The interesting thing about Raoul Moat was not that he was unusual - it was that he wasn't. A man filled with self-loathing who blamed his former partner for leaving him when he turned into a pathetic, self-pitying and ultimately threatening boyfriend, and who failed to see beyond his own emotional needs to the needs of his children: he was a cliché. How very fitting that the abusive macho-turned-baby figure of Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne should turn up at a crucial moment in Moat's childish drama, offering a dressing gown, chicken and a beer.
Moat had a look similar to that of a man whose trial I watched last year. Edward Richardson had split up with his wife, Sarah. He, too, was angry; he, too, was jealous. His text messages veered from pathetic to threatening; from "I don't want to break my heart over you" to "You're a slag. I'm going to ruin your life". Aged about 40, he had the same worked-out, stupid-faced, shorn-headed look that Moat had. Richardson was also a father, and a drug user (his drug was cocaine; Moat's, by all accounts, was steroids).
He went looking for Sarah with a knife and stabbed her to death. She was 26. I saw the pictures of her slumped in her nightie next to the bed at her mum's; it looked as if she had tried to protect herself with a duvet. Or maybe she just managed to stagger to the bed after the 13th stab. Richardson is now in jail.
Dad's Army
You don't have to look far through the online message boards to find men sympathising with Moat: "I think raoul moat is a huge victim in all of this, i think his ex really messed his head up & knew wot she was doing & wot he was like." There is a lot of bile like that directed at Moat's former girlfriend: "Moat is a true British hero, he done what he thought was right by getting revenge on his cheating ex-girlfriend." Or how about this? "Maybe if she kept her legs closed none of this would of happened. Maybe Moaty had good reason to be angry. Hmmm?"
“Moaty". "Gazza". I expect Richardson's friends had a pet name for him, too. These men are babies tipping their food off their plates because Mummy isn't giving them the red plastic spoon. Sadly, Raoul Moat was not at all extraordinary. The only extraordinary thing about Raoul Moat was that we treated him as something extraordinary.
And that was partly down to the absurd antics of the police. Hundreds of officers from 15 different forces were involved in the hunt for Moat. A tenth of all armed police in the UK joined in. There were sniffer dogs, armoured cars, a helicopter and even RAF Tornados (or did someone make that up?). The military was consulted, as was the now-obligatory small army of psychologists. The police turned Moat into a media spectacle, dripping out pictures and pieces of information to suit their own PR agenda. Where he made tapes, they gave press conferences. They did more than he to turn him into a Rambo figure.
Yet the whole police operation around Rothbury seemed more Dad's Army than RoboCop. Can it really be true that there was a squad crawling towards Moat when he shot himself, using a system called Crop, or "covert rural observation post" training? Did the officers camouflage themselves as bushes, do you think? This was pure farce, even before Gazza turned up with his bit of chicken.
“It was very brave," said a "police source" about the Crop men, because they kept their guns holstered so that they could use their hands for crawling. "Police sources" are good at deflecting criticism by reminding the media of the bravery of their boys, or stunning reporters with information about their hi-tech kit. The truth is that the police are not generally brave. At awards ceremonies, officers are given honours for doing things like "running down street in pursuit of suspect". I once went out with an armed police response unit; they loved showing off their guns and the speed at which they could drive but, in this supercar laden with weaponry, we got nowhere near the kid with an air rifle they had been sent to deal with. It was considered too dangerous. Those "brave" Crop men crawling towards Moat without guns drawn were covered by the guns of dozens of other officers.
Brave bobby
The aggressive antics of the police were more directly alarming to members of the public than Moat was. They shoved guns in people's faces, yelled at them, frightened children, left bullets in kids' bedrooms and crashed into each other, all the while bristling with macho pique at their failure to catch the killer. This looked more like a meeting of minds than a clash of forces.
Remember that the police were not interested in protecting Moat's former girlfriend. It was only when the threat was turned on the police that half the nation's coppers swung into action and the armed response was scrambled. This is a familiar pattern: as the criminologist Professor Sandra Walklate has noted, "Put simply, if you want to guarantee arrest where violence is an issue, best hit the police officer."
The bravest officer I have met was a bobby on the beat in a drug-ridden area of Bristol. He patrolled quietly, alone and unarmed, day in and day out, amid the dregs of society. He was brave. He'd won no awards. If Moat had been hiding in that community, this PC would have known it in a flash. These macho cops with guns didn't listen to information from Moat's previous girlfriends or from friends. They responded to the media and listened to the military. In their vanity and vainglory, their histrionic machismo and their battered pride, the armed police chasing Raoul Moat were even closer to him than they thought.
