Hmm
Do as we say, not as we do.
Erg. Where have I heard that before?
Police and the courts are losing their patience with overenthusiastic net citizens, whose "helpful" sleuthing has caused trials to be abandoned and wasted tens of thousands from the public purse. The police, however, seem a little less fastidious about protecting due process where they feel a little local publicity will do them …
Just wait 'til the judicial system is run by bots, a bit like car insurance and loan applications, you may never see a judge or a jury, the system just has to crawl over the internet and make a "judgment" before an email is sent to the police to come and take you to prison.
Might actually end up being more of a Criminal Justice System than the Criminal Legal System we have in place now.
I would rather have my case heard by a dispassionate, unemotional, uninvolved, unbiased machine that looks at facts rather than a Human, biased, emotional Judge who has had a bad day or didn't get any the night before.
I know of several cases where the defendants were found guilty due to emotional bias on the part of the jurors and judge, and a prosecutor with his own agenda, only to be cleared years later (one case 20 years later) when someone actually looked at the hard evidence in the case and saw there was no way the defendants could be guilty of what they had been charged with.
Was it?
Bombs had exploded, people were injured and dead. The IRA were blamed (although I couldn't be arsed looking up to see if they admitted it or not) and the Authorities needed people to blame. So they picked up 6 Irish lads, prosecuted them on the flimsiest of evidence and Justice Was Done.
It seems to me that the police and the legal system were very competent. Just not very fair. But that's OK because They started it. Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless minority of people seem to have forgotten good old-fashioned virtues. They just can't stand seeing the other fellow win. If these people would just play the game.
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This is hardly new on the part of the police - for years they've been using the media to prop up accusations or denigrate suspects, for example when they fall back on the 'child pr0n on the computer' charge when everything else has failed. It's funny how in cases like the Forest Gate shooting of a 'terrorist' suspect, later downgraded to 'child pr0n suspect', later downgraded to 'uh, we got nothing guv', the police are quick to accuse in all sorts of media outlets, but then rather more reticent about coming forwards and saying they got it wrong.
If you by "old laws incapable of addressing the modern world" mean that the juror's/victim's/witness' Googling/Facebooking is just a thing of the modern world that the judicial system should accept, you are IMHO very wrong.
They must never be allowed to investigate by themselves, Internet-based or otherwise. When a victim or witness has to ID a suspected perpetrator among many potential in a line-up, all these potential suspects are presented in as much a neutral and equal way as at all possible. If the victim starts investigating himself then he already has an idea from which his investigation starts, and he is thus prejudiced against the subject of this investigation.
And a juror's job is to consider the guilt or innocence based only on what the court presents. There's a reason certain things are inadmissible in court, things that are not presented to the jury at all. The same goes with things that the jurors are explicitly instructed to ignore.
Letting people investigate by themselves would erode the legal rights of the innocent-until-proven-guilty suspects.
(I do not commend the MET's actions described in this article. And IANAL.)
... it is old law failing to keep up with modern developments. It has been easy for an individual to do "investigative" work on their own behalf for at least a hundred years. The internet has just made it *very* easy. For some time it has been clear that, in the interests of justice, anonymity* should be the default for all those involved in a crime investigation (accused, witnesses, lawyers, police, etc) unless and until a conviction has been secured, unless there is an overriding public interest in breaching the anonymity (such as finding witnesses to corroborate one side or the other). The public interest would be assessed by a judge not involved in the case. This would mean all the people involved being referred to by bland, standardised pseudonyms (e.g Mr A, Ms B) during all public proceedings, and court artists would be unable to show the faces of anyone involved until after any conviction was secured.
It would not be difficult to do this - it just needs some will from those whose job it should be to protect justice.
"If the victim starts investigating himself then he already has an idea from which his investigation starts, and he is thus prejudiced against the subject of this investigation."
And how this differs from police who already _knows_ the guilty one, they only need to find some evidence, or in case nothing found, publish the details of the person they think is guilty and make evidence afterwards?
Or drop the case, as the "guilty one" was already on the front page of every newspaper and got punished without any trial anyway.
In my opinion, there is no difference and police as an organization is total nazi for doing stunts like that whenever they feel like it, essentially when they feel that someone is guilty but they can't'prove it. Immediately alternate punishment: Publicity: Name, addess,picture, job, phone number, everything.
The Police _always_ gets their man, legally or illegally. Guilty? Who cares, as long we nailed him!
if the pigs werent so FUCKING USELESS themselves they might get more sympathy.
i get burgled: 1 month later someone comes to wipe for prints! genius!
i park my car and find when i come back that someone had scraped all down the side with a white van. right infront of some police cameras i report it - nothing ever happens even tho this happened 10m infront of a camera.
the police in this country are useless wankers, more obsessed by trying to catch you doing 35 in a 30 that anything else.
