Archive for the ‘Law and Order’ Category.

The Welsh are a race now?

A man was fined for racism after he branded Welsh people “sheep shaggers”

They’ll be fining us for calling the French ‘frogs’ and the Germans ‘krauts’ next…

Isn’t it a bit late?

I am no fan of Sally Bercow, considering her to be someone who has done little in life but engage in shameless self-promotion, but her latest ‘gaffe’ has left me more bemused with the law than with her.

Bercow, already on a list of those who wrongly named or linked former senior Tory Lord McAlpine to child abuse claims, sent a message on Monday night to her 60,000 followers on Twitter asking what happened to the teacher, Jeremy Forrest, 30, and reportedly naming the girl.

[…]

In the initial stages of dealing with his case, the court made a section 39 order under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, banning identification of the girl.

My question, for any lawyers who might be reading, is, given that her name was plastered all over the media for the 10 days or so after she eloped with Forrest, why bother with secrecy now? It’s not as if we don’t know who she is…

And another nail…

Barry Thew

Meet Barry Thew. Or not – unless you happen to have shared a cell with him last night. Barry it seems doesn’t like cops – not a surprise really for someone who a string of convictions for offences going back to his pre-teen years. Whilst Barry is hardly alone in this feeling though, he was the only one wandering around a town centre not far from Manchester wearing a white t-shirt with the hand-written slogan ‘One less pig. Perfect justice‘ on the front mere hours after two police officers had been murdered.

I think we can all agree that that was not Barry’s finest hour.

For this rather tasteless piece of fashion he was charged under the s4A of the Public Order Act (1986). He pled guilty and has now been gaoled for 4 months for this ‘crime’.

At the risk of repeating myself so quickly, I have to ask why. That the slogan is deeply unpleasant and was no doubt considered upsetting and offensive by the officers of Manchester police is a given but none of that should land you in court, let alone gaol.

If Barry – or anyone else – wants to walk around with that on their t-shirt then so be it. It lets the rest of us know who to avoid.

Not everyone agrees of course, as evidenced by this quote from Inspector Bryn Williams of the Radcliffe Neighbourhood Policing Team:

To mock or joke about the tragic events of that morning is morally reprehensible and Thew has rightly been convicted and sentenced for his actions.

Newsflash Bryn… people have made tasteless jokes about things since time immemorial – and will continue to do so. Some of the worst offenders when it comes to mortuary humour are those in the armed forces and the emergency services. It is a coping mechanism. Are you going to report yourself and your fellow officers next time a ‘morally reprehensible’ joke goes around the nick?

Being morally reprehensible is not a crime and locking Barry Thew up for a distasteful remark is not going to bring back those murdered officers.

Yet another nail in the coffin

When the CPS declined to prosecute Daniel Thomas for comments made about the diver Tom Daley last month, the Director of Public Prosecutions issued a statement saying he planned to review guidelines for prosecuting comments made on social media:

“Against that background, the CPS has the task of balancing the fundamental right of free speech and the need to prosecute serious wrongdoing on a case by case basis. That often involves very difficult judgment calls and, in the largely unchartered territory of social media, the CPS is proceeding on a case by case basis. In some cases it is clear that a criminal prosecution is the appropriate response to conduct which is complained about, for example where there is a sustained campaign of harassment of an individual, where court orders are flouted or where grossly offensive or threatening remarks are made and maintained. But in many other cases a criminal prosecution will not be the appropriate response. If the fundamental right to free speech is to be respected, the threshold for criminal prosecution has to be a high one and a prosecution has to be required in the public interest.

“To ensure that CPS decision-making in these difficult cases is clear and consistent, I intend to issue guidelines on social media cases for prosecutors. These will assist them in deciding whether criminal charges should be brought in the cases that arise for their consideration. In the first instance, the CPS will draft interim guidelines. There will then be a wide public consultation before final guidelines are published. As part of that process, I intend to hold a series of roundtable meetings with campaigners, media lawyers, academics, social media experts and law enforcement bodies to ensure that the guidelines are as fully informed as possible.

