The Policeman's Blog

Getting Away With Murder, UK-style

2009-11-23T10:57:00.001Z

Jane Andrews had it all - she worked for the Royal Family (OK, it was Fergie, but that's still not a bad gig), lived in a nice pad in London and her boyfriend Tom Cressman was a wealthy businessman.
Unfortunately, she wanted to marry him and Tom wasn't up for it.
So she battered him with a cricket bat as he lay in bed and then stabbed him through the heart.
He was 39 years old.

She was originally jailed for life with a recommendation that she serve 15 years, though this was later cut to 12 - the sort of sentence our judges think is suitable for premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
Of course, she won't even serve 12 years, in the sense of spending the time behind bars contermplating her appalling actions.
Recently, after serving just seven years, she was moved to an open prison.
For overseas visitors, this is not a prison in any meaningful sense - there are no guards to speak of, you wear your own clothes, have a room which you are free to decorate in juvenile fashion [the picture shown is actually of Andrews in a closed prison] and can abscond at will see update below!).

She'll soon be going on little away days and working outside.

This weekend, it was revealed that she has been hoarding pictures drawn by Fergie's kids which she plans to sell. She calls them her 'pension' apparently.
Tom Cressman was more than 25 years off pension age when his life was cut short with an eight-inch knife.
Andrews has never even apologised to his family.
Instead, they have had to read Guardian profiles of his killer which are thinly-disguised attempts to exculpate Andrews ('I witness a flash of the stylish, engaging and independent young woman she once was... "She was so good to know," one close friend told me...) in which she makes unsubstantiated claims about him.
If he did the things she said he did he wasn't a very nice bloke, but he didn't murder anyone; and if Alastair Darling had a penny for every convicted criminal who whines that it wasn't his or her fault we wouldn't be in a recession.

UPDATE: Thanks to Martin in the comments for letting us know that Andrews absconded today! We'd like to claim ownership of that crystal ball, Martin, but sadly predicting this sort of thing is a little bit easier than the 4.10 at Kempton.

WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?

2009-11-19T14:57:00.007Z

Here's a picture of a drilling rig. I took it while in one of Edmonton's heavy industrial areas in the South East of the city. You can read the technical specs here.

The oil price is a crucial indicator of the health of the Albertan Economy and twelve months ago it was around $US55.00 a barrel, which wasn't good. These days it's around $75 and may well be going up even more. While this may not be good news for you in the UK, it's mostly good for Alberta and even better for the oilsands around Fort McMurray. New oilsands projects are being re-started, like Suncor's Firebag Stage 3 in-situ project, Imperial Oil's Kearl Lake mine and Devon Canada's Jackfish Lake. All this is good news, unless you're an environmentalist of course, in which case the solution is to shut down the oilsands and send everyone home on horseback.

Albertans have a realistic approach to the environment. Firstly, there's a lot more of it than there is in the UK, so even if you dig up thousands of hectares of it, there's still lots left. Secondly, people know which side their bread is buttered: OK, making oil is dirty, smelly and might cause cancer, on the other hand, it pays the bills and things could be worse.

A Ratatouille Of Crap Sentencing, or Mad Judges 6

2009-11-19T10:30:00.000Z

Meanwhile, back up to Manchester, where a 17-year-old student decided to go to her local park with her sisters, aged between five and 11, and her sister-in-law and s-i-l's baby.
As she played on the swings with the baby - so far, so Enid Blyton - she was approached by a mixed-sex, mixed-age gang of youths, taunted and finally attacked, being punched so hard that the pendant from her necklace was embedded in her face and had to be removed in hospital.
What do you reckon that's worth - especially given that it happened in a kids' park, and taking into account the terror and upset it must have inflicted on the victim's young sisters, never mind the damage and fear inflicted on her?
How about - for the puncher, who aged 16 has 13 previous convictions - a 'referral order'? Not even any compensation ordered because, surprise surprise, she has no income or parental support. For another member of the gang, a lad of 16 with 30 convictions, a nine month supervision order and a two month curfew which he will break because there is no possible means of enforcing it.

Moving across to Middlesbrough, where five-year-old Chloe Edwards was woken at 2am by the sound of Dean Affleck breaking into her family home armed with a meat cleaver. She apparently shouted at 18-year-old Affleck to put her dad's car keys down, at which point, gallantly, he threatened her with the cleaver.
Mr Edwards came down and chased Affleck out of his house. He escaped, opunching two girls in the face as he ran, but was later arrested and found to have a lock knife, cannabis and amphetamines on him.
For breaking into a family's houser in the dead of night, threatening their five-year-old with a machete, violence and ~~drugs offences~~ mitigating possession and use of drugs, he received three-and-a-half years in a Young Offenders' Institute.
Well, at least he's off the street for the next 12 months or so.
But the killer line was delivered by Judge Peter Bowers who told him: 'You were given an amazing chance in January with a community order for a similar burglary.'
Is amazing the right word?
Is Dean Affleck active in the villages where his local judges live, I wonder?

Finally, what do you get if you smash a pint glass into another girl's face, a centimetre below her eye, on a dancefloor (an 'unprovoked' attack, notice - like there's some sort of provocation which might excuse such behaviour)?
How does 120 hours community service sound? Well, we know from Dean Affleck's case how effective community sentences are, don't we?
Even if Ashleigh Holliman actually turns up, it sounds like no sort of a deterrent or a punishment at all... which is why this sort of thing happens, of course.
Apparently Holliman is a hairdresser. She should be going somewhere for a six month holiday.

TCT

The Same Differences

2009-11-17T15:28:00.002Z

People often ask me if the people that I work with now are any different from my Canadian colleagues. The short answer is that they aren’t and I can see the same characters in my previous squad in Newtown as I can here. There are however some differences that reflect the differences between British and North American cultures as much as they do about different approaches to police work.

For one thing, police officers here are generally thinner and taller than those in the UK. This must be partly due to the fact that over here there’s a fitness test to pass prior to getting in and thereafter a similar test every year. This has the effect of creating a culture where it’s almost unacceptable to be fat. Canadian youth culture as a whole is much healthier than in the UK, so the pool from which recruits are drawn is healthier. I once spoke to someone who had the unfortunate duty of looking after a British teenager who was on holiday here in Alberta, the host was quite amazed that the youth didn’t want to do much more that get drunk. Par for course I said. Par for the course.

There are far fewer women in the police here than in the UK. This is probably, once again, due in part to the more exacting fitness standards, but it’s also a fact that there are significantly more, shall we say, ‘support’ positions in the UK, that tend to suit a family schedule. There’s also a greater emphasis on being in uniform and on the street, rather than ‘working hard to support our front line colleagues.’

