Posted on 12/27/2007 7:13:38 PM PST by PotatoHeadMick
“Now in this case you might say that the lady in question is the criminal and the youth is the victim which indeed is the police’s opinion”
How is it the police’s opinion? They haven’t even spoken to her about it yet.
“That former “common sense” approach to policing has been abandoned in the UK in favour of a strict literalism and neutrality and no amount of parsing and analysing the current state of UK legislation is going to gainsay that.”
In some respects that is certainly correct. On the other hand, in the past, people complained that there was a lack of answerability by the police and some units seemed to be a law unto themselves, and also that police forces tended to under-record crime in order to make their figures look better.
To correct that, the police are now required to follow prescriptive national standards as to when they should or shouldn’t record a crime. They are lots of places where a more common sense approach could be used but in the end, we can’t have it both ways.
> She was surrounded and asked who was going to help her. Sounds like she was being assulted and responded in self defense.
I believe that you are correct.
If we get down to legal definations, assault is a verbal threat and battery is the act of carrying through on the threat (hitting).
If a YOB the same as a what we call over here a YUTE?
Property crime, vandalism and muggings were rampant in London when I lived there. My children were mugged 3 times in one year (by yobs)and the police "advice" was for them to carry a few pounds that they could “give” the mugger without creating a “tense” situation.
The implication was, that since they looked “American”, they attracted the muggings.
I made rolls of “2P” coins for them to carry in self defense. It worked magnificently on the fourth muggers’ nose.
I’m not convinced things have changed based on this old lady’s experience.
“I do appreciate that people may get frustrated with this sort of situation but the appropriate response is to work with agencies like the police and local authority to find solutions.”
This inspector ought to get assaulted across the face too. What a jerk. The police should be profusely apologizing to the woman for not doing their job.
“How is it the police’s opinion? They haven’t even spoken to her about it yet.”
From the article;
*Mrs Lake will voluntarily attend a police station next month to be formally arrested.*
Clearly someone from the local constabulary has had a word in her shell-like, unless she found out she is to be formally arrested by telepathy.
Yes, when the police have grounds to suspect someone of a crime they formally arrest them prior to interviewing them. It’s the first stage of the investigation, not the conclusion.
I just love Limey slang, what little I know of it.
I understand that.
I didn’t say it was the conclusion, but you stated “that they [the police] haven’t even spoken to her yet”, that is clearly incorrect and your obsession with the minutiae of procedure doesn’t detract from the overall picture of a police force more concerned with this woman’s behaviour than that of the louts who roam her area.
It’s a simple concept and one which I would have thought someone who called himself a UK Tory could understand. The UK police now see themselves as neutral enforcers of the law in the same way as their European counterparts, schooled in the Code Napoleon, have always considered themselves.
However what traditionally set British policemen aside from continental policemen was that the job of a British constable was first and foremost keeping the peace, not enforcing the law, it might seem a subtle difference but it was in fact the bedrock of community support for British policing for generations.
If the British police want to become gendarmes, blindly enforcing state decrees, well then let them come out and say so and let them not be surprised by the concomitant hostility of ordinary British citizens towards them.
I would have thought a self describing Tory could understand this basic principle.
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