The Evil Poor

Firstly apologies for the blatantly sensationalist and sweeping title of the post. It’s just that I could think of no better way to put it.

Throughout the years there have always been chroniclers and documenters of the worst of London life. In 1751 William Hogarth shone light into the dark corners with his studies of Gin Lane. He set down the worst behaviour of the indolent poor by drawing them sprawled, thieving, prostituted, numbed even to the suffering of their own children. His was a very urban decay caused by alcohol, peopled by characters devoid of the ability or ambition to climb from the gutter. Nearly 90 years later in 1837 Charles Dickens was writing vividly about the mores of the workhouse society. He knew there were packs of feral children in thrall both to the malign father figure of Fagin and the local gangster heavy Bill Sykes. Sykes seems to have become a role model for modern times in that he came complete with devil dog and long suffering battered other half. If you were a London centric person looking at your city today, you might think that there is nothing new under the sun and that nothing has changed.

Gin Lane c. 1750

For London you would be right but this phenomenon of the evil poor has spread so that not a town in England does not have it’s unfair share of Kappa clad, drugged up, workshy, wasters swaggering through the town centre streets with a can of lager in the one hand and a bull mastiff on a string in the other. They aren’t out looking for a job or a chance in life let alone a wash. They are just looking to do you over, nick your stuff, sell you stolen stuff and drugs, take the next drugs and collect the next dole. The attendant girls aren’t much better, shrieking complicit harpies who will all end up looking grey and faded round the edges, kicking dirty nappies out of the way to feed the dog in the kitchen of their two bedroom basic box flat on the grim estate where everything has been broken if it can’t be stolen.

A stable family unit c 1837

There has been talk and much naiveté about respect and a “respect agenda”. Even in my nick the silly posters have gone up saying “Give Respect – Get Respect.” I think of it as the algebra of the willfully uninformed. There is a simple problem with this stupid, stupid (repeat stupid) slogan. What you and I mean by respect and what Adibok boy means by it are not the same. His respect means “Act like you are scared when I am around. Do what I say because my wants come first every time. If you don’t agree, if you don’t do what I say, then that is disrespect and you won’t like me if I feel disrespected” This is respect as a loaded gun with a hair trigger pointed at your head by a youth high on drugs, booze and ego. Now if you really want me as an officer to give respect to someone that thinks like that, I am happy to do so, but it will be on his or her terms only. There is no respect as I understand it to be given to me or you by the KappaMassiv. They just want to get high, shag your 14 year old daughter until she is pregnant and nick your stuff. Sorry if that’s a bit bleak but it’s a lot true.

This common debasement of our social currency so that the worst of metropolitan life is cloned everywhere is commented on recently by Judges

Judge Russell sentencing in the Sophie Lancaster murder yesterday said said that the case raised “serious questions about the sort of society which exists in this country at the start of a new millennium which was heralded with such optimism.”

Judge Coleridge in his recent Brighton speech said “We are experiencing a period of family meltdown whose effects will be as catastrophic as the meltdown of the ice caps,”

We, the Police are currently responding with the Dock Greenism of Neighbourhood Policing and Community Focus as if turning back our policing methods 50 years will return society to the state of the 1950′s with us. That isn’t going to happen because we are not a big enough lever to move society and we have never been a catalyst. We can only help by keeping the peace, enforcing the law and protecting life and property.

The evil poor are now with us everywhere. So how are the rest of you planning to deal with them?

A street near you c. 2008

The Persistence Of Bail

Is there something in the water? It will be common ground amongst the Police officers that read here that it is incredibly hard to get someone remanded in custody particularly when we bring them back before the Courts either in breach of bail or offending on bail. Once that bail is granted, the bench seems generally reluctant to take it away no matter what. If the Magistrates see fit to remand some unrepentant repeat offender or someone who regards bail conditions as optional you may actually see the local Police putting up bunting.

I have even known it to happen that Magistrates just drop the bail conditions because they are obviously too hard for the criminal to keep. To put things in perspective,

1) The C.P.S. seldom do much jumping around or show much enthusiasm

2) The right to bail is taken very seriously and next stop is an appeal to Judge in Chambers

3) They keep getting told to stop sending people to prison because they are full

4) The defence will go on and on and on and on………

So it is against this background that I read the report into Anthony Leon Peart over at the Attorney General’s website. Have a read and tell me what you think.

What I think is everybody from the Police, through C.P.S. to the Courts screwed up somewhere and ended up making bad decisions on poor evidence. The only people rolling double sixes were the defence solicitors who kept asking for more bail and kept getting it. I wonder if the only people who knew the full facts of Peart’s criminality were his defence solicitors? I’d love to know.