As we all know the CPS suffered two defeats in quick succession over the summer when Paul Chambers and John Kerlen (better know to many as @Sir_Olly_C) had their convictions under s127 of the Communications Act (2003) quashed and the (hopeful) thought was that after Thomas they would call a halt to prosecutions until they had finished their review.

It is ironic then that on the day that the first discussion took place, Matthew Woods was prosecuted for offensive comments about the missing girl, April Jones.

Having read some of the comments he made, I wouldn’t recommend he takes up a career in comedy but they are certainly no more distasteful or offensive than any I heard (and no doubt repeated) after Hillsborough back when I was a pre-teen.

Woods pled guilty to this ‘crime’ – on whose advice I know not as I would have thought that a competent brief would have dug the Chambers and Kerlen verdicts out – and has been sentenced to a total of 12 weeks in a young offenders institution. The presiding magistrate had this to say on passing sentence:

“The reason for the sentence is the seriousness of the offence, the public outrage that has been caused and we felt there was no other sentence this court could have passed which conveys to you the abhorrence that many in society feel this crime should receive.”

Sorry Mr. Hudson but the public being outraged is not a reason to hand a young man, however stupid he is, a criminal record and to waste taxpayers money by sending him to a secure institution for what will be no longer than 6 weeks just for typing words into a box on a social media platform.

I am regularly outraged by a lot stupid things that go on in the world but as abhorrent as I find them, I’m not going to call for the people involved to gaoled simply to fulfil my need to have them punished for their idiotic behaviour.

For the purposes of comparison it is worth noting, as I saw elsewhere, that 12 weeks is what Lord Ahmed got for dangerous driving, and I certainly can’t see how anyone could say that Woods’ actions were in any way dangerous to anyone’s life but his own.

No, the sickest joke of this entire affair is not the behaviour of Woods but that of the justice system. From the decision by the Police to arrest him ‘for his own safety’, to that of the CPS for prosecuting him and finally Mr. Hudson (who gives the impression of accepting the rule of the mob), each step has been an exercise in craven stupidity.

I hope that Matthew Woods appeals this appalling decision and wins.

Young love

As we know from that bit of the media which isn’t still raking over the Andrew Mitchell non-story and the waste of time which was the Liberal Democrat party conference, a 15-year-old girl has eloped to France with her maths teacher.

Cue much wailing as well as pleas for her to come home and him to give himself up.

As she is under 16 the word ‘paedophile’ as well as various slang terms have been used online, if not by the media. It is, of course, the wrong word to use as she is, in terms of sexual development anyway, mature. If the teacher really does prefer partners in this stage of life then the term is ‘ephebophile’.

A teenage girl being attracted to an older male is not a story. As a general rule they tend to prefer older boys and men simply because the boys of their own age are usually behind them on the maturity curve.

Given then that developing teenage girls in the UK (and the developed world) tend to spend a significant part of their lives in schools and that schools will likely have at any one time several young-ish male teachers, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that sometimes the object of a girl’s affections will be her teacher.

Most of the time it will remain just a crush, one that the teacher may well be unaware of, and will go nowhere. There are times though when it will go further and I’d be surprised if there is a secondary or upper school in the land in which a relationship between a pupil and a teacher hasn’t taken place at some point.

I can think of one definite example from my days in the sixth-form* attached to my secondary school and there were persistent rumours about one of our humanities teachers*** involving a number of female pupils. In neither case, to the best of my knowledge, was any action taken against the teachers concerned.

Some will rail about the age of consent and how, because the law has imposed a legal age of 16, sexual congress with anyone under this age is an issue whilst waiting until the day of their 16th birthday isn’t. What they forget is that they themselves were young once and that the idea of the law telling you on which day you were able to make the beast of two backs with your partner may well have been as meaningless to you as the laws about when you could drink and/or smoke. Or perhaps, depending on personal preference, even the laws surrounding narcotics today.

Indeed the Telegraph has reported that the French police aren’t actively looking for her because the age of consent on the other side of the Channel is 15 and thus there is no crime taking place.

(Across Europe the age of consent is generally between 14 and 17 years of age, with the outliers being Spain at 13 and Turkey at 18.)

