption Lissie Harper has vowed to “fight for a alternate within the laws in memory of her slack husband”.

Newlywed PC Harper, from Wallingford in Oxfordshire, died after his toes obtained caught in a tow strap trialling within the again of a getaway car that had been aged to drag a stolen quad bike approach Stanford Dingley.

Lengthy, 19, Bowers and Cole, every 18, were convicted of manslaughter however cleared of extinguish following a trial on the Extinct Bailey.

The most sentence a have interaction can impose for manslaughter is life imprisonment however they must specify a minimum length of time to be served.

Mr Justice Edis mentioned every of the sentences for PC Harper’s killers needed to copy “the seriousness of this case”.

He mentioned: “Customarily death could maybe furthermore be induced by an act of low carelessness, infrequently it’s terribly shut to a case of extinguish in its seriousness. That is so, right here.”

The have interaction added the formative years were “young, unintelligent however legitimate criminals”.

Mrs Harper, who closing week wrote to the pinnacle minister to ask for a retrial, has referred to as on the “British public and politicians of all events” to again her marketing campaign.

The Attorney Frequent’s Role of job mentioned on Tuesday it had been requested to analysis the sentences given to the killers after claims they’re too lenient. Its officers have 28 days from sentencing to analysis the case.

Image copyright PA Media

Image caption PC Harper married his childhood sweetheart Lissie four weeks earlier than his death

Mrs Harper mentioned she had “witnessed first-hand the lenient and insufficient manner in which the justice machine deals with criminals who take dangle of the lives of our emergency workers”.

“The oldsters accountable for wreaking voice despair and distress in all of our lives will utilize an insufficient amount of time within the again of bars,” she mentioned.

“These men who showed no remorse, no guilt or sorrow for taking such an harmless and daring life away.”

John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, mentioned he completely supported Mrs Harper in her marketing campaign to alternate the laws.

“The killing of a police officer must glimpse these responsible face the rest of their lives in penal complicated,” he mentioned.

Mrs Harper mentioned her “wish” modified into once to develop sure “any widows of the long breeze will no longer must abilities the same miscarriages of justice”.

“Let us at closing place in region licensed suggestions which we can basically be joyful with, allow us to attain something about the injustices of our systems that cause so powerful heartache and voice outrage from us all,” she mentioned.

Image copyright Thames Valley Police

Image caption Jessie Cole, Henry Lengthy and Albert Bowers (L-R) were convicted of killing PC Harper

Lengthy, from Mortimer, Reading, pleaded responsible to manslaughter however denied extinguish, asserting he did no longer know PC Harper modified into once attached to the auto.

He modified into once given a reduction on his sentence attributable to he pleaded responsible and must wait on in any case 10 years and eight months in prison.

Bowers, of Moat Close, Bramley, and Cole, of Paices Hill approach Reading, admitted they were passengers, however denied ever seeing the police officer.

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tomperanteau · 7 years

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UCLA Prof: I Would Play for North Korea, But Ban Dennis Prager UCLA professor Andrew Apter, a violinist in the Santa Monica Symphony, appeared on the Dennis Prager Show Monday to defend his call for musicians and members of the community to boycott a concert where Prager will be guest conducting the orchestra.

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bbcbreakingnews · 4 years

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PC Harper manslaughter verdict is ‘two fingers up at the criminal justice system’

A jury’s decision to clear the three travellers who killed PC Andrew Harper of murder is ‘two fingers up at the criminal justice system’, the chairman of the Police Federation said.

The verdict left PC Harper’s widow, Lissie, ‘immensely disappointed’ and sparked fury from his friends and colleagues.

For over a mile he was towed helplessly behind the Seat Toledo by his feet as the car reached speeds of up to 60mph with driver Long, 19, swerving violently to try and release the stricken officer.

Police mugshots of (left to right), driver Henry Long, 19, and his passengers Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, both 18

PC Andrew Harper and his wife Lissie celebrating their wedding at Ardington House in Oxfordshire in summer 2019

Lissie Harper (centre, in white), the widow of PC Harper, outside the Old Bailey in London yesterday. She said she was ‘immensely disappointed’ that the three teenagers were cleared of murder, describing the crime as ‘barbaric’

How jury was protected amid fears of intimidation – and one was dismissed after mouthing ‘Bye boys’ to the defendants

The PC Andrew Harper case was dogged by alleged attempts to ‘frustrate’ the investigation and fears over jury nobbling, it can now be reported.

