The Curious Tale of Spray-Tanned Danny

In 2016- 17 it was only too clear that the British media and police force were now openly scapegoating anyone with brown skin. For the Police who, for several decades of being correctly branded ‘Institutionally Racist’ by the Commission for Racial Equality,  - a toxic mix of post-Brexit nationalistic bravado and its subsequent revelation of a complete lack of leadership, the constant rolling and breaking news of colleagues on the European continent flagrantly demonising millions of brown-skinned refugees whose only crime was to seek security from war-torn Syria and the mess-room spectacle of actual terrorists being gunned down and their so-called accomplices hunted on National television in equally spectacular raids, for the British press and law-enforcement officers and elite squads it was now open hunting season and Scotland Yard now gave themselves licence to arrest those who looked ‘other’ in full view of a public made too media- frightened and -paranoid to step up and enquire any deeper than surface skin colour.

It was unfortunate then, that in September of 2016 a man, who the charge sheet insisted on stating ‘Middle Eastern’ under Ethnic Appearance, should be brutally accosted in central London for no other crime than going two shades darker at his local Tanning Parlour in Hornchurch, in Essex. (God Forbid the same fate should befall Spray-Tanned Donald before or after inauguration!) Pumped up on xenophobia PC Luke Kensley (P240566) and PC Ian Gray's (3414CW) aim was a public display of humiliation in a precise imitation of the brutality meted out on foreigners by counterparts in that besieged continent across the English Channel. However, they had overlooked, in their zeal to set the native apart and above the rest, that their victim was indeed a white native himself. Spray-Tanned Danny, as he was fondly known in Essex was publicly beaten up, in full view of a general public who,  media-trained to switch off...well, switched off.

Spray-Tanned Danny had no idea that going ‘up town’ to central London for a few Coca Colas and a bit of shopping in Oxford Street that he would be in the racial firing-line in the same way Jean Charles Menenez, a young Brazilian man who had been fatally murdered when the Metropolitan Police, once again, pumped up on Video Games, and media over-kill, took anything a shade darker than ghost white as a national threat and shot him, again in front of a media-bewildered and dazed audience. In the lamp light of a London evening the young man with black hair and dark skin down on the ground in brutally tightened handcuffs with two white cops stamping on him, had, to the bystander, clearly done something to deserve this treatment and this immediate reality on display was cravenly converted into a single, palatable idea; 'terrorist'.

The error was never realised, the recording of ‘Middle-Eastern’ on the charge sheet was the sole red badge the arresting and charging offers pinned their courage on. However, there was the awkward matter of the Anglo-Saxon name of the charged man which somewhat took the gloss off the prize; how could they doctor the name Daniel Braithwaite into Mohamed Fawaz or something more Arabic sounding. Bruised and limping Spray-Tanned Danny was charged retrospectively with ‘Resisting Arrest’. ‘Drunk and Disorderly’, along with a malicious additional trumped-up charge added at Belgravia Police Station by a PC David Robinson (P230228) of 'Assault on a Police Officer’, and placed on police bail. After a night of verbal and more physical abuse he was discharged the following morning pending a court hearing set at a date that allowed the physical evidence of actual police brutality to...well, no longer be in evidence. The Charging officer PC Chege (P236122) reminded Daniel Braithwaite that should he fail to appear, the hearing would continue without him.

Daniel Braithwaite died two weeks later as an indirect result of his injuries; he had misjudged the distance of an on-coming car and the speed with which he could physically cross a Hornchurch High street and a now completely white Daniel Braithwaite, his spray-tan having disappeared in a vortex of shower gel and silent tears, was killed on impact. Unfortunately, Daniel Braithwaite had had no identification on him at the time of his unfortunate fatal accident, having just popped out to get a few groceries and exercise his leg; his body would lay in the local morgue unidentified well beyond the date of his trial.

The CCTV footage released to the media of a brown man arrested on the Strand in central London and now, after his failure to appear at court, clearly on the run, newsreaders on national media outlets of every stripe, and more perniciously the BBC, warned the general public to ‘approach with caution'; a posthumous Spray-Tanned Danny was now more dangerous dead than alive. It was truly remarkable, though no one remarked on it; in the ensuing man-hunt the name of the man being hunted was never mentioned; in one surge of somnambulant and xenophobic complicity, the UK, as one, sunk into their sofas and accepted what they were being shown.

In January 2017 Spray-Tanned Danny’s trial went ahead, in absentia. The media now reported the charge as  ‘Acts of terrorism’ and the court and police did not disavow them of that belief; the actual charges fell short of media-friendly and to the arresting officers would not have the same shine. Indeed, to benefit from the attention afforded the case by the now international media charivari, and by extension the reflected glory on the presiding judge's careers, along with Contempt of Court, the actual charges were now transmuted to ‘Acts of Terrorism.’

In the nation-wide search for Spray-Tanned Danny raids on the homes of brown-skinned ‘accomplices' became the staple of day-time and evening viewing; the nation would cosy itself up to itself in the shared glow that skin-colouring exempted them from disproportionate numbers of flat-jacketed and armed squads dragging disproportionate numbers of Muslim men out of their homes into the full glare of the cameras. The tabloids had a field day and no race other than those implicitly white native was left un-insulted. There was also a reported spike in calls to the Anti-Terrorist Help-Line as thousands of Spray-Tanned Dannys were reported across the land 'living just next door', or 'just upstairs'. In a surreal but not totally unexpected twist of national Schadenfreude the hairdressing salon of Fadi Fawaz, the last true love of the recently departed singer George Michael, was raided. The police cited 'possession of ammonia' as a suitable and possible fit for the fugitive and now very probably, given his Middle-Eastern appearance, the murderer of the beloved pop singer, and arrested; the swarthy grieving man was paraded before a nation sat, proverbially, knitting at the guillotine.

On a cold marble slab in an Essex morgue, the unclaimed Essex lad Danny Brathewaite, ghost-white in his death-state, was now being claimed by ISIL as one of their very own. His escape from Western authorities had elevated him to hero status, his eventual capture and death to martyrdom. 

Daniel Braithewaite’s formal identification three months later would not link him with the mythical and dangerous phantom still at large, the interest in the trial and imprisonment under the Terrorism Act of some thirty-five accomplices had in the blink of an eye, moved onto to other newsworthy items. For months after the arrest PC Luke Kensley (P240566), PC Ian Gray (3414 CW) and PC David Robinson (P230228) could not account for the brown greasy stains on their white work-issue shirts which stubbornly refused to wash out even in the heat of ...well, a white-wash.

RIP Daniel Braithewaite, (Spray-Tanned Danny). Please copy/paste into comment boxes and/or text whole into FB post & share:
The Curious Tale of Spray-Tanned Danny 
 http://spray-tanneddanny.blogspot.co.uk/

Thank you.