The sin in such circumstances is not that girls involved are 14 or 15 but that the teachers, who are In loco parentis, breached the trust placed in them by the families of the pupils and their employer.

By involving himself so comprehensively with Megan Stammers, Jeremy Forrest has destroyed whatever life he might otherwise have hoped to build in the UK. Assuming he does come back to these shores he can look forward to a criminal record, an entry on the sex offenders register, potentially some gaol time and the inability to ever work or act as a volunteer in any position which requires a CRB check to be performed. And, I would suspect, speedy divorce from his jilted wife.

Megan, who is unlikely to be an entirely innocent party, will likely get away scot-free.

* We were both going through 6th form together and he was one of our maths teachers. Barely out of university himself, he was no more than 8 years older than us and the relationship between the two of them ran for a couple of years or so. The first that the rest of the students knew about it was when we were in pub celebrating the end of our lower-sixth** and they spent a reasonable part of the night tonsil tickling. We certainly didn’t tell anyone about it and they kept it discrete (he didn’t show up on the 18th birthday party circuit for example). She showed up at my 18th wearing an engagement ring whilst only 17 herself at the time (she was the only person in the year younger than me IIRC) and my mum pestered me for sometime to say who it was. I eventually told her after my younger brother left the school 3 years later.

** Obviously none of us were 18 but we were all drinking and no-one was asked for ID.

*** The closest I got to the truth was over a beer with a mutual friend some years later when I found out tha he’d got married. Jokingly asked if it was to one of his former pupils, my friend smiled and said no.

For a lesson in how not to conduct an investigation…

With the release of documents from the professional standards unit of West Midlands police (WMP) it appears that detectives in the force haven’t learnt anything from the bad old days of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.

The story starts with the arrest on suspicion of being involved in the ‘commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism’ on 14th May 2008 of Rizwaan Sabir, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham and his friend Hicham Yezza, a staff member at the university. They were arrested after a copy of the ‘al-Qaida Training Manual’ was seen on the latter’s computer by a colleague. It was there becase he was helping Sabir draft his PhD proposal on the ‘evolution of global militant Islam’.

The document had been downloaded by Sabir from the US Deprtment of Justice website and is, so the Guardian reports, also available from major bookstores as well as the university library. Hardly a secret document then so it seems that this was a case of people putting two and two together and getting five.

As part of the obligatory investigation WMP interviewed Dr. Rod Thornton, then a lecturer in the department of Politics and International Relations at the university.

Now, however, the results of the internal West Midlands police professional standards investigation into the affair following complaints by Thornton over the police’s handing of the case is complete. It found that officers effectively invented what Thornton, the university’s sole terrorism expert, told them about the al-Qaida training manual in a police interview.

During the interview Thornton said that he merely told police that Sabir was studying al-Qaida, but was never asked to discuss the manual. Thornton says that officers invented claims that he had concerns over the manual which he says are an apparent attempt to justify the arrest and police anti-terror operation, codenamed Minerva.

The findings of the force’s standard’s inquiry upheld Thornton’s claim that officers “made up what he said about the al-Qaida manual.”

It also states that the actual minutes of the Gold Group meeting of the detectives assigned to the case “incorrectly recorded” their conversation with Thornton.

Internal notes from the Gold Group meeting, dated May 17 2008, actually reveal police quoting Thornton as believing the manual was a “tactical document” and could not be considered relevant to Sabir’s academic research into terrorism.

Thornton has now referred the police treatment of him to the IPCC. The standards board, however, says that no officers will be investigated for misconduct.

Now call me odd but if officers have been found to have been making stuff up, is that not an open and shut case of misconduct. Or is it that the individuals involved have now left the force so there is is no point in disciplining them?

WMP released the pair after a week without charge but left incorrect information on Sabir’s file which asserted that he had been convicted of a terrorist offence.

The whole business cost WMP £20,000 in compensation and a personal apology from the Chief Constable who ‘conceded that “there was “no evidence to justify any criminal charge” against Mr Sabir” and agreed to “delete the inaccurate information from the intelligence files; and acknowledged that her officers? actions were unlawful and “apologise[d] for any embarrassment, frustration and distress” in respect of a stop and search on 4 February 2010 that was based solely on the fact of his wrongful arrest’.

