As concerns grow about 26-year-old Luis Piovesana who’s been missing from Bristol since the early hours of Friday morning, a further appeal for help from the public by Avon and Somerset Police on social media gets hijacked in a petty points-scoring argument about what the police have, or supposedly haven’t, done in a separate missing persons investigation, that of missing student Jack O’Sullivan, that’s been going on for over a year now. Sometimes, I despair at the level of public discourse in our country.
Luis has been missing since about 3.00 am last Friday night and the police are very worried about him. They have released CCTV footage of his last sightings. I can’t imagine how his family and friends are feeling. But on the social media pages people decided to have a pop at the efforts of the same police force in failing to investigate Jack O’Sullivan’s disappearance properly.
Now there has been criticism of the police by Jack’s family. They have made an official complaint about the police, the force has referred itself to the independent Office for Police Conduct for them to establish what, if anything, has gone wrong. What we have is not evidence; it is hearsay. Unfortunately, the case of Mr Piovesana has provoked critics of the police to ask things like, “Why didn’t the police act as quickly when Jack went missing?” Do we know, for sure, that they didn’t? I don’t know and neither do you.
It may be that the police messed-up but frankly that’s a separate situation. They are both missing persons investigations which have nothing to do with each other. It’s a free country, people are at liberty to speculate, even on things they know little or nothing about. Jack O’Sullivan’s disappearance is a massive story in Bristol. Luis Piovesana’s disappearance is a relatively new story. The last thing we need now is division. Can we not concentrate all our efforts on finding both men?
All of this is easy for me to say. It’s not my son who is missing. I haven’t gone through a year of absolute hell. I get all that. And if I was in his mum’s position I doubt whether I’d have had any of her strength or dignity to help see me through. I don’t know all the facts so speculation about pretty well everything about this case is pointless.
I hope against hope that both these sad stories are resolved by both men being found safe and well. To concentrate on anything else, not least having a pop at the police while major investigations are ongoing, is just noise.
