By a Northern Correspondent.
Oluwale was drowned in the River Aire in 196 In 1970 a police cadet had the nerve to talk about the possibility that Bilerker and Kitching put him there. In 1971 Ellerker and Kitching were put on trial for manslaughter. The judge told the jury to dismiss that charge. But the pub- behaviour towards Oluwale. And even then, it licity had been such that the assault charges had to be allowed to stand; the jury convicted and the judge gave moderate prison sentences.
The case seems to be part of a pattern. When publicity or rumour become so rife that they can no longer be safely ignored, the police officers concerned are put on trial. But the trial Is not allowed to run its course. In Nottingham last year, when police were charged with drug judge stopped the trial when only about half the prosecution witnesses had been heard; the police got off the lot. That case came to court because of very thorough muck-racking work by the News of the World, which gave the Jurid facts full treatment. In Leeds the jury was permitted to give an opinion on some of the less serious charges; but on the manslaughter charge the judge simply instructed the jury that there was not enough evidence, apparently not confident of the jury's ability to reach that decision on its own. It is also possible to speculate whether the prosecution's evidence would not in fact have been more impressive if other than officers of the law had been involved. As in Nottingham, the police were forced into prosecuting by events outside the control of the hierarch: the proliferation of rumour. Both in Nottingham and in Leeds, the victims of the police were black.
Even so, it is doubtful whether rumour would have even begun if it had not been for a coindidence. The fact that Ellerker was on trial for covering up for a fellow officer clearly, and on police evidence, gave some policemen the courage which they had previously lacked to start talking about Ellerker's and Kitching's was a mere police cadet who was brave enough to take the drastic step of actually reporting the matter to the authorities. The evidence given by the police was full of statements like that they hadn't talked about it before because they were scared for their careers, or simply because they claimed they wouldn't have believed. And it now appears that there was some kind of a "mafia" operating in the Leeds police force which was capable of terro-