Police

Just last month I wrote about the inverted priorities of our judiciary and police who busy themselves with the arrest of individuals for things posted on social networking sites. Earlier today police bailed a 19 year old man after he was arrested for posting a video of a burning poppy on Facebook. The video was allegedly accompanied by a statement which read: ‘How about that you squadey c****.’ The sentiment is undoubtedly crass and offensive, but I suspect few would support his prosecution for offences under the Malicious Communications Act 1988. In itself this is a remarkable indication of just how inverted the police’s priorities have become. Yet, he is

Have elected police commissioners become the new political piñata? This week, the upcoming elections have taken a battering most notably from former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair. In an interview with Sky News, Blair irresponsibly encouraged the public to boycott the elections, citing his concerns over centralising police power in a single individual — much like his old role. But as we stated in this week’s leader, Blair’s denial may not be a bad thing for those who want to see radical change in the policing: ‘Ian Blair perfectly embodies what has gone wrong with policing in England. He is marinated in political correctness…now retired and ennobled, he sees

The coppers have fought back following Kelvin MacKenzie’s revelation, contained in this week’s Spectator, that his lawyers are seeking an apology from South Yorkshire Police over the Hillsborough scandal. South Yorkshire bill’s head honcho David Crompton says: ‘South Yorkshire Police have received a letter from Kelvin MacKenzie’s lawyers, which demands the force makes an apology to him. We have publicly apologised to the Hillsborough families and the Liverpool fans but we will not apologise to Mr MacKenzie. He chose to write his own headline and he should accept responsibility for it.’ Your move Kelvin.

Lawyers acting for Kelvin MacKenzie have written to South Yorkshire Police seeking an apology for the circumstances that have led to his ‘personal vilification for decades’. Writing in tomorrow’s Spectator, the former Sun editor speaks out for the first time in detail about his fateful decision to print the now infamous ‘THE TRUTH’ headline in the red-top the day after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. The terms of the apology are to be debated, but MacKenzie tells of police patrols being increased around his house and the physical danger he faces in the city of Liverpool. Kelvin admits that he was wrong, ‘but the people who have got away scot-free are

All right, he’s eaten dirt. Andrew Mitchell, Chief Whip, has now apologised to the Prime Minister and apologised profusely to the policeman he may or may not have called a pleb. In a statement today – prudently, he declined offers of radio interviews – Mitchell admitted that he ‘did not treat the police with the respect they deserve’ when on Wednesday evening one of them refused to allow him to ride his bicycle out of the Downing Street gate and directed him instead to the pedestrian one. In the outburst that followed, he is said to have told the man that he didn’t run the government. Well, that makes two

The Corby by-election campaign is warming up, with the Tories selecting Christine Emmett as their candidate. Emmett is a local woman who lives in neighbouring Rutland. She runs her own management consultancy, and claims ‘extensive experience’ working with the NHS and in other areas of the public sector, notably in the fashionable area of ‘health and wellbeing’. The emphasis that the party is placing on Emmett’s work with public services, particularly the NHS, suggests that its strategy will concentrate on public service reform rather than economic policy. Speaking of which, Nick Clegg, in an interview with the Times (£), has reiterated that the autumn will be dominated by a ‘rat-a-tat

The staggeringly low turnout that the Electoral Reform Society is predicting for November’s Police and Crime Commissioner elections comes as little surprise to those involved in organising the vote. In fact, I was quite surprised that the ERS expects a turnout as high as 18.5 per cent, and I suspect the Home Office might be, too. Nick Herbert betrayed his nerves about the turnout earlier this week when he was harangued by Evan Davis on the Today programme. Today the ERS’ chief executive Katie Ghose predicted that this could be a ‘perfect storm, which could result in the lowest turnout for a national election in British history’ and could ‘degenerate

It has just been announced that the police are going to launch an investigation into the Bloody Sunday deaths. It comes after the Police Service Northern Ireland and the Public Prosecution service reviewed the evidence of the Saville Inquiry. There will be a lot of comment about this in the coming days, but I think a couple of things are worth noting at the outset. Firstly, there can be no doubt that a number of soldiers deliberately shot and killed innocent people that day. Secondly, there can be no doubt that they then lied and misled an exceedingly long and costly public inquiry set up precisely in order to find

Brace yourselves for a new crime wave sweeping across the country — the government is doing away with ASBOs. Or, rather, don’t. The truth about ASBOs is that they were rather less significant than Labour would have you believe. As reports such as this one from Policy Exchange suggest, they’ve probably cropped up more frequently in newspaper articles than they have in real life. Only 20,335 ASBOs have been issued to date, covering less than one per cent of all incidences of anti-social behaviour. What’s more, there’s little evidence to suggest that those ASBOs that were issued made much difference. As the graph below shows, 57 per cent of all