Police

Machetes and the middle classes

Another stabbing in my new neighbourhood, not with an axe or with a samurai sword this time, but a machete. The samurai sword incident was back in the spring. The magnolia was in bloom and the citizens of London N1 were about their innocent business, reading for book club and baking (wheat-free). At 3 p.m., a terrible screaming was heard coming from Englefield Road and when police arrived they found a teenage boy lying bleeding, sword on one side, meat cleaver on the other. The machete killing which followed was worse. Daylight, but this time the crime scene was a playground. Children were goofing about after school, including the soon-to-be victim’s

LA runs riot

Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after four white police officers were acquitted of beating the black taxi-driver Rodney King. The inadvertent coup that the book’s publishers have scored by bringing it out in the wake of the Baltimore and Ferguson riots only underlines how far we haven’t come since then: some lines from this buzzing thriller might still be quotes from yesterday’s news stories, such as the impassioned complaint of one character against the police: ‘If you’re brown or black, you’re worth nothing. Killing you is like taking out the trash. That’s how they think.’ Judging

A British policeman shouldn’t take orders from a radical Islamist preacher

Each year Anjem Choudary earns more in benefits than a soldier does starting off in our armed forces. This is a fact I never tire of pointing out – especially to Anjem’s face whenever we have the misfortune to meet. The follow-on point, which I think also worth continuing to make, is that there is something suicidal about a society that rewards its enemies better than it does its defenders. Choudary and his family rake in around £25,000 each year  and – as you can see from this newly-released video above  – we taxpayers now get even more for our money than we had previously thought.  For now we do not only pay

Real life | 18 June 2015

Aren’t the police getting younger nowadays — and ruder, and scruffier and more intolerant of middle-class women? In other words, why am I always getting pulled over for no apparent reason? If I were a member of any other minority group I would be complaining to my community leaders of terrible bias and of hideously unfair ‘stop and search’ policies. As it is, whatever minority I do belong to in my Volvo with a Countryside Alliance sticker on the back window and my gundog in a travel cage in the boot, it has absolutely no recourse to complain to anyone. So they help themselves. The other day, I was driving

A triumphant failure

I must be an idiot for pointing out the failings of a novel that’s so screamingly, self-denouncingly about failure. Steve Toltz’s Quicksand is a nutty, occasionally hilarious, flaccid carrier bag of a comic romp, all dazzling one-liners and no comic paydirt. Like his debut novel, A Fraction of the Whole (about a misfit philosopher and his troubled son), it is narrated by a pair of human catastrophes: a New South Wales police constable, Liam Wilder, who’s a failed novelist; and his best friend, Aldo Benjamin, who’s a failed husband, entrepreneur, everything. Toltz probably intended this novel to be a failure. It’s that difficult beast, his second book, after all (his

The white-knuckle terror of being driven by a dopehead

‘Hidden menace of the drivers high on drugs,’ says the headline in today’s Daily Mail, revealing that – according to police – six out of 10 motorists are failing a new roadside test that can detect use of cannabis or cocaine. If so, that’s worrying. But not as worrying as actually being driven by someone who’s stoned. Trust me on this. Several times I’ve found myself in California bowling along the freeway at night, trying not to think about the spliff the driver smoked before turning the ignition key. A single puff induces terror in passengers, since all dope seems to be skunk these days and the Californian strain is wickedly strong.

High life | 21 May 2015

This is as good as it gets. A light rain is falling on a soft May evening and I’m walking north on a silent Park Avenue hoping to get into trouble. Fourteen thousand yellow taxis have turned Manhattan into a Bengali hellhole, blasting their horns non-stop, picking up or disgorging passengers in the middle of traffic-clogged streets, speeding and failing to yield to pedestrians as Big Bagel law requires. But on the Upper East Side, on a balmy evening, the yellow devils are causing havoc downtown, so I almost find myself singing in the rain as I head north far from the madding crowd.(Puns unintended.) Nicola’s is an Italian restaurant

In praise of the pit bull

Last night I saw a woman dancing with a pit bull terrier. It was about 9 p.m. and her curtains were open, lights on. Music must have been playing, though I couldn’t hear it through the glass, because she was singing as she danced the dog about, leaning back to balance his considerable weight. Her arms made a seat for him, as you might carry a child, his paws on her shoulders. The woman gazed down lovingly at the dog, who looked embarrassed but patient, as if this wasn’t his first dance and wouldn’t be his last. I watched them for a while, standing unseen in the street, half-wondering whether

Camilla Long’s Have I Got News For You appearance causes problems for Ukip

After Camilla Long claimed on last Friday’s Have I Got News for You that she had spent more time in South Thanet than Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader failed to see the funny side. In fact such offence was taken by party members that one of his team took the unusual step of calling in Kent Police. The police have since rejected the complaint and word now reaches Steerpike that fractions are forming in the party over whether it was wise to report the incident in the first place. ‘We didn’t report her,’ insists a source close to the leader. Instead they say that they merely ‘reported the incident, which is

The jihadi bride and her astonishing dad

Like you, I suspect, I have been terribly worried these last few weeks over the plight of 15-year-old Amira Abase. Amira fled the country on 17 February in order to take up an exciting and challenging position as an in-house whore for the vibrant and decapitating warriors of the Islamic State somewhere in Syria, probably Raqqa. She travelled with two like-minded school friends from the local caliphate of Bethnal Green and not much has been heard of her since. We wring our hands in anguish at the fate which might have befallen this girl. It is of course commendable that she, along with so many other fervent young British Muslim