Whilst WMP were obliged to investigate, to me this saga hightlights the following:

  1. the idea of possession is in some way equates to intent is, as I’ve said before, stupid
  2. by encouraging people reporting on others we find ourselves living in a country where innocent motives are discounted in favour of criminal ones and we are guilty until proven innocent
  3. there is apparently such a need to find ‘terrorists’ in order to justify the state-driven paranoia that some police officers would rather lie instead of admitting that a mistake has been made

Is it any wonder I despair?

A new Battle of Bannockburn

Saturday last was the 698th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn and if it hadn’t been for my spotting of a piece of bureaucratic stupidity the day would have passed by completely unnoticed by this particular Sassenach.

For the last 80 years, nationalistic Scots have been commemorating the anniversary with various activities including a procession through the town to the site of the battlefield. Those taking part in the march are generally dressed in costume (either medieval or Jacobite) and carry a mixture of swords, axes, daggers and shields.

This year however Stirling council decreed that no weapons could be carried because of some apparent minor trouble last year:

However, following reports of an “incident” at last year’s march, where a car on the route was allegedly hit with a shield and a Union Flag was burned, Stirling Council ordered those taking part to lay down their arms, saying no weapons would be allowed to be carried during the march, even if they were safely sheathed in a scabbard.

A burnt flag and a damaged car? Obviously the sensible thing would have been to prosecute the individual(s) who participated in the property damage, ignore the flag burning and forget the whole business. However these are bureaucrats we’re talking about so sensible doesn’t come into it and instead they reached for rule one of the public sector law and order playbook: collective punishment.

Unsurprisingly this didn’t go down very well with those organising the march, especially as

Scots law allows Shetlanders to dress up as Vikings each year and march through the town armed with battleaxes during the Up Helly Aa festival, while Scots are allowed to carry the sgian dubh knife.

Ooops!

As expected the council tried to justify their decision with some weasel words:

A Stirling Council spokeswoman said: “Stirling Council respect the rights of organisations and individuals to celebrate their history and cultural traditions.

“But we also need to balance this with the rights of the general public to go about their daily lives safely and with minimal inconvenience.”

Oh look, some tripe about ‘respecting rights’ followed by a recourse to that old favourite: public safety. All copied and pasted right out of the government PR handbook for dealing with uppity members of the public.

The public however weren’t going to let this stand and some behind the scenes lobbying of both Stirling Council and the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) later a compromise was reached:

The National Trust for Scotland, who manage the battlefield, confirmed a compromise to allow weapons to be carried during the ceremony inside the heritage site – but not during the march.

An NTS spokeswoman said: “People bringing swords and other weapons will be allowed to keep them in their cars and take them out when they arrive at the battlefield.

“After the ceremony, they will have to put them away again if they want to go back into Stirling.”

In the end there were two marches:

for the purposes of clarity.. this year there will be TWO marches.
The first one.. which the SRSM [Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, Ed] have organised will be a NON weapons bearing event.. and will be assembling from the 1314 inn at 13:30 hrs

The second one, fopr those bearing weapons, sorted out by Garaidh Stiùbhart of the society of William Wallace will be assembling in the Bannockburn Heritage Centre carp park at 13:30 hrs.

Both marches will rendezvous at the rotunda for the commemoration!!!

I thing we can call that a partial win for the public but now that the council has tried this once, it is a fight which I expect will be repeated annually for a while yet.

Murphy’s law

Richard Murphy, the former tax account and practising tax avoider whose Damascene conversion to the idea of ‘tax justice’ means that he now spends his time pontificating that tax avoidance is immoral and should be illegal, has apparently decided that, against all logic, the time has come to open a new front in his never ending campaign:

That’s right, because something isn’t codified in law it can’t – in Murphyworld – be legal.

Sorry Ritchie but in this country we follow something called ‘Common Law’. You may have heard of it. The general principle is everything is legal unless it has specifically been legislated against.

If you want a legal code in which anything which hasn’t been declared legal is automatically deemed to be illegal then can I suggest you move to mainland Europe and live under the Napoleonic Code?