Their first complaint about jurors not doing their own research, I agree with... but that's nothing new. Here in the states - sorry I'm not too familiar with how juries work in the UK - there have always been problems with Jurors watching news stories or reading articles about the trial they are sitting in on, which typically leads to their dismissal or a mistrial. A jury should only be judging based on what is presented in court. Blaming this pre-existing condition on teh interwebz is ill-informed.
The second complaint about victims finding their own perps online thereby invalidating a photo or some other type of "pick them out of a lineup" challenge... on that all I can really say is WOW, are these officers completely batshit retarded? It's possible that the lineup is some sort of procedural requirement I guess, but this still makes no sense. What they're ultimately complaining about is the public doing their job - which is not a new phenomenon either.
Strangely enough my friend's car was stolen the night before last. He went online to check his toll records and saw that it had exited off the tollway in a neighboring city at 3 AM. He informed the investigating officer, who - we suspect - contacted the neighboring city's police department, who put out an APB on his vehicle and it was found within roughly 14 hours of being stolen. I raise this issue for one point only - the officer investigating the issue did not get all pissed off about the victim helping out his investigation. We were able to provide useful information that would have taken him much longer to find - assuming he ever looked where and how we looked to begin with - and it helped him solve the case. In this case everybody wins.
For the sexual assault/rape case referenced in the article I can see how both the victim and her friend repeatedly looking at the perp's Facebook page could make the prosecution more difficult, but telling an assault/rape victim to sit around and do nothing while the cops go off and do their thing is somewhat offensive - as is the coppers whinging about it after the fact like 11 year old girls.
They need to grow up or GTFO
"ACPO guidelines clearly state that working with the media on operations can assist in the prevention and detection of crime."
The police will work with the media on their own terms, but are often hostile to news reporting and photographers in general, as so many recent cases show. Just another case of police hypocrisy.
Your joke icon confuses me.
Anyway,
"are they trying to say that recignising anyone in any other way than a police controlled lineup does not count?"
No, they're trying to say staring at a picture for long enough will convince you you know the person in it.
If you see someone in the street and think "that was him", you phone the police and say "I think I saw the guy that did it."
Same with an on-line picture. You see it, you report it. You don't keep going back to the picture, or you overwrite your memory of the attacker with the memory of the picture. Clearly the person looks similar, which means that if it is the wrong person, you're going to end up forgetting what the actual perpetrator looked like.
And a Facebook mugshot is not generally of good enough quality to identify someone.
A little transparency with regards to the evidence, how it was collected, who collected it and why exactly it is relevant. Maybe even present some proof that someone who isn't corrupt and/or a retard actually DID bother to look for evidence in the first place.
If people were confident in the ability of officials to do their damn jobs, you wouldn't get jurors running around trying to do it for them.
It doesn't really matter what people want. One must differentiate between "the law" and "justice". That "the law" and "justice" may coincide is a happy accident when it does.
A trial is about jurors weighing the evidence presented not about the jurors finding additional supportive or otherwise information and having their evaluation of the legal evidence potentially corrupted. The juror is to form an opinion on the evidence presented. If they think the evidence is flawed then they are entitled to weigh that in their opinion. If a juror shares obviously information with others pertaining to the case or evidence presented, that they have otherwise acquired, then there are issues. By argument in the (confidential) jury room they may influence other to their way of thinking with regard to the evidence so that a collective opinion can be formed.
If I were dumb enough to publicly blab that I had made my own investigations then I might well expect to put a case at risk.
While I don't necessarily trust the police/officials I don't piss off a skunk and not expect to get smelly, do I?
"the police raided two Polish women who were selling sex from their home "
Is it just me or does that sentence amalgamate two really odd-sounding turns of phrase?
The first one sounds like the police actually went inside the women, and the second part conjures up an image of some kind of take-away..!
"ACPO guidelines ....
I wonder why these four initials make me more concerned each time I come across them?
Still, I am sure that a Limited company run by Senior plods, building a database of almost all vehicle movements in the country whilst not being subject to FOI laws can only be a good thing.
Perhaps it is time that the government reigned these buggers in.
"First up is the case of six "persistent" sex workers who, the Met told us, had "rejected a raft of supportive measures aimed at helping them change their behaviour". The police decided that there was nothing else for it than to apply for Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) against the individuals involved – and then to place their pictures, full names and dates of birth up on the Met’s website. In this case, the pics were up for a month, which is the length of time the police considered "appropriate"."
So, these six people were effectively punished for declining the "help" that the State tried to push on them?
Are we really a free country, or do we just pretend to be one?
Given the absence of any charges, I think that the media publishing pictures in the second case described here is a bit out of order - even if faces were obscured. However, it seems to me that's more of a media issue than a Police one. I don't have any problem with the media being given access to Police operations (quis custodiet and all that) but if they take photographs of someone who isn't subsequently charged then I don't think those pictures should be published at all.