Educational standards are much the same amongst Canadian and British police officers, but there’s no Accelerated Promotion Scheme over here, which seems to reflect a blue collar tradition of North American policing. In Britain, there’s an emphasis on investigation and procedure that is reflected in the extensive powers of arrest and search available to the police, this means that the officers see themselves as investigators or administrators rather than in the more traditional role of being on the beat. Over here on the other hand, the police have yet to hand over the streets to the criminal element and the primary job of the police is to be on the street and in uniform, so there aren’t the same number (proportionally) of specialist, denim-wearing roles that there are in the UK.

All this means that patrol officers in North America see themselves doing an important and respected job, rather than simply waiting for the next vacancy to come up somewhere else. Someone in the UK once told me that uniform was the nursery of policing, well it’s just that sort of patronizing attitude you don’t get over here.

After The Stabbing, Unemployed Miller Celebrated And Told His Brother That He Had 'Done A Paki'.

2009-11-16T10:04:00.001Z

Kunal Mohanty was a young Indian naval officer who had come to Glasgow College of Nautical Studies to train to become a master mariner.
On his way to a restaurant one night, three days before he would have taken his finals and returned to India (where his wife was expecting their first baby), he unfortunately encountered 25-year-old waster Christopher Miller.
Miller asked Mr Mohanty if he had a cigarette. When Mr Monhanty replied that he did not smoke, 'Miller, without warning, produced a knife and slit his throat'.
Later, Miller 'celebrated with friends' and told his brother that he had 'done a Paki'.
Mrs Mohanty lost the baby as well as her husband, and Mr Mohanty's bewildered parents have had their lives ripped apart.
For this, Miller received life with a minimum of 18 years.
If this revolting piece of garbage keeps his nose clean in jail, he'll be out in his early 40s (and probably on day release long before that).
How on earth can that be a suitable sentence for this appalling act?
He should never be released.
Most disgracefully, Bill Aitken, Member of the Scots Parliament for the Conservatives, suggests that had Miller's victim been white, or had he not shown any racial motive for the killing, an even shorter sentence would have been in order.
Aitken said, 'This was a particularly brutal crime with racial overtones which deserved an exemplary sentence. The judge probably got it more or less right.'
The mind boggles.
Meanwhile, Mr Mohanty senior told the Times: 'European countries are supposed to be well-educated, well-mannered and advanced.'
Unfortunately, these are descriptions that simply do not apply to Christopher Miller and thousands, perhaps millions, like him.

Mad Judges (4): The Days Of Lenient Sentences Are Over!

2009-11-13T14:06:00.003Z

As Polis Man pointed out in the comments to Mad Judges (3), it wasn't Judge Richard Bray who cut the violent and multiply convicted thug Kane Johnston's sentence from three years to one, in was Lord Justice Beam Me Up 'Scott' Baker, if you please. In fact, Judge Bray was the hombre who handed down the original three years. Not enough, given that Johnston would only have served a fraction of that anyway, but we've seen worse. So apologies to Mr Bray.

Mind you, he is the dude who claimed recently that 'the days of lenient sentences are over' and promptly weighed off one Thomas Boyce for a whopping 18 months. So a latter-day Judge Jeffries, then?

Not exactly.

Boyce, 23, had punched his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his child, in the stomach one night, after she had the temerity to ask him where he'd been lately and could she have the money he owed her. Later, he threatened to stab a police officer (he was seen with two knives) and smashed up a pallet and hurled it at another constable.

Let's tick the boxes:

1. Is this Boycie character an utter waste of space? Check 'Yes'.

2. Is he contributing anything to society apart from mayhem, and children he leaves the rest of us to pay for? Check 'No'.

3. Does he have 'a long history of drunk and drug problems'? Check 'Yes'.

4. Does he attack women? Check 'Yes'.

5. Is he prepared to pull out knives on cops? Check 'Yes'.

6. Does a sentence of 18 months for the above prove that 'the days of lenient sentences are over' for violent thugs? Check 'Er... no.'

TCT

Mad Judges (3)

2009-11-12T15:43:00.005Z

Kane Johnston has '...numerous previous convictions for assault, possessing offensive weapons, three offences of robbery, witness intimidation grievous bodily harm, wounding and assault' so, when he was sentenced for:
a) punching a man in the street and knocking him unconscious and....
b) threating police by saying, 'Get off my estate, you're going to get it and I'll glass you in the eye and you'll know about it' and trying to stop them arresting a third party
he got threee years (18 months for a and b).

However, Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Thomas 'Beam me Up' Scott Baker decided this was manifestly excessive and cut it to only a year. The good news is that Johnston is still subject to a 5 year ASBO banning him from doing things like punching people unconscious and threatening/obstructing police officers.

As a public service, here's a picture of Kane Johnston so just in case you're ever in the Briar Hill area of Northampton on a dark night you'll know to cross the road.

Thanks to Matt

Mad Judges (2)

2009-11-12T10:20:00.001Z

Not that we have a downer on Manchester or anything, but here's another great example of weak sentencing from that great city (thanks to 'Tony' for the tip - send in your own via the email link at the top right).

BBC reporter Paresh Patel was setting up with his camera in the centre of town for a news report about Gordon Brown's posthumous apology to Alan Turing when he was attacked.

First, a 26-year-old moron called Jodie Anderson threw a pint over him - as you do.

Then the cretinous John Nugent (22) and David McKenna (27) threatened Mr Patel and followed him through the city, shouting, swearing and swinging punches at him for half an hour as he retreated.

Unfortunately for Nugent and McKenna, Mr Patel is a karate black belt, and although he suffered a split lip himself he was able to deck at least one of them.

Unfortunately, too, the whole incident was captured on CCTV (you'll really enjoy the way Nugent is unceremoniously collared when the van finally arrives).

A sensible court might ask, if they can act like this in broad daylight in a city centre, what's their general behaviour like?

For people like this, jail is the only answer; Mr Patel could have been seriously injured or even killed, and the next victim of Nugent and Mckenna, because there will be one, might not be so lucky.

Instead of jail, McKenna was given an 18-month community and supervision order, an alcohol education programme and 140 hours' unpaid work for common assault, affray and vandalism.

Nugent (who was on a conditional discharge for theft at the time) was given an intensive alternative-to-custody order for 18 months plus supervision, ordered to attend an anger-management programme and given unpaid work for 80 hours.