They say “The lack of diligence in verifying suggested bail conditions, scant evidence of enforcement of those conditions and a failure to deal effectively with breaches when they occurred, all contributed to events taking the course they did.”

I wonder if next week we are going to see a lot more sceptical Magistrates thinking long and hard about conditional bail even if the prisons are full.

A Remand Court Door Today

Tagged

Facts in no particular order

1. I lived in a squat for 2 years

2. I played guitar with the Egyptian Youth Jazz Orchestra

3. I used to be a doorman at a rather nice Kensington Night Club

4. I can read the Lord of The Rings cover to cover in a day

5. My favourite colour is blue

6. I used to smoke 20-40 cigarettes a day

7. I played a season of American Football

Not sure who I will tag myself

Close To Home

God bless you Mr. Matt Baggott sir. Mr Baggott is the Chief Constable of Leicestershire and speaks for ACPO on Neighbourhood Policing. What he has done is say something that is likely true and likely not a popular thing to say and he has said it on national radio.

What he says is that yes, there are places in the country where we, the Police, are not the law enforcers of choice for the locals. There are places where you have a chat with a man who has a chat with your burglar and your stuff comes back. Very reasonable rates as well. Of course Mr. Baggott doesn’t think it is a widespread thing. He’s right, if it was widespread we would have people strung up from lamp posts and many local A&E departments would be gaining experience in removing tar and feathers as well as repairing kneecaps. It’s not ever a good thing to let the biggest nastiest criminals set up as local arbiters of justice as clearly happened in large chunks of Northern Ireland.

Sadly Mr. Baggott dodged the biggie and so did the radio program. I remember at a conference some years ago being told by a Divisional Commander no less, that on his first day in the job, he had met the local Asian community leaders and they had said to him basically “If there are crime problems in “our area” let the community sort them out. Just tell us and we will sort things out for you.No need for the Police to get involved” He was horrified and replied strongly (if diplomatically) in the negative.

My own experience is that, particularly in assault cases in the Asian community, there will be a series of meetings between parties sponsored by one or another local community leader. These will lead to the complaint evaporating away. Yes I do mean cuffing ABH, GBH even on an understanding and possibly a bit of financial compensation between families. In my wilder moments I think why not? It doesn’t sound that different from restorative justice to me. In these cases, people go not to us but to their community leaders and I don’t think we can do much about it except tut and shake our heads. It’s just the way things get done and it’s how things have always be done. Again from personal experience, this “entitlement to fix” mentality of some community leaders runs all the way up to Police Authority members.

That’s the way it is and Mr. Baggott probably know because he polices Leicestershire. Its a very tricky thing what with discussion of allowing Sharia Courts and all. I don’t have a solution. I don’t think locking up for witness interference or attempt pervert is going to do us a lot of good as we will be locking up our “key community stakeholders” If everybody ends up happy where’s the harm?

Restorative Justice

Goalposts Moving

PC Ellie Bloggs posted on her blog that manslaughter is the new murder. I have to take slight issue with that. Manslaughter is still the old murder, it is just that now it has a smart lawyer and a psychiatric report. I speak in terms of the gradual extension of the doctrine of diminished responsibility. This is a defence that can reduce murder to manslaughter. Was it a new law? Nope, just the usual Judges having another look at where the boundaries should be placed. I am acutely aware of the “unintentional irony” possible with the phrase “diminished responsibility.” We live in a political culture of diminished (or non existent) responsibility why should the same not be true of our legal system. My very layman’s view is that this defence boils down to “Its not my fault because there was something wrong with my head at the time.”

Thus any sensible defence lawyer will be looking for a psychiatric report containing such phrases as

Adjustment Disorder (Having problems adjusting to the fact that his wife has left him?)

Personality Disorder (Nasty Evil Untreatable Person)

Severe Personality Disorder (Very Nasty Evil Untreatable Person)

Depressed

Morbid Jealousy

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Persecutory Delusional Disorder

Alcohol Dependency Syndrome (Alcoholism with a PhD thesis?)

Acute Stress Reaction

Khat / Amphetamine Psychosis

In many of these cases, there was a prosecution expert report saying essentially “Nope, nothing wrong, fully responsible.” Somebody has an expert who is wrong but which one? It must be hell for a jury to decide, I can understand the CPS taking a plea just to get the matter to sentencing.

