Police

Sunday

James Forsyth

How Cameron can stem the Lib Dem tide

If the Tories are to beat back this Lib Dem surge, there are three things they need to do. First, they need to establish Cameron as the insurgent, anti-establishment candidate. It might seem odd to urge the leader of the Conservative party to be the anti-establishment cadidate, but the establishment in this country is now essentially soft-left. Just look at how senior police chiefs are threatenting to resign over Cameron’s plans for elected police commissioners who would be accountable to the public and set the priorities of the local force (another transformative Tory policy that Cameron didn’t mention during the debate) Cameron needs to run against these people. He should

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The return of Chris Grayling

Adam Boutlon’s interview with Chris Grayling this afternoon felt like a pressure valve being released.  Grayling’s recent low profile had already become a rolling story, and his absence from the speaking line-up at his party’s manifesto launch was bound to fuel more murmuring and speculation – so the Tories clearly decided to wheel him out in front of the cameras to calm things down a bit.  As it happened, Boulton was on combative form – arguing that elected police commissioners would just add “another layer of bureaucracy” to society – but Grayling sounded quite reasonable in response. Here’s the video, so you can judge for yourselves:

Monday

Alex Massie

The Future of British Policing

It hasn’t happened yet but, mark my words, something like this will happen in Britain soon. Why? Because when you arm the police with Tasers you cannot be surprised when they start being used and, of course, used when they need not be. Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent. Malaika Brooks was driving her son to Seattle’s African American Academy in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. She insisted it was the

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Is Boris’ resignation a problem?

Boris Johnson has resigned as Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, apparently because he could not devote enough time to the job. The deputy mayor for policing, Kit Malthouse, replaces him. This is a marginally embarrassing turn of events for Boris and the Tories. It’s a puerile point but Boris still has the time to write his extremely readable and by all accounts admirably remunerated column in the Telegraph. Equally, the Tories cited Boris Johnson as their first elected police commissioner – a famous face for one of their flagship policies. I don’t see either problem as being serious, certainly not beyond the present. Kit Malthouse is very able and

Saturday

Alex Massie

Panopticon Britain

At the very least, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this sort of caper anymore: Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance. The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police. Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained

Friday

David Blackburn

Commissioner Boris

The Evening Standard reports that Boris Johnson is set to become the Tories’ first elected police commissioner. Chris Grayling told the paper: “We envisage the Mayor of London being the elected police commissioner. This would strengthen the role of the Mayor. However, I’m absolutely clear that no reform we introduce will allow any elected politician to interfere in operational policing and we will make absolutely certain that the independence of operational policing is protected in law.” Under Tory proposals the mayor will be responsible for hiring and firing chief constables, tailoring police objectives to local requirements and budgeting. Naturally, the contrarians are gathering. I give it 24 hours before Sir

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

A debased database

As with much police work, the questions surrounding a DNA database come down to one thing: striking a balance between civil protection and civil liberties.  Going off a new report by the Human Genetics Commission, reported on the cover of today’s Times, the government are getting that balance seriously wrong: “Jonathan Montgomery, commission chairman, said that ‘function creep’ over the years had transformed a database of offenders into one of suspects. Almost one million innocent people are now on the DNA database… …Professor Montgomery said there was some evidence that people were arrested to retain the DNA information even though they might not have been arrested in other circumstance. He

Alex Massie Alex Massie

New Police Mission: DNA-Farming

Can this really be true? Apparently and alas unsuprisingly the answer seems to be yes: Police are routinely arresting people simply to record their DNA profiles on the national database, according to a report published today… The revelations will fuel the debate about the DNA database, the world’s largest. They are included in a report by the Human Genetics Commission, an independent government advisory body. It criticises the piecemeal development of the database and questions how effective it is in helping the police to investigate and solve crimes. […]Professor Montgomery said there was some evidence that people were arrested to retain the DNA information even though they might not have

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Dodgy expenses referred to the CPS

And so the expenses scandal rumbles on.  This morning’s Telegraph lead with home-flipping allegations against Andrew Dismore, a member of the Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges.  And now it’s emerged that the Met have referred the cases of four parliamentarians to the Crown Prosecution Service.  All of which makes Brown’s decision not to mention expenses in the Queen’s Speech seem even more unwise.

