The cover-up briefly aligned police and white working-class interests against justice

Evidence

But in all the controversy surrounding the failure to bring Stephen’s killers to justice, and the mixture of inaction, incompetence, silence, and cover-up that for once brought the police and the white working-class community of South London into the same side of the dock, there was one piece of evidence which both broke that complicity and put into question the distinctions upon which the report’s recommendations were made. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1234