Detectives quickly tracked down the car which dragged PC Harper to his death in Berkshire to the Four Houses Corner travellers’ site.

But the investigation was hampered by family and friends of the occupants, who were all said to have close ties to the site.

Thames Valley Police Detective Superintendent Stuart Blaik said: ‘A decision was taken very early on to arrest all the males on the site that night. While we were frustrated by family and friends, we have been able to work through that and establish exactly what happened and who was involved.’

Supporters of the teenagers – Henry Long, 19, Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, both 18 – had crowded into the public gallery of the Old Bailey as the case got under way in March. But no sooner had it started, Mr Justice Edis brought the trial to a halt over an alleged potential plot to intimidate jurors.

An unidentified person in the public gallery overlooking the courtroom was seen pointing at jurors.

Defence barrister Timothy Raggatt QC dismissed the incident as ‘a touch oversensitive’.

In the absence of the jury, he said: ‘In the circumstances, someone could be pointing for all sorts of reasons. Take, for example, there appear to be a lot of ladies in this court.’

But Mr Justice Edis ordered extra security measures to protect the jury. Without divulging details, he said police had received information ‘that an attempt is being considered by associates of the defendants to intimidate the jury’.

The jury was provided with a private room, and anyone entering the public gallery was asked to provide proof of their identity. A third measure was kept secret.

On the day the nation went into lockdown, the original jury was discharged.

When the case returned for retrial in June, social distancing in court was introduced to combat the risk of Covid-19 and security was further stepped up.

Jurors were referred to by number rather than their name to be sworn in. And uniformed police were out in force during a jury visit to rural Berkshire.

Officers lined the narrow country roads as the jury viewed the spot where PC Harper was killed. A police drone buzzed overhead as detectives jump-started the defendants’ battered old Seat Toledo as the jury moved on.

With the end of the retrial in sight, fears for its integrity surfaced on July 20.

An overly friendly juror was seen by a prison officer to mouth ‘Bye boys’ to the defendants in the dock.

On being alerted to the incident, Mr Justice Edis said: ‘She must have been compelled by some strong motive to have behaved as she did in this court under the observation of so many. It was both overt and covert at the time, which is remarkable behaviour.’

The female juror was discharged just a day before the remaining 11 men and women began deliberating on their verdicts.

‘They’re literally putting two fingers up to the criminal justice system.

‘There’s got to be a deterrent, these are violent individuals. I support the increase but the increase in sentencing is worthless if it doesn’t go hand in hand with a complete review and overhaul of the sentencing guidelines.

‘At the moment it’s almost the exception that people go to prison, that should be turned around. The exception should be that you don’t go to prison.’

His comments come as Andy Ledbury, a family friend who employed PC Harper at a roofing business when he was 18, also bemoaned the verdict.

He told BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme: ‘To say I’m shocked and disappointed would be a huge understatement.

‘For me it was never a question of whether it would be murder or manslaughter it was a question of how many of them would be prosecuted for murder.

‘The more evidence you hear, the more it’s clear they knew exactly what they were doing and they were just preoccupied with their escape at all costs.’

Despite the verdict, he made clear his view that: ‘This was murder and will not in any way take away the pain of what’s happened, it’s about justice and for those that committed the crime.

‘As it stands at the moment it’s not showing much in the way of support for our police force which need it now more than ever.

Meanwhile it can now be reported that the jury were given special protection by police because detectives believed associates of the defendants were planning to intimidate them.

PC Harper had married just four weeks before he was flayed alive by the surface of Admoor Lane and the obstacles at the side of it.

Parts of his body including his face were destroyed and the details of the opening of the trial were so terrible that his family took the unprecedented step of asking the media not to report them.

When the body was discovered by his colleagues after he had fallen away from the sling he was completely naked except for his socks.

A snaking trail of blood behind him marked the course of his body down the lane. His widow was joined in court by his parents Phil Harper and Debbie Adlam and his brother Sean.