TCT

Mad Judges (1)

2009-11-11T14:57:00.004Z

Lovely views over there in Canada, Dave.
Back home, the bastard judges are at it again.
A youth in Manchester rapes a seven-year-old boy.
He gets severely punished - with the imposition of a three-year community rehabilitation order.
He walks out of court and eight days later he kidnaps a five-year-old boy and rapes him.
Ooops!
At least this time he's been banged up, on an IPP with a minimum of, er, two years and 359 days.
Anyone care to speculate on how long he'll serve - or on the odds that, once released again, he will rape someone else, and possibly kill them?
Let's be clear about this: the police did their bit in nicking the teenager first time round; the only reason that five-year-old's life is now in pieces is because of the judge in the first case.
We're going to get a little theme going this side of the Atlantic - mad judges.
We'll collate them all via the 'labels' link at the bottom of the post, so that there's an online resource available, in one place, where ludicrous sentences are collated.
The days of anyone seriously believing prison is about rehabilitation are long gone, it's about protecting the public from nasty, vicious people - because what prison does is it prevents them getting their hands on their victims.
So email in any examples you see or know of (magistrates included) to the 'email Copperfield in Canada' address at the top right hand corner of the page and we'll start saving them.
We're really interested in serious offences, particularly those involving violence, and they don't need to have made the papers - as long as they are check-outable.

TCT

RURAL LIFE

2009-11-10T00:20:00.006Z

You don't have to go far beyond the city limits to get into the countryside here, and what's more when you get into the countryside, you very often have to go a long way before you get back to a town, or even a paved road come to that.

We went out to Mayerthorpe the other weekend and stayed in a log cabin on a farm. Here's the view from the front porch:

We went out for a few walks, here's me standing on a beaver dam with one of the dogs from the farm:

While the Albertan countryside doesn't have the manicured beauty of the English countryside, it's still nice to look at. The rural lifestyle here is exemplified by the cowboy, who still exerts a powerful influence on the popular culture here. Consequently, rural pursuits like hunting or the rodeo aren't the minority sports that they are in the UK and their adherents aren't persecuted in the popular press.

For the next couple of weeks, Edmonton is hosting Farmfair International, which is not for vegetarians. I went today and shot this video of a competitor in a horse competition which might be called 'Annoy the Calf', there's a scoring system too apparently. Spaniards reading this will be disappointed to find out that at the end of each round the calf isn't ceremonially killed with a long sword, but instead gets untangled and then annoyed by a different cowboy.

TRAFFIC

2009-11-07T19:32:00.000Z

With thanks to Andy.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

2009-11-05T12:56:00.008Z

The blog's been down for a while for a variety of reasons. Sorry. Back now. Normal service will be resumed shortly, but meanwhile a few things which catch the eye.

Just in case you didn't see it a while back, here's a terrifying and tragic piece from The Times. If you live in the States, or Australia or elsewhere, this is real, modern, urban council-estate England as it is known by millions.

Lots of people say things in Britain are better now than they ever were, and in some ways they are right: Britons are living longer, there's no hunger to speak of, there's free education, everyone has healthcare, you only really end up homeless if you want to. But when you scratch the surface you find that for many people, particularly those trapped on sink estates, the longer lives they're living are hellish, the education system is letting down their kids, they die earlier and the housing isn't quite Polly Toynbee's Tuscan villa.

Frustrated care home worker Winston Smith's blog deals with some of the fall out from the madness, and continues to be a great read, albeit not updated all that often.

The Ministry of Truth continues to expose charlatanry - here the fact that some IED-detecting equipment used by British troops in Afghanistan is, effectively, about as much use as a dowsing rod. In fact, it is a dowsing rod. Still, Gordon Brown says our troops have all the equipment they need, so they must work.

Inspector Gadget draws the parallels between a benefit cheat and the former Police Minister Hazel Blears.

Miss England allegedly punched another woman in the face in a row about who was going home with a TV Gladiator. It all supposedly happened at a porn-themed night in a club - how quaint and typically English.

Finally the Met's Commander Simon Foy is 'worried' about a rise in gang rape in Britain.

I SPIT IN YOUR FACE

2009-08-13T00:29:00.003+01:00

Classsic dashcam footage from the land of the free and the home of the brave. This time from the delightfully named town of Kalamazoo. You can read the whole story here, but briefly, a drunken, abusive teenager in breach of his curfew and in possession of ammunition, spat in the face of Sergeant VanderWiere ( a 12 year veteran of the force) when the latter attempted to arrest him.

The unfortunate Sergeant not only fractured a finger during the incident, but was also suspended from work for 10 days following an enquiry conducted by Assistant Chief Lynn Wetmore. All I can say is that with friends like Ms. Wetmore, who needs enemies? Here's the footage so you can decide for yourselves:

It's difficult to remain calm when you've been spat in the face, even if the spitter doesn't have any communicable diseases, so I have some sympathy for the sergeant. But the text of the enquiry stinks of the kind of 20/20 hindsight that's all too common when people who weren't at the scene attempt to make a judgement without taking into account any context. According to Ms.Wetmore, VanderWiere "gave no verbal warning, did not consider the utilization of other techniques" and "Although there is no evidence to indicate that there was any intent to cause serious injury to (the teen), it appears the strikes were delivered out of frustration that (the teen) was not compliant ..." But if the teen was not compliant and continuing to assault the sergeant by spitting at him, why couldn't the sergeant seek other methods of gaining compliance beyond handcuffing?

Anyway, at the risk of really annoying the Kalamazoo Tourist Office, here's another video from a Kalamazoo school bus which shows what the little angels get up to when the police aren't around.

TESTING TIMES

2009-08-03T19:49:00.003+01:00

Here's a video of the NYPD fitness test:

Here's a similar video from the Boston Police Department:

For the record, here's a video of the PARE, which has been adopted by many Canadian police services:

The PARE doesn't look all that hard, in the same way that the Tour de France is just a bicycle ride: it's doing the whole thing quickly that's hard.

Most UK forces seem to have adopted the Job Related Fitness Test, which means getting to 5.4 on the beep test, which you could probably do on crutches. With one arm. You then go on to some pushing and pulling which is designed to simulate opening a filing cabinet, pulling out a chair and pouring hot (but not boiling) water from a kettle. The point, I suppose, is that it's 'job related' and if the job is mostly taking statements and waiting to book prisoners in, then a firm pulse and an ample backside should be sufficient.