Friday

James Forsyth

Elected police commissioners are a test of whether the Tories are serious or not about their agenda

Sir Hugh Orde, the head of the Association of Chief Police officers, has issued another broadside against Tory plans for locally elected police commissioner. Orde has warned that senior police officers will resign over the plans and that, “Even the perception that the police service of this country… is under any political influence, I think that suggests you cannot argue that you are a proper democratic society.” This is an absurd argument. The idea that you are not a proper democratic society because the police commissioner is accountable to the public via the ballot box is obviously nonsense. But the Tories will face a lot of this kind of criticism

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Paul Clarke Update II

The national newspapers may not be terribly interested in the Paul Clarke case but, happily, legal blogger Jack of Kent is. He’s produced a detailed account of the case, and the law, that I highly recommend. Mr Clarke may not be the ideal poster boy for liberty but it’s equally clear that this is of little to no import. What we have here, as Jack of Kent makes clear, is a case that makes a nonsense of a) strict liability offences, b) manadatory minimums, c) the police and d) the CPS. It’s possible that e) the judiciary and f) the jury could also be added to this list. Mr Clarke

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Paul Clarke Update

Remember the outcry after the discovery that Paul Clarke could face five years in prison for the “crime” of finding a sawn-off shotgun in his garden and handing it in to his local police station? No, me neither. Well, blog-land has not been happy about this but, as a reader points out, our friends at newspapers and the BBC have completely ignored it: This story is getting zero coverage. I’ve seen more coverage from American websites than I have from UK sources. I’ve done a search at the Times, the Guardian and the BBC News website and – unless I’m doing something very wrong – none of them seem to

Saturday

Alex Massie

Is This the Most Enraging Story of the Year? Perhaps!

You might think that this story can’t be true or that’s been made-up to provoke everyone’s inner Littlejohn. But no, not so. It is true and, alas, an enraging, dispiriting business. A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”. Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Learning to let go of the police

Today’s Mac cartoon in the Daily Mail is, for me, a cut out and keep. It epitomises everything that has gone wrong with policing in Britain – a copper running past thieves to nick an old lady who has wrongly parked. And it touches on a wider theme: this is why regard for the police has fallen in the last dozen years. Their priorities seem to have switched from those of the public to those of the bureaucratic elite. This impression is, of course, deeply damaging and will be tough for the Tories to reverse. The plan for directly elected police chiefs, and Nick Herbert’s seminal work on the subject,

Saturday

Alex Massie

The Future of Policing

PC Heckler and PC Koch prepare for life on the beat. Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images. Let us concede that there may be problems in Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham that demand new approaches from the police. Let us further accept that perhaps there really are “no-go” areas in some of the estates in these boroughs. But even if one takes the police at their word, I think one may still be worried by the news that, for the first time on the British mainland, police officers on routine patrols in parts of London will be armed. Because will it stop there? How long before there are calls for all police to

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Who is to blame for the Pilkingtons’ deaths?

I empathise with the jurors who decided the Pilkington case: it is impossible to make sense of this senseless episode. Yet society must ensure that the tragedy is not repeated. The jury, the Home Secretary and even the Opposition, up to a point, all blamed the police. Simon Jenkins’ piece in the Guardian savages the political Establishment’s refusal to address a democratic deficit, which has eradicated local civic leadership, a status quo that leaves the police caught between being a law enforcement force and an organisation that promotes community cohesion, a dual task that it is ill-equipped to perform. ‘Monday’s Leicestershire jury verdict on the Pilkington deaths was typical of

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Can the Afghan police be trusted?

Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4’s Helmand correspondent asked local Police Chief, Colonel Asadullah Shirzard, if the police were sufficiently free from corruption to manage the forthcoming election. The corpulent Colonel declaimed:  “We have eradicated corruption in our police force!” This is a seminal moment. Rudy Giuliani couldn’t do it, Sir Ian Blair failed, though that’s no surprise, and moving around Venezuela will confirm that even Hugo Chavez can’t stop his police taking a cut from the downtrodden population. But in war-torn Helmand, the perfect police force has been born. As Hilsum notes, this is even more extraordinary when one considers that Helmand is the centre of the opium trade and that

Friday

Alex Massie

Hamsterdam Britain

The good news about the Drug War is that the police know it can’t be won. The bad news is that the politicians, judging by their public pronouncements at least, still seem to think it can. There are times when I think it’s important to question some of the assumptions made about policing; but when the police have the good sense to agree with me it’s only proper to acknowledge the excellent work they’re doing. So huzzahs for the UK Drug Policy Commission whose latest report the Times summarises thus: Police should switch their focus away from arresting drug dealers and concentrate on managing the harm they cause, according to

Thursday

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Tories must be prepared to launch a reverse march through the institutions

Sir Hugh Orde, the new president of ACPO, has predictably come out against elected police chiefs. Andrew Sparrow  has the key extract from his speech: “If people seriously think some form of elected individual is better placed to oversee policing than the current structure, then I am very interested in the detail of how that is going to work – and happy to have that debate. Every professional bone in my body tells me it is a bad idea that could drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability and add nothing but confusion. I note that our partners here in the [Association of Police Authorities] are