Long admitted manslaughter but was acquitted of murder. Bowers and Cole were convicted of manslaughter after the jury deliberated for 12 hours and 22 minutes to decide.

Jurors who were visibly shocked by the details of the case had been offered counselling before the trial began.

All the police officers involved in the discovery of his body were also advised to seek help to deal with the trauma of the case.

When he was arrested at the Four Houses Corner travellers site in Ufton Nervet, Berkshire, Long claimed he had been watching a Fast and Furious DVD at the time of the killing.

He complained police were unfairly targeting travellers and said: ‘I don’t give a f*** about any of this,’ when he was charged.

Long, Bowers and Cole, spent most of their time chasing rabbits and hares with their lurcher dogs and scratched a living by burglary and theft.

They had spotted the Honda TRX500 quad bike at the home of Peter Wallis, near Cock Lane, in the village of Bradfield Southend, earlier on August 15 and returned at around 11pm to steal it.

All of them were wearing balaclavas and gloves and they had taped over the car’s number plate and disabled the rear lights.

The killers were armed with an axe, crowbars and a length of pipe to use against anyone who tried to stop them.

Mr Wallis called the police saw them taking the bike and hitching the handlebars to the back of the car with the sling.

Long drove off with Bowers in the passenger seat and Cole riding the bike.

Albert Bowers (left) and Jessie Cole (centre) leaving Reading Magistrates’ Court on September 19, 2019

Albert Bowers arriving at Reading Magistrates’ Court on September 19, 2019 for an appearance over PC Harper’s death

The Seat Toledo with tow rope and the police car in a similar position at the site of the meeting of the vehicles during the Old Bailey jury site visit to the scene in Sulhamstead on July 1

PC Harper was in an unmarked BMW with PC Andrew Shaw and was due to finish his shift at 7pm.

The officers were on duty that night in the Reading area and were heading back to their base station at Abingdon when they heard of the incident on the radio and responded to the call.

It was a decision that was to cost PC Harper his life.

When they drove down Admoor Lane they came nose to nose with the Seat going the other way.

The travellers quickly realised it was a police car and Cole unhitched the bike and tried to get to the Seat as it rounded the police car to drive away.

PC Harper jumped out to try and stop Cole getting into the car but he managed to dive in through the passenger side window.

As the car sped away dragging the sling, PC Harper’s feet became entangled. Mercifully, he was likely to have been rendered unconscious almost immediately.

PC Shaw had no idea what had happened to his colleague and expected to find him further up the road. But as he reversed up the lane he found PC Harper’s shredded and bloodied stab vest lying in the road.

The court was told Long must have known he was dragging the officer and with the music blaring and his friends screaming at him, he tried to free PC Harper by zig zagging along the lane.

By the time the officer fell away from the car at the end of Ufton Lane his body was a ‘bloodied mess’.

A police officer who saw the incident thought PC Harper’s body was a deer carcass.

The stolen quad bike is pictured during the Old Bailey jury site visit to the scene in Sulhamstead on July 1, 2020

This is the moment Henry Long, one of the teenagers who killed PC Andrew Harper asks a police officer arresting him over the death: ‘Does it look like I’ve done a murder?’

The Seat sped away to the travellers site causing other road users to drive into the verge to avoid a collision.

It was tracked by a police helicopter and the travellers were arrested at the site.

Long, Bowers and Cole all admitted conspiracy to steal a quad bike and Long admitted manslaughter.

They insisted they had no idea that PC Harper was trapped behind the car but a macabre re-enactment of the incident with a mannequin showed they must have known the officer was being dragged to his death.

During the trial Long, Bowers and Cole smirked and laughed as details of PC Harper’s horrific death were read to the jury.

It can now be reported that Long had previously threatened to ‘ram’ a police officer as he chatted with a police community support officer (PCSO).

In the conversation in July 2018, ruled inadmissible during the trial, Long said: ‘You can’t touch me now ‘cos I’ve passed my driving test and if police try to stop me I will ram them.’

Long and Bowers, both of Mortimer, Reading, and Cole, of Bramley, Hampshire, each denied murder and were acquitted.

They will be sentenced next Friday.

Thomas King, 21, of Bramley, earlier admitted conspiring to steal the quad bike.

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