Many North American forces are particularly keen on the Polygraph, or lie detector, as a means of finding out if what you've written on your application form is actually true (it's also used by investigators, although the admissability of the results varies between jurisdictions). As you might expect, there's a lot of controversy about how effective the polygraph is, and your enthusiasm for it as a tool may well depend on whether or not you've passed a polygraph interview. Having taken, and passed, a polygraph, I have no idea whether it works or not. It makes for a stressful interview though: I was half expecting Jeremy Kyle to show up with an envelope containing the results at the end and Mrs C to appear yelling like a fishwife.

I don't know why the polygraph isn't used in the UK, but whether it works or not, it certainly concentrates the mind, and exerts a powerful psychological effect. Maybe that's the point.

IT'S WHY WE GO TO WORK

2009-07-22T04:46:00.005+01:00

I always think that there's more to do over here than in the UK. If you like shopping then you're better off in the UK (unless you specifically want a pair of combat pants, in which case you're in luck).

Here's a photo of me at a place called Snake Indian Falls in the Jasper National Park:

To get to the trailhead, you have to drive down a 40 km gravel road. There isn't a pay and display car park at the end. While we were there, we met a couple of Alberta Conservation Officers who were out in the Willmore Wilderness Area. These guys have got the coolest jobs in law enforcement: they go on horseback through the parks and they're out for 10 days at a time, they carry everything they need on packhorses and call in at about 7.00pm every night on a sat-phone. They have standard glock sidearms and a lever action rifle carried in a holster on the horse.

Apparently, they can't get many people who want to do this sort of work (going out for 10 day camping trips on horseback? Do people not pay for that?) I nearly volunteered on the spot.

Anyway, it took a good day to get there from the trailhead and we had to ford this river en-route.

It was about thigh deep on the way out, but overnight rain meant that it was even deeper on the way back. You'll note that there are no barriers either at the falls or by the river saying 'Danger: water'. At the trailhead, there aren't any signs saying 'Be aware - thieves operating in this area'. I suppose it's just too far to go.

All this is three hours from Edmonton, along the Yellowhead Trail, which is never, ever busy, unlike the torture of going to say, Devon. Behind a caravan.

To give you a better idea of the scale of the falls, here's a silent video:

SUCCESS COMES IN MANY 'FORMS'

2009-07-18T04:03:00.004+01:00

The media can be so unfair to the police. Take this story from the Daily Mail.

Burglary a priority crime? Tick !
Arrest for burglary? Tick !
Got it past CPS? Tick !
CHARGE WITH BURGLARY? TICK !

So it got reduced to theft by finding in the end, so what? It just goes to show what happens when you have such a lily-livered bunch of prosecutors.

The real give-away is in the final paragraph, 'We followed procedure...'. You'll notice it wasn't, 'We used our judgement' or 'We used a bit of common-sense'. In fact it was probably ,'We got them in initially and although, to be honest, we all had our doubts, nobody wanted to pass up the opportunity for a burglary detection.'

You just know that there's a Superintendent down south with responsibilty for keeping the number of raves shut down graph going in the right direction.

SATURDAY NIGHT NINJAS

2009-07-08T22:22:00.001+01:00

Economics of the Madhouse

2009-07-07T12:22:00.005+01:00

I've never met Sean Price, the chief constable of Cleveland, but it seems unlikely to me that he's worth £200,000 a year, however good he is. Still, it's comforting to know that the taxpayer is helping to put his kids through private school, isn't it?
The Times has done some digging into a number of chiefs' pay packages.
They've also found out that Sir Norman Bettison (W Yorks) has a 'unique package' worth about £55,000 a year, Ian McPherson (Norfolk) got £70,000 more than his £126,000 salary in 2007-08 and Essex's popular Roger Baker was awarded a golden handcuffs package to persuade him to stay.
As well as private school fees, car allowances and stamp duty, more dosh was handed out to various chiefs for relocation packages, satellite TV and 'lifestyle coaching' (whatever that is).
I suspect the thing that will bug taxpayers the most is the money given for 'home security'.
It would be nice it we could all have some of that.
At the same time, Sir Hugh Orde has warned that police forces will have to make cuts.
It would take forever to list the lunatic nonsense which could be scrapped in every police area up and down the land (flip flops, speeding cyclists, cardboard cops, lollipops etc etc etc).
Suffice it to say, if the forces stopped wasting money phoning people up to ask how they feel about interacting with the police, sacked their diversity co-ordinators, burned half the forms and concentrated on harrassing known criminals, an awful lot of the crime that real people in the real world are worried about could be dealt with overnight (with assistance from the courts and jails, of course).

BREATH-HOLDER

GOOD TO BE HOME

2009-06-26T15:22:00.005+01:00

Here's a picture I took yesterday. It shows the Saskatchewan River running though Edmonton and is taken from this location here:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=53.543113,-113.445425&spn=0.021115,0.076818&z=14

Forest Heights Park (where this photo was taken from) is unlike many parks in the UK in that it isn't full of children getting off their faces on alcopops.

The river is in a steep sided valley as it runs through the city, and not used by shipping because it's too shallow. Next year, I'm getting a kayak and going to paddle along the river for a couple of days, packing my gear and camping on the bank.

Next month I'm off to Snake Indian Falls for a few days.

I've just got back from a two week holiday to the UK with Mrs C. It was quite strange going back after just over a year and a half away. Nothing much has changed and it was good to see family and friends once more. We hired a car at the airport and ended up driving from Manchester, to Birmingham, to Bristol, to Norfolk and back and found the amount of traffic amazing, even outside the cities. That said, there seemed to be a 'blitz spirit' amongst the drivers that you don't get in Alberta: the general standard of driving was very high and almost everyone was very considerate, resigned to the traffic jams.

Still, it was good to be back, Canada has now become home in such a short time.

Blast From The Past

2009-06-23T11:57:00.002+01:00

Some people think the police are all thugs. Others think they're all incompetents. Others still think they're all incompetent thugs.
Well, given that the British police are drawn from the British population, and that we see all around us every day evidence of incompetence and thuggery, it would be surprising if a few didn't fall into one of the above three categories.
Most, though, are ordinary people who really just want to deal with shoplifters (and other criminals), as this classic PC David Copperfield post from yesteryear suggests.

Just how far I have departed from the approved method of dealing with criminals was revealed to me yesterday when I dealt with a shoplifter whilst accompanied by a probationer.

