Body parts: talk about a cover-up.

Eh? Surely I misheard: the PSNI have been storing ‘body parts’ since 1960? When questioned they  refer to these bits as ‘human tissue’ but the fact remains that they’ve been storing parts of people – arms, legs, even skulls. Of course there was no PSNI in 1960, so it was the RUC that did most of the storing.

Now we’re told that these bits were to help with investigations and that the PSNI are really sorry and are busy informing the relatives of those whose parts they hold. I’m baffled. Why do you need to hold onto an arm or a skull to help you with an investigation? And an investigation of what sort of crime? And how come none of this was mentioned before now?

Let’s be honest: the police put the fear of God into most of us. If you see one of them  when you’re driving along, your heart does a skip and you stab at the brake pedal. If one calls to the door, you answer with a sense of foreboding: what have I done, what’s gone wrong, omgwtf?  What we need to do is remind ourselves – and maybe more importantly, remind the PSNI – that they are our servants. We pay them. So if you’ve got a servant who, for whatever reason, has been storing body parts, shouldn’t you have been told? Even if the part doesn’t belong to a relative of yours?

I keep checking the date but no. It’s not April 1.