Meanwhile, the ASBO case could be very different - IF it is the case that the pictures were published after the ASBO had been granted. And the critical word there is the last one - "granted".
Whether you love 'em or loathe 'em, the Police can't just pull an ASBO out of their collective backsides. While there may not be a trial as most people think of one, ASBOs are still granted by the Courts. Although it is a civil process rather than a criminal one, the applicant still has to prove (to a standard that is essentially the same as that in a criminal action) that the person upon whom the ASBO is to be served has been guilty of anti-social behaviour and that an ASBO is an appropriate way to deal with the matter. Generally speaking, ASBO applications tend to receive careful consideration since they can be quite complex (sometimes involving hundreds of pages of statements and other evidence that must all be considered) and everyone in the Court tends to be aware of the Human Rights implications involved.
If the ASBO is then granted, it isn't unheard of for those involved to have their picture(s) published. That's part of the price you pay for doing the stuff that landed you with the ASBO in the first place.
In fact, given some of the - shall we say - "interesting" ASBO cases that the more muck-raking elements of the press sometimes rant about ("OAP given ASBO for some minor thing or other" etc.) I often wonder just how much of the story they have left out in order to make their political point du jour.
Of course, whether ASBOs actually work is a different question and I'm not even going to get started on that one...
Sadly there is the problem of differing timescales here. The media want to get their story in the public eye immediately whereas the police/CPS could take weeks or even months to decide whether or not to go to trial. By the time that happens the media would be looking to 're-visit their expose of local police done good' or whatever.
If they were to be told that they could not publish until any potential case had gone to court and a verdict handed down then I somehow doubt there would be much uptake from the 4th estate (or whatever they call themselves these days).
"Whether you love 'em or loathe 'em, the Police can't just pull an ASBO out of their collective backsides."
Yes they can. All they need is a story to present to judge and presto, you have a ASBO.
Applies to anyone and anywhere (At least in UK).
Recently China has instructed it's police to stop the practice of marching convicted prostitutes through their communities streets.
Yet the English Plod seek to emulate them on web sites.
The Chinese, along with other countries, continue to publish full details and photographs of AIDS/HIV carriers on their police station notice boards.
true story...
I had a horrible little street urchin come into my house through the back door and relive me of possession of my mobile phone which was in the kitchen.
When I noticed the phone missing, I called it so I could find where I left it.... surprisingly a young girl answered my phone... when I demanded she bring it back she hung up...
At the time I had a service where the details of the call were available almost instantly online. I got the list of numbers she had called and began calling the numbers to find out who it was called them. Through a stroke of luck one of the people she had called was a relative of my niece. (Fathers side of the family) She told me exactly who it was who had called her from my number and where she lived.
I went around to the house, the kids mother claimed she had not seen her daughter with a mobile phone so as far as she was concerned that was the end of it..
with a little bit more digging, I found the name and address of another person she called, which happens to be her next door neighbor... off to the police i went with my info...
I presented the police a printout of the list of numbers she had called from my phone, the pages out of a phonebook with the names and address of two people she called. a witness who was prepared to give evidence that she had called her from my mobile phone (and had the call logs on her phone to back it up). The name and address of a witness who was prepared to give evidence that he had seen the girl hanging around outside at the time and seen her running away shortly before the time of the first calls on my logs.
Can anyone guess what the police did?
NOTHING...... they did not contact any of the witnesses, any of the people that she called, they did actually go around to her house 4 days later. No search warrant no nothing.... just asked her mother about the phone, (she denied any knowledge of anything).
I was one mobile phone down, she got away scot free and the police did nothing... I handed it to them on a plate; they had minimal work to do. All they had to do was verify what i had given them already.
And people wonder why there is no faith in the police force any more...
I can sympathioze with what you experienced: my then 12 year old son was the victim of an unprovoked beating up on his way back from school just over 18months ago. Because he is Chinese in an area noted for its BNP activity, some aspects of what happened and what were said to him before and during the assault may have had racist overtones. What seemed to us to be particularly serious was the fact that he was knocked to the ground and kicked in the face that smashed his glasses, though he didn't receive any cuts from this. We knew who had done it, as he attended the same school as our son, and he admitted he had done it to the school the next day after I rang them up.
The police came to see us at my request, and decided to do absolutely nothing. They did say a "community support officer" would call round in a few days, but one never did, and no amount of chasing them up could get one to attend. That made it extremely difficult to get a crime number from them, which would have at least allowed us to claim for replacement glasses via our insurance: ideally I wanted to find out who it was so that I could take the kid or his parents through the small claims court to get the price of the glasses back via that route as well as try to demonstrate that, in the absence of police action, bad behaviour as directed towards my son, should have consequences. But no luck.