I dislike being accompanied by probationers when dealing with prisoners and I always say, “Whatever competencies you need me to sign off, I will, but don’t tell anyone else about what’s going to happen today.” Being able to deal with a shoplifter is the starting point for any police officer because it contains some simple elements of police work:
An offence
An offender
An arrest
A house search
An interview
A charge or caution
A file
A crime report

For me, speed is of the essence when dealing with so-called “simple shoplifters” (Adults who will readily admit the offence, don’t require a solicitor and speak English as a first language) and my record from arrest to caution is 57 minutes. Usually though progress is slowed by a number of requirements. These are:
An appropriate adult (for juveniles)
A solicitor (for the inexperienced)
An interpreter (for the foreign)
A house search (for the greedy)
A busy custody suite
A denial by the offender

Sometimes though, speed takes second place to other tactical considerations. For example: if I arrest a shoplifter at 12.00 midday and I need to finish at 4.00 pm, do I really need to hurry? Let’s say the average simple shoplifter takes three hours, why should I rush?

Anyway, back to the probationer and the prisoner. First the clarification interview:
“So, are you going to admit it?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure? Because if I interview you and you deny it, I’ll put you back in the cell and have to get more evidence. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, course.”

Next came the formal request for legal advice:
“Will you be wanting a solicitor? Just to help me get an idea of the time.”
“Err…yes I think I’d better had, just in case.”
“No problem. We’ll be able to have one for you in about three or four hours. I’m ready to interview you right now if you want.”
“OK. So can you just interview me and let me go?”
“Yeah no problem. You’ll have a solicitor at court anyway.”
“OK, well I’ll leave the solicitor then and you can interview me.”

Finally the house search, which has to be authorised by an Inspector or above. The police like searching houses and we can do it at the drop of a hat, we feel that if we have the power we should be using it. The problem is that in real life, you never find anything and it takes ages to get the necessary authorisation signed. The problem for me is not so much to get the search authorised as to persuade the Inspector that it’s not worth doing:
“Hello Inspector, It’s Dave Copperfield. I’ve got a shoplifter who’s stolen razor blades to the value of £20.00. They’ve been recovered and he’s cooperative.”
“Have we searched his house?”
“Not yet sir. The problem is we’re really struggling for people today and I’m ready for interview now.”
“OK, leave it then, carry on with the interview and get him charged.”

The interview lasts three minutes (including formalities) and the thief is charged. So we’ve managed to avoid a lengthy interview, a house search and the interminable wait for a solicitor and we’ve reduced the time spent dealing with the shoplifter by two hours and we’re almost back on the streets where the non-shoplifting public actually want us.

The piece de resistance is that the security guard has written his own statement, so I don’t even have to do that, I just pick it up later. Because the prisoner admitted the offence on tape, the quality of the witness statement is irrelevant, furthermore, the brief transcript of interview that I have to prepare for the file, contains the following: “Normal Introductions. DP made a full and frank confession to stealing the razor blades.”

To tie up some loose ends I have to explain to the probationer why I ask such penetrating questions in the car and not in the interview room, why we didn’t take the statement and why we didn’t do a house search as per force policy. Unlike many officers I have not been on a course to teach probationers, so I only have them for a day or so when their regular tutor is on holiday. I don’t like probationers to do anything: I’d rather take the responsibility myself rather than overhear one of them saying, “Dave Copperfield told me that it was OK to breach PACE and that it should be used as guidance rather than law.”

I'd never say that.

'SHOCKING' FOOTAGE!

2009-06-16T08:27:00.002+01:00

If this is police brutality, I'm a banana:

Why Labour Got Spanked

2009-06-08T09:58:00.002+01:00

Blair and Brown (and Blears, Harman, Balls, Cooper, McNulty and the rest of them) have given us taxpayer-funded plastic surgery for murderers, thousands of pounds-worth of cardboard cops and police officers handing out flip flops and lollipops to drunks instead of arresting them.
Thank God the cardboard and lollipop budgets were ringfenced, because actual frontline police numbers are going to be cut now the money's run out - though strangely, it only ran out for certain groups after media scrutiny proved they were lying about where they lived, claiming for mortgages they'd already paid off and signing off their husbands' porn bills.
These are people who can claim, with a straight face, that crime is down by 39% since 1997 (and what little there is can easily be dealt with by the PCSOs while the cops escort you home from the cashpoint, walk round with megaphones warning people to lock their doors or act as 'travel consultants' to advise women on how to get home at night).
The public used to buy this rubbish. Less and less, these days.
In many areas, violent crime - to take but one example - is actually hugely up, if you ask real people (like the doctors who actually treat the victims), despite all the snappily-named, not-in-the-real-world Edballsian programmes and initiatives which cost millions and make not a jot of difference.
Your chances of being stabbed on the streets of a Ruralshire village may not yet be that high, but in Newtown (Dave's old stomping ground of Burton on Trent) it's not exactly uncommon.
Labour's response? More civilians, more PCSOs, more initiatives, more bureaucracy, more tagging, more reports, more psychiatrists and probation officers and more supervision - which, sadly, doesn't always work all that well.
Ever since Dave started this blog, it's been consistent: the only thing which will stop serious, violent, recidivist criminals from preying on the vulnerable is jail.
Yes, there are many things which cause crime. Yes, it probably makes sense to try to treat prisoners with respect, and to try to educate them while they're in prison.
But for all the sociology and criminology and blather, one thing is inescapably true: while they're inside, they can't be demanding your mobile phone at the point of a kitchen knife.
Labour has never understood that.

And All My Bridges I Would Burn

2009-06-02T14:18:00.005+01:00

Jacqui Smith is about to 'resign' as Home Secretary, says the BBC (and others).
Oh no! It's a disaster! How will the fight against crime survive this?

She intends to stay in Parliament, though, and will be contesting her seat in Redditch.
Her majority there is 2,716, so, er, good luck with that one, Jacqs.

UPDATE:

Hazel has gone, too.

On her bike

THE POLICING PLEDGE

2009-05-30T20:38:00.004+01:00

Here's a link to the policing pledge.

Pretty fantastic I think you'll agree.

Anyway, with budgets coming under pressure everywhere and forces being reduced to a bare minimum number of crime auditors, news reaches me from Lancashire Constabulary about an internal marketing campaign to 'get everyone on board' and 'singing from the same hymn sheet'.

Here it is:

Here's a poster!!:

Lancashire Constabulary also have an internal message board for those with no interest in further career progression. Here's a selection of rather po-faced messages of lack of support. I've highlighted the best post, about half way down:

Policing Pledge versus Chocolate ????
Whoever designed the current "Policing Pledge" advert/campaign really should reconsider the whole thing. Trying to emulate a well known chocolate bar is not very sensible in this day and age of healthy eating... and to offer a month’s supply of chocolate as some kind of incentive to embrace the pledge is an insult to those people who:

Want to maintain a healthy eating approach
Diabetics
Any other person who has no interest in chocolate whatsoever.

