Best euphemism for killing someone of the week

Part of the project to make our police indistinguishable from our army, junta style, involves the gradual adoption of euphemistic phrases contrived to take the sting out of unfortunate news. You know the routine…

• Dead innocent people become Collateral Damage
• Killing your own troops becomes Friendly Fire or, even better, Blue on Blue
• Mercenaries become Civilian Contractors
• The Ministry of War becomes Ministry of Defence

and so on.

Anyway, it can’t have escaped anyone’s attention that our police are becoming increasingly euphemistic in their official statements. I blogged a few days ago about how tickled I was to discover that the innocent man shot at Stockwell Station last year was not the victim of a Shoot to Kill policy but was in fact subject to a ‘Shoot to deprive of function’ policy

… deprived of function by being shot in the face, eight or nine times

So, thanks to my mate Ian for coming up with this week’s best official euphemism for killing people that cropped up in the report of the investigation into the death of a man who died in police custody in 1998 …

Mr Hardwick said that although there were "serious failings" by the four police officers, they did not assault Mr Alder and that it could not be said "with certainty" they had caused his death.

But their "neglect" undoubtedly did deny him the chance of life, he said.

Nice one