The whole episode was disheartening, and made my wife and son disillusioned with staying in the UK at all. Given other related incidents which officials seem not to consider important enough to deal with, they became so disillusioned that now, 18 months later, we have relocated back to China.
I actually thought that prostitution was legal over there. Now maybe you have to do it out of a proper store front and not a house and maybe you need licenses these ladies didn't have. What is the deal over in the UK? Legal or illegal?
Its a legal grey area if i recall correctly.
Outright selling of sex is illegal either by the person in question or a 3rd party.
But selling time isnt, what happens inside that timeframe is then a private affair between two consenting adults that has nothing to do with any financial transaction.
Or so i recall from various reports on our rather antiquated laws on the whole thing
Up until recently, the UK laws on prostitution were fairly sensible, Prostitution itself is legal. But there are a number of laws surrounding it that basically have to do with decency and institutionalised prostitution. For example, you're free to sell sex with yourself, but not free to solicit from the street corner. And you're only allowed to profit from it directly - i.e. you're the one prostituting yourself. The moment that some "boyfriend" is living off your earnings, they're breaking the law. There are also some slightly fiddly laws about more than one prostitute working from the same place. I.e. if you're working out of your flat, visiting hotels, etc. you're fine. If there are several of you in one building for the purpose, then there are laws to do with it that are beyond the scope of a very short post. I'm not commenting on enforcement here, but the laws are generally fairly sensible, imo.
All this got a bit of an overhaul recently under the New Labour government which introduced some extra bits on top of this such as putting the burden of proving a girl hadn't been "trafficked" on the client. These laws are a bit messy and I'm not sure they're very well thought out, but I don't recall all the details.
That's the case in the UK though, anyway. Several European countries are laxer on the issue still.
On a similar theme, there has been a story in the Norwegian media recently who sent the police details from the anti-theft software on his (stolen) mac which not only sends emails, but pictures of who is using it! The latest I heard was that one of his mates even saw the woman pictured using it on a bus ans still the police did nothing.
At what stage can you take the "law" into your own hands to retrieve stolen property?
[Hand grenade - one way of taking the law into your own hands]
"...It is important that our community is aware of the work the force is carrying out to respond to its concerns and reduce crime in the City."
These days one might be forgiven whether it is actually more important than actually nicking anyone. The police seem to spend and indecent amount of effort on tackling anything that looks remotely high profile or otherwise likely to look good on TV or the front page, while being resolutely disinterested in the bread and butter coppering that the majority of the population actually give a shit about. Been burgled? Not much they can do. But a Tory MP suspected of leaks merits a dozen of them to turn up and look suitably professional.
ITV would already be bust if it wasn't for the endlessly repackaged "Chummy coppers nailing ASBO villains" ad-magnet crap, although its notable how rarely the stern-voiced presenter gets to mention someone actually being prosecuted.
Trial by website is just an outcrop of the same "seen to be doing something" mindset.
This is abosolute BS, really how can anyone in the justice system sleep at night.
They haven't got the time to help everyone and we're not allowed to help ourselves because we might inadvertedly help out the criminal.
Instead of telling us to stop trying to solve our own problems deal with the lawyers and judges who have a twisted idea of justice. Seriously how can someone claim to be an expert in law and justice when they see it fit to charge £60+ for a frickin letter!!! where's the justice in that.
The police are institutionally retarded, they actually think we are all incapable of of stopping a crime because they can't and they being paid for it.
Time for change...
ASBOs are not just "odd law" they are, and always were, a very stupid idea. They were not really aimed at dealing with the issue of antisocial behaviour, but it reclassifying many crimes as antisocial behaviour, and the only reason I can see for that is to improve crime figures. Ever tried calling your LA's antisocial behaviour team? It's amazing how often the buck gets passed. "Sorry sir, that sounds like criminal activity to me, if there's any criminal activity you have to ring the police." Call the police and you get told, "that's antisocial behaviour, unless there's evidence of a criminal offence then you need to call the antisocial behaviour team". IOW neither side wants the incident on their statistics.
When they are used ASBOs are seldom enforced. Breaching an ASBO should get further penalties, such as jail time, but more often than not it seems the penalty for breaching an ASBO is another ASBO.
Anyhow in the context of this story it's pretty much irrelevant for future police activity since the ConDems have already said they are going to abolish ASBOs. Which is a good thing.
The police have always been lax in giving out personal information. I remember years ago reading of someone's surprise to read in his local paper that he had been burgled. with his full name, detail and address.
The usual one is after an arrest to read something like "a 47 year old married sagger maker's bottom knocker with two children living in High Street, Anytown" has been arrested. No name but enough information to identify the person.
Of course if it is a police officer who is under arrest then you will probably just read that "a police officer from Mickey Mouse Police Force has been arrested for an offence" with no further information.