If this was aimed at children I could see the adverts comparison aims... but we are not so why use this style?

I totally agree. It’s like pumping the smell of fish and chips through a dieter’s club. It’d be interesting to see if the sale of “Wispa” bars or chocolate in general has increased over the last week or so.

I fully agree with these comments. If you want to bribe people into reading the policing pledge then you should not be offering chocolate. This appears to be against all the health advice we are given. What are you going to offer next alcohol and cigarettes?

It would also concern me that you are close to breaching copyright.

Whoever thought this up should take more care for future campaigns and adopt a more professional approach.

Also what has the cost been to produce all these posters etc. not to mention the cost in staff time to put them up?

I saw two support staff that I didn't recognise, so I assume they were from HQ, putting up the 15+ (!!!) posters in my station.

Surely the Intranet was set up to be used for such purposes, to save money on posters and other "publicity" material which probably have a questionable relevance.

What worthwhile initiatives that would actually benefit the public of Lancashire could use the monies that have been wasted on this "awareness campaign"?

I agree with the previous post and wonder what reaction we will get from other partner agencies who visit our stations when they see what is basically a very "childish" campaign.

Subjects that are far more important like MOPI get no posters. Where's the logic in that?

Additionally has the Constabulary checked copyright issues because it would be tragic if they got sued by a leading confectionary manufacturer for breach of copyright?

But I love chocolate.....

I thought I should reply on behalf of the department who has thought up, produced and delivered this campaign across the force. There are a number of issues raised, and I would like to address them:

You are right to be 'concerned' about copyright - we certainly were and that is why we checked our legal position. Just so you are aware, there is no legal case for copyright in this case as the campaign is internally focused and we are not making any monetary gain from the 'adverts'. Even if this was 'external' we would have to be taking a market share from Cadbury and quite clearly as selling chocolate isn't our primary concern, then we wouldn't be. There may be an increase in chocolate purchases across the force though!

Secondly, this campaign was designed to get people talking and to raise the profile of the Policing Pledge across ALL staff. I am certainly pleased that we have succeeded.

We often get criticised for churning out the same old corporate stuff from HQ, so when we stray away from the norm to try and get some attention on an issue that is vitally important for the force, I am disappointed that some people can't support this approach.

I don't think the campaign is childish or unprofessional in any way - I am in my 30's and love chocolate (people who know me will totally understand that!) but I don't eat it every day as I do have an element of self control. It is a bit of fun to get people involved – you can take or leave the chocolate, but please do look at the Pledge.

The staff in our department are professional, specially trained graphic designers, marketers and communicators who take great pride in what they produce. They have been recognised outside the force for their work so I am quite comfortable that they have delivered an extremely professional campaign.

We felt it important to ask our own staff to come into division to put these posters up as we appreciate just how busy life is out there (I was out in division for 10 years until I came to HQ, so I like to think I haven't lost touch with reality completely).

Finally, the campaign has the support of the Chief Constable and the Police Authority and other organisations that have visited HQ in the last couple of days have actually asked to take samples back as good practice to their forces.

We are trying to support you, not work against you. Love it or loathe it, you are talking about it so we are quite happy with that.

Here, here!!

I thought it made a refreshing change, as the Constabulary is often thought of as stuffy with no sense of humour/fun (plus I love chocolate and still manage to lead a healthy lifestyle!!!)

I think that the campaign is highly creative and eye-catching. The posters look as if they have no bearing on police work, so staff seem drawn to them, which I guess is their intended purpose. Had it been the same old staid posters or leaflets, then they probably would have become as invisible as every other campaign literature has become. Love it or hate it, it seems to have even got the cynics talking about the 'Policing Pledge', so something must be working! As for the health benefits of chocolate, one can choose not to eat it, but I believe it does allow a release of endorphins. Conversely, you could always walk around your local supermarket getting into a fit of rhetoric about the masses of foodstuff as well as chocolate that lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Doner kebabs or fruit, surely it's all about the 'Policing Pledge'.

It might be an idea to do a survey in due course as to how many people actually digested the Policing Pledge, and how many just digested a bar of chocolate!!

************** BEST COMMENT ********************
This is not a bribe, it's a great way to promote a fantastic and important performance initiative. It's just the sort of fun thing I joined the job for. I'm very impressed with the pledge and having told my wife all about it, she too is very interested and pleased with the whole thing. I suspect she'll be attending our local PACT meeting shortly for the first time ever to hear from our Community Beat Manager just what it will mean to us at a local level. This campaign certainly works for me. Viva la pledge, viva la chocolate. Operationalising the pledge will be hard work, but no one ever said it couldn't be fun too. I hope the next campaign will imitate Kentucky Fried Chicken, that'll whet my appetite for what could have been a very dry and boring subject even further. The Home Office have clearly put their best brains behind this. They are to be congratulated on their intuitive and well-researched, and very driven approach.

“If this is a success then it must have reached its target audience” Sorry, I did not realise I'm a chocolate eating 9 y/o with an IQ less than my shoe size. What Government sponsored initiative will we be tackling next in this vein?

"…this campaign was designed to get people talking and to raise the profile of the Policing Pledge across ALL staff. I am certainly pleased that we have succeeded"

But has it? It has certainly got people talking about the Pledge, but the content?

"We often get criticised for churning out the same old corporate stuff from HQ, so when we stray away from the norm to try and get some attention on an issue that is vitally important for the force, I am disappointed that some people can't support this approach."

So hasn't the 'norm' passed the different messages on throughout the years?

"I don't think the campaign is childish or unprofessional in any way - I am in my 30's and love chocolate (people who know me will totally understand that!) but I don't eat it every day as I do have an element of self control. It is a bit of fun to get people involved – you can take or leave the chocolate, but please do look at the Pledge."

I feel it is. Everything about the design from the logo, phrases used, type of pictures is reminiscent of 'spoof' adverts you sometimes see in student 'rag mags' and the like.

“The staff in our department are professional, specially trained graphic designers, marketers and communicators who take great pride in what they produce. They have been recognised outside the force for their work“
Yes, it is very well presented and executed and congratulations to the designers, but is it relevant and necessary in an environment such as ours? Tesco, Sainsburys or Asda maybe, but in a police station? No.