Another nail in the coffin

Jacqueline Woodhouse is, at least when drunk, a very unpleasant woman. It is entirely possible that she isn’t nice company when she is sober either.

Why do I say this? Because on the evening of January 23rd this year she launched into a foul mouthed and racist rant at her fellow passengers whilst on the tube home. This diatribe was filmed and posted on to YouTube by Galbant Juttla – one of those fellow passengers.

As a result of this she was turned herself into the police and was charged with one count causing racially aggravated “harassment, alarm or distress” by using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”. Today, having pled guilty to the charge, she was sentenced to 21 weeks in gaol as well as being banned for a five year period from – whilst drunk – tube or DLR stations, or from using the tube or DLR.

She has also lost her job and is, I would hazard, destined to spend the rest of her ‘working’ years unemployed.

As with Liam Stacey and Luke O’Donoughoe, I in no way condone what she said at all but once again I have to wonder why she was prosecuted.

What she said was abhorrent but prosecuting people for using words that are displeasing to others is to constrain their freedom of speech – a ‘thought crime’ if you will. That such backward views should be challenged when encountered is to to be encouraged but it should be for each individual to do so without feeling the need to resort to using the power of the State to squash an insignificant gnat.

Our forefathers fought against tyranny – let us not undo their hard work by introducing our own.

Aiming in the wrong direction

The train aside, my main – and preferred – method of transport is the bicycle. Yes, I realise that this makes me a member of one of Julia’s least favourite groups but with three exceptions* I stick the to Highway Code and get as annoyed with other road users as they no doubt do with me.

Whilst I am nowhere near Tour de France standard, on a decent, flat piece of road in good conditions I can get up to beyond 20mph under my own steam and on downward stretch of some of the hills between myself and my parents I go through 30mph – and have hit 40mph on one of them before now – without trying (only one of those hills has a 30mph limit).

Basically I cycle (generally) within the rules, have notched up more than 1k miles a year for most of the last 23 years and I cycle at speeds which are sometimes comparable to the motor traffic around me. And yes, I have the tree trunk lookalike legs to prove it.

You can imagine my disbelief then when I read that a city councillor in Melbourne, Australia has called for the speed limit for cyclists of just 20km/h – or 12.5mph in real money.

12.5mph? I can go up some hills faster than that!

So, why does said jobs-worth want such a thing?

Cr Ong said he was almost struck by a cyclist moving at speed recently. “The other day when I walked out from town hall I nearly got run over from a cyclist who shot through a red light as I was crossing Little Collins Street right in front of town hall.”

So, a cyclist goes through a red light at what looks like (from Streetview) a fairly active pedestrian junction at ‘speed’** and rather than do complaining about the offence committed, he set his sights on something which had nothing to do offence, viz imposing a speed limit. Typically the prat hasn’t a clue about how to enforce it:

He did not know how the bike speed limit would be enforced. “The thing is not about enforcement, the thing is about education,” he said.

A speed limit is educational? Really? Methinks Councillor Ong has spent too much time sipping the double think juice.

If he wants the problem dealt with then he should ask the local police to enforce Highway Code (or Australian equivalent). I assume it is one of their jobs, much the same as it is back here in Blighty***…

h/t Angry Exile

* These are:

  1. I do, although very rarely, break red lights. Similar to some drivers, if a light I am familiar with changes to amber and I think I have the time, I will try and get through before it changes to red. I don’t always succeed and if I’m still within braking distance I’ll stop rather than jump.
  2. There is a one way stretch between myself and the London bound platform of my station which used to be (before one car driver too many lost control and ploughed the wall at the far side) bi-directional. Sometimes I get off and push, sometimes I will ride on the pavement (at a speed slower than walking) through here as it is a matter of meters compared to the 1/2 mile (according to Google Maps) to complete the trip legally.
  3. If I find myself coming home later than planned (i.e. after dark) and I didn’t pack my lights that morning I will still cycle home but I keep a careful watch out for cars and keep out of their way.

** People, especially stationary ones, are usually poor judges of speed.

*** Before they gave up and left it to speed cameras, obviously.