Well I think you all get the picture. Once a defence team hear that somebody has got one of these home, strangely more defendants seem to start suffering from it. Its a bit like nationality / religion / persecution story with asylum seekers, where the circumstances leading to a successful application become viral. The last thing you would ever want is for someone who kills another to be responsible in a life sentence sort of a way.

As usual I probably over simplify but basically the jurisprudence on murder has moved to the point where its worth a go at diminished responsibility if you can get the right report.

“Relax and Tell Me Why It Wasn’t Murder”

Hardened Targets

Well, for whatever it is worth issues at fabulous NightJack Towers have unexpectedly improved over the last few days and I am glad to say that as predicted, I am back ahead of Jim Webster.

A few bits of technical jiggery pokery behind the scenes for which thanks to my colleagues with a smattering of technological savvy.

Feels good to be typing again although I do wonder why it is that I have to be so careful in expressing an opinion when we value openness and honesty so much. As I understand it, I may be bringing the Police into disrepute by telling my truth. Ahh well, lets just see how it goes.

“Hello Again”

Bye For Now

Sorry and all but due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, I need to take a while off.

Nothing “job” related luckily and I hope to be back before Jim Webster. Infact there is some doubt over Mrs Night’s job and it wouldn’t work if we both ended up unemployed. Some dice are not worth throwing. It’s a “family comes first” thing but I know things will be OK soon and I’ll be back.

“This is Radio NightJack saying thankyou and goodnight”

Notes From The Glue Factory

This is going to be Eeyore’s gloomy post, I can just feel it.

I suppose it is an inevitable part of the aging process that after 15 years in the job, I am starting to feel like one of the dinosaurs we were hunting 10 years ago. I am finding it ever harder to keep standing in the face of the blizzard of new acronyms describing exciting new approaches to what I believe is a fairly simple job.

Ten years ago, we had “Organisational Change” which was an attempt to weld an inappropriate service industry model of Quality Management onto the Police Service. We were encouraged to self-criticise and to rationalise our work force. The important outcomes were a flattening of the middle management structure (now reversed), process mapping (which became the flow diagrams that underlie systems such as NCRS) and focus on achieving value for money. It could have been a defining time for our organisation if we had used it to mould a strong front line well supported by a small number of highly skilled specialist units. We could have slimmed down the civilian support side, PCSO’s would have remained a gleam in a penny wise pound foolish Home Secretary’s eyes. We could even have taken the time to ensure succession planning so that we wouldn’t have to be searching high and low for detectives who know how to detect and SIO’s who don’t have to read the manual for every job. In the end however it all turned out to be overpriced “MBA in a day” book nonsense taken on by under informed Senior Managers who did it to please the chaps at HMIC and the Home Office who in turn took it up to please the Treasury. I know, ’cause I was there.

Since then it feels like there has been a general thrashing about because nobody in Government has a clear idea of what they want us to do that lasts for longer than 18 months. Here, for the little it is worth from a career constable who does not have and has never had “helicopter vision”, are my thoughts.

1) Put your foot on the ball and look around. No more strategic changes for at least 5 years. I don’t care if we end up with the needle stuck on “Broken Windows” “Zero Tolerance” “Problem Solving” “Neighbourhood” “Community Focussed” “Sanctioned Detections” “Proactive” “Intelligence Led” “Megaphone” “High Visibility” or “Random Wander” just pick one and stick with it. We can learn to live with just about anything as long as things don’t keep changing every five minutes.

2) Get off our backs, you have been there long enough. Dynamic, thrusting, disorientating management is suitable for telephone sales, distribution warehouse managers and bond traders. We are an emergency service protecting life and property, upholding the criminal law and keeping civil order. It’s what we do. We’ve had a lot of experience at it and we used to be globally admired for how we did it. You have had your pound of flesh with Pay Settlements, PCSO’s, Stop & Account, CPS Charging Authority, Police Reform and NCRS. Now the time has come to either say outright that you don’t trust us and do away with us to start again or just let us get on with the job. Bollock us if we get it wrong by all means but don’t not trust us. Yes, it is true that by and large we tend to vote Conservative or similar, it has felt a bit like you are punishing us for that. I apologise on behalf of us all for any unpleasant experiences you may have had as a student. If it helps, I used to be Socialist and into direct action and I used to get stop checked a lot as well. I got over it.

3) Stop lying to us and about us. I guarantee that not one officer was really bothered about the money in the pay settlement. I guarantee that every officer in the country was deeply bothered that you weaselled on the arbitration. Your crime statistics have also become a cynicism magnet such that nobody knows what to believe any more. Is it up? Is it down? Doesn’t matter actually. What