Order is restored to Pall Mall club scene

Last week Mr S reported on the poshest squatters ever: dozens of angry militant lefties had taken over a building on Pall Mall to protest against a multitude of right on issues. However, the dopey hippies got the wrong building. They thought they were ‘occupying’ the Institute of Directors but it wasn’t the case as the lease on the building was handed back by the IoD last summer. Sadly, Steerpike can now report that Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians (ANAL) have been evicted by six police vans and dogs. There were a few minor scuffles, but all over in time for lunch. ‘No sign of water cannon, alas, so they’re

Spectator letters: the Rowntree legacy, and a suggestion for the Met police

Betrayal of Trust Sir: Rod Liddle has traduced the Quaker values of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust that include non-violence, equality and truth in his piece, ‘Jihadi John, Cage and the fools who give it money’, 7 March. Mr Liddle identified three recipients of JRCT grants: Jawaab UK, Cage, and Teach na Fáilte. Jawaab UK was not set up by an extremist Islamic maniac. On the contrary, it works to help young Muslims play their part in a democratic society. Cage, which JRCT ceased funding in January 2014, has in the past played an important role in defending the right to fair trial and due legal process. Finally, JRCT has

How (not) to poison a dog

Deadly to dogs An Irish setter was allegedly poisoned at Crufts, using beef containing slug pellets. Some other substances with which dog-show rivals could poison your pooch: — Chocolate contains theobromine, a stimulant which dogs cannot metabolise, and which causes the heart to race. It takes just 1 oz per pound of body weight of milk chocolate and a third of an ounce per pound of body weight of dark chocolate to kill a dog. — Grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure in two thirds of dogs. The link was discovered by America’s Animal Poison Control Center in 2004 after the fruit was linked to the deaths of 140 animals in one year,

The shocking truth about police corruption in Britain

Imagine you lived in a country which last year had 3,000 allegations of police corruption. Worse, imagine that of these 3,000 allegations only half of them were properly investigated — because for police officers in this country, corruption was becoming routine. Imagine that the police increasingly used their powers to crack down not on criminals but on anyone who dared speak out against them. What sort of a country is this? Well, it’s Britain I’m afraid — where what was once the finest, most honest service in the world is in danger of becoming rotten. Some of this was revealed in a little-noticed report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, which

Property crime is not a victimless crime

While researching Taking its Toll, a report written with Policy Exchange on the regressive impact of property crime, some troubling facts became clear. In the year to March 2014 there were an estimated 6.85 million victims of theft in England and Wales, representing 1 in 10 of the population. Yet a significant proportion of property crime is not reported to police: a third of burglaries and 90 per cent of shoplifting incidents go unreported. In a climate of heightened threats to our national security, the police are struggling to keep up. Last year around 19,000 bicycles were reported stolen to the Metropolitan Police yet only 666 (3.5 per cent) of

When did it become OK for the police to electrocute children?

Hard as it may be to imagine, dear reader, once upon a time the police managed to fulfil their obligations to society without resorting to electrocuting children. The sky did not fall. Teenage ruffians did not run amok. Life went on, much as it had before. Changed times, of course. These days, the carrying of Tasers has become increasingly normal. And when the police are armed as a matter of course, it’s no surprise that they are increasingly likely to deploy force. Even on children. And pensioners. The youngest person Tasered by the police in England and Wales in 2013 was 14 years old; the oldest a menacing 82 years old.

How the driverless car will liberate us all (except smokers, of course)

I was listening to the radio the other morning to hear people complaining about the huge cuts in the number of traffic police patrolling English roads. This meant that drivers would disobey motoring laws with impunity, they said. They would babble away on their mobile phones, unfasten their seat belts, and generally break the rules of the road in the knowledge that they were most unlikely to get caught. The only things left for them to fear would be speed cameras. As a result, road deaths, of which there were already more than 1,700 in Britain last year, would go shooting up. A grim outlook indeed. But wait, there is

When did we become a nation of police informers?

There’s a danger that in what follows your columnist may seem to be recommending an attitude. Please don’t think that. It’s true that I would never shop a friend for drink-driving — but frankly I doubt I’d shop a friend for murder. This column isn’t about what we should do if we know a friend drink-drives — responses will be various and variously arguable — but about shock at my own serious misreading of my countrymen. I was tooling along in our Mini on the first Saturday of the year, with BBC Radio 2 playing. It was Graham Norton’s fizzy and engaging morning show, where a regular feature is his ‘Grill

Jaw-dropping confessions of a very un-PC Plod

There can’t have been many people who watched Confessions of a Copper (Channel 4, Wednesday) with a growing sense of pride. Among those who did, though, will presumably have been the creators of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes — because, in its frequently hair-raising way, the programme confirmed how well they did their research into old-school policing. Of the seven ex-officers interviewed, the most old-school of the lot was probably Ken German (sample quote: ‘We all have a view on political correctness: it’s bollocks’), who began by explaining in full the admission procedure that he’d gone through to join the force — he was told to bend over

MI5 mystery at Millbank: has the pig left the building?

Of all the watering holes across the capital, Mr S knows full well that the Pig and Eye club is both the most elusive and exclusive. So Steerpike was curious to hear that the MI5 joint has apparently been forced to change its name in order to err on the right side of political correctness. Originally set up by spies during the Cold War in their then-headquarters on Curzon Street, the Pig and Eye was a place where secret agents could meet over a drink – or five – without risk of being overheard by the wrong people. Peter Wright wrote of frequenting it in his best-selling espionage book Spycatcher. The secret establishment is then