“We felt it important to ask our own staff to come into division to put these posters up as we appreciate just how busy life is out there (I was out in division for 10 years until I came to HQ, so I like to think I haven't lost touch with reality completely).”

Maybe a survey of staff within Divisions should be taken about the campaign?

“Finally, the campaign has the support of the Chief Constable and the Police Authority and other organisations that have visited HQ in the last couple of days have actually asked to take samples back as good practice to their forces.”

It would be interesting to see the feedback from the operational officers within the respective forces if and when they are used.

“We are trying to support you, not work against you. Love it or loathe it, you are talking about it so we are quite happy with that.”

I'm sure the rest of the Constabulary realise that, while the Constabulary may be talking ABOUT the Pledge (or the Pledge advertising campaign) are they talking about the content?

I have read the Policing Pledge as per instruction but I did print it out for the sole purpose of answering the questions for the competition, however I would like to know the definition of a month's chocolate because by my consumption, that's a high value prize.

Surely the constabulary could spend tax payers’ money better than wasting it on silly signs and advertising. Are we not supposed to be encouraging a healthy work force not a group of roly polys?

The "Chocolate Bar" Pledge
I'm sick and tired of seeing these damn chocolate bars all over the police station. I'm desperately trying to lose a bit of weight and have a soft spot for the Wispa Bar. Subliminal promises of chocolate are just not fair!!!!

Personally I think it should have been a can of polish on the promotional material... with the tagline "policing pledge... 10 steps for a polished performance"... God I’m in the wrong job !

What I find abhorrent is the fact that the Constabulary spends money on designing/printing a huge number of unnecessary and expensive posters, yet they won't contribute a single penny to the health and welfare of retired police dogs when they need veterinary treatment.

I have already had my say on this subject but then things got worse on Thursday when Pop-Ups started appearing every time I clicked on Sherlock. I thought I had gone onto one of those websites (you know the ones) by mistake.

As a said last time this is an unprofessional campaign and you have just proved it. It may have people talking but not about the pledge.

I would have loved to have been in the meeting when this campaign was green lighted. Despite the generally negative reception this will be a "huge success" as everything in this organisation is...

Fair point, I have some friends who worked on the Cadbury's Wispa campaign they would be a tad upset to see this somewhat blatant rip off

Can’t agree more - I’m constantly in and out of Sherlock and I’m getting these 'pop-ups' all the time. They're getting in the way.

If this were my personal computer I’d be upgrading my software to block them!

PLEASE someone tell me how to stop them.

Pledge and pop ups
Sorry, but these new 'pop ups' are really beginning to grate - we get it!

Insult to intelligence choc bribe
I agree with all the comments so far and have emailed media and marketing about this annoying pop up as follows:-

Please remove this extremely annoying pop-up as it’s stopping me from doing my job! I find it an insult to my intelligence to constantly see this appear each time I open a window. It’s bad enough seeing it on the front page and having banners about it in our work place. We don’t need to be offered unhealthy confectionery as an incentive to work hard and give good service to the public.

Thanks for your comments about the 'pop up' - we have had a number of complaints about it and are making steps with ICT to stop them today. So, please bear with us, as soon as we can stop them we will!

Macpherson, 10 Years On

2009-05-28T10:03:00.002+01:00

Stephen Lawrence's murder was, like all murders, a tragedy; every right-thinking person wants to see his killers locked up for life (if not hanged).
But did it prove that the Met were institutionally racist?
The doctor, prison trick cyclist and writer Theodore Dalrymple (on the sidebar under Politics and Media) thinks not.
The good doctor has written a piece for the US magazine City Journal about the disaster of Macpherson.
Attacking what he sees as the 'intellectual confusion', 'moral cowardice' and 'feeble mental pirouettes' of the learned judge, he points out the obvious truth: that the report was essentially a modern-day witch hunt, and its literally nonsensical findings (of 'institutionalised racism', because not one single episode of actual racism could be identified), have caused infinitely more harm than good.
It's well worth reading in full, but here's an edited version:

This year, on the tenth anniversary of the report, the press and professional criminologists are celebrating it for... bringing about a “paradigm shift” in the sensitivities of British police about “diversity”—police now think about race all the time, it seems. The report’s real effect, however, was to demoralise further an already demoralised police force, which, immediately after the report appeared, retreated from stopping or searching people behaving suspiciously and watched street robberies increase 50 percent.
...The public gallery regularly overflowed with activists and extremists, who did not hesitate to jeer and mock the witnesses with whom they disagreed; the head of the inquiry, Sir William Macpherson, rarely admonished these spectators, thus creating an officially sanctioned atmosphere of intimidation... (The report itself said:) “We thank the officers from the Walworth Police Station, who in difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances have helped to keep order when emotions ran high.” An incipient riot is not a situation in which the truth is likely to emerge or to be uppermost in people’s minds.
...The report’s contention was that the mishandled Lawrence case illustrated the “institutional racism” of the (Met). Poor Sir William tied himself in knots trying to explain the notion of institutional racism... admitt(ing) he could point to no actual instance of racist behaviour by the officers involved in the case, though evidence of incompetence and delay was abundant.
Macpherson (said): 'Failure to adjust policies and methods to meet the needs of policing a multi-racial society can occur simply because police officers may mistakenly believe that it is legitimate to be ‘colour-blind’ in both individual and team response to the management and investigation of racist crimes.'
On the very next page, however, he quoted approvingly the assertion of an association of black police officers: “Institutional racism leads officers to act, albeit unconsciously, and for the most part unintentionally, and treat others differently because of their ethnicity or culture.”
In other words, if you treat people the same, you are racist; but if you treat them differently, you are racist.
The evidence of institutional racism that Macpherson uncovered would be laughable, had the liberal press not taken it so seriously. For example, when the police arrived at the murder scene, Brooks snarled: “Who called you fucking cunts anyway, pigs, I only called an ambulance.”
That the police did not feel entirely reassured that Brooks was a respectable, upright citizen, and ignored the fact that he was also a victim of the attack, became for Macpherson a sign of their racist stereotyping, not a natural response to such vile abuse, which is not a normal way for the law-abiding to address the supposed guardians of the law—or, indeed, anyone else.
...Sir William (criticised) some of the detectives (who) refused to accept that the Lawrence murder was “wholly racist,” though none denied at least a racist element.
Of course, since no one had actually been convicted of the murder, the murderer’s motive could not be known for certain. And even if the suspects—a violent group, certainly—were indeed the culprits, was racism the sole, or even primary, cause of their violence? One suspect—David Norris, the drug trafficker’s son—was almost certainly guilty of that earlier stabbing in which his father became illegally involved, as the report observed. But there the victim was white. Norris and two other suspects in the Lawrence murder had also been suspects in another assault, this one on two brothers, both white. In both instances, Norris got off because of incompetent prosecutions.
Macpherson did not draw the obvious inference, and if he did, the liberal intelligentsia would not have applauded.
Let us assume that Norris was indeed one of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers. If the prosecution of Norris’s earlier crimes had not been so incompetent, and if he had received an adequate sentence if found guilty (an unlikely outcome in contemporary Britain), then Lawrence would now be alive.
At one point, the inquiry listened to secretly recorded conversations among the Lawrence suspects. The conversations were racist in the crudest possible way, but they were not purely racist. Norris said, for example, “If I was going to kill myself, do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every Paki, every copper, every mug that I know.”
The police in London are not predominantly minorities; it is also unlikely that “every mug” that Norris knew was a minority. Norris’s propensity to racism was probably caused by his propensity to violence, rather than the other way around.
So on every possible ground, the police who dismissed the idea that the murder was “wholly racist” were right, at least factually.
Their error was political or even metaphysical—beyond the realm of mere empirical evidence. On Macpherson’s view, the police should act more as defenders of politically correct orthodoxy than as keepers of the peace and searchers after the truth.
...Further confirmation of Sir William’s moral cowardice was his uncritical acceptance of everything that Stephen Lawrence’s mother said. Now, Mrs. Lawrence had lost her son to murder, and the police had failed to solve the far from insoluble crime; she was understandably distraught and angry. But that did not make her the arbiter of truth; common sense, indeed, should have suggested the contrary. One might have hoped that a judge would have shown some judgment.
At the beginning of the report, Macpherson defended the unusually “adversarial” manner in which the inquiry was conducted. “Cross-examination of many officers was undoubtedly robust and searching,” he wrote.
A few pages later, without noticing any contradiction, he mentioned that when the counsel for the police was questioning Mrs. Lawrence, “The nature and content of the questions made Mrs. Lawrence protest that her perception was that she was being put on trial. Wisely (the lawyer) desisted.”
In short, only the accused could be questioned.
In her statement to the coroner’s court, [Mrs Lawrence] said (and later repeated the assertion to Nelson Mandela when he visited London): “In my opinion what had happened was the way of the judicial system making a clear statement to the black community that their lives are worth nothing and the justice system will support anyone, any white person who wishes to commit any crime or even murder against a black person, you will be protected, you will be supported by the British system.”
Even if we leave aside the question of why she bothered to participate in the system at all if it really was as she described it, she ought to have known that she was exaggerating. I quote from the report, which sought to show that Lawrence’s was not the only racist murder in the area:
In February 1991 a white man named Thornburrow murdered a young 15 year old black youth named Rolan Adams. . . . He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On 11 July 1992 an Asian boy called Rohit Duggal was stabbed to death by a white youth named Peter Thompson. . . . Thompson was found guilty of the murder in February 1993.
Mrs. Lawrence should have known about these sentences. If she did not, she was ignorant; if she did, she was lying. But all that Macpherson said of her incendiary charge was that it showed the depth of her feeling—not that it was inaccurate and misleading. Her victimhood had to be immaculate.
Mrs. Lawrence further said that she felt condescended to by the police and ascribed this condescension to their racism. Macpherson showed—surprisingly, for a judge—no recognition of the obvious difficulties in accepting such feeling as evidence of anything. He did not even demand that her feelings have some objective correlative: if she felt condescended to because of racism, she was condescended to because of racism
Among the report’s many pernicious recommendations was the following: “The definition of a racist incident should be any incident which is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.”
Nothing could be better designed to destroy the possibility of easy—dare I say normal—relations among people of different races. For the notion that racism is so pervasive and institutionalised that it is everywhere, even where it appears not to be, induces in the susceptible a paranoid state of mind, which then finds racism in every possible situation, in every remark, in every suggestion, in every gesture and expression. It is a charge against which there is no defence.
Two incidents in my clinical experience illustrate this nonfalsifiability.
In the first, the lawyers for a black defendant asked me to appraise his fitness to plead. The defendant faced charges of assaulting another black man, out of the blue, with an iron bar. The man was obviously paranoid, his speech rambling and incoherent; his lawyers could obtain no sensible instructions from him. I argued that he was unfit to plead. Whereupon the man’s sister denounced me as a racist: I had reached my conclusions, she charged, only because her brother was black. Her 15-year-old daughter started to describe to me her frequent difficulties in understanding her uncle, only to be told to shut up by her mother. The lawyers had been unable to obtain instructions from the defendant only because they were white, the sister persisted. Give her brother black lawyers, and he would be perfectly reasonable. Of course, if I had said that he was fit to plead, she could have claimed with equal justice (which is none) that I came to that conclusion only because he was black.
The second case, far more serious, ended in a man’s death; the blame was partly mine.
A black man in his mid-twenties arrived at our hospital with severely cut wrists. He was nearly exsanguinated and needed a large blood transfusion; his tendons also needed an operation to repair. By all accounts, he had been a perfectly normal man, happily employed, a few weeks before, but suddenly he had stopped eating and become a recluse, barricading himself in his house until police and family broke in to reach him.
His suicide attempt was not one of those frivolous gestures with which our hospitals are all too familiar. If ever a man meant to kill himself, this man did.
His mother was by his bedside. I told her that her son should remain in the hospital for treatment (you’d hardly have to be a doctor to realise this). At first she was perfectly agreeable; but then a friend of the young man, himself young and black, arrived and instantly accused me of racism for my supposed desire to lock the patient up. I tried to reason with this friend, but he became agitated and aggressive, even menacing. Whether from conviction or because she, too, felt intimidated, the mother then sided with the friend and started to say that I was racist in wishing to detain her son.
I could have insisted on the powers granted to me by law—asking a court to have social services replace the mother as the patient’s nearest relative for the legal purpose of keeping him in treatment. But I did not fancy the process: the young friend had threatened to bring reinforcements, and a riot might have ensued in the hospital. Instead, I agreed to the demand that I let the patient go home. The two said that they would look after him, and I made them sign a paper (of no legal worth) acknowledging that I had warned them of the possible consequences.
This piece of paper they screwed up into a ball and threw away immediately outside the ward, where I found it later. I had made copies, and it was one of these that I sent to the coroner when, six weeks later, the young man gassed himself to death with car exhaust.
The notion of ubiquitous, institutionalised racism resulted in his death; and I resolved that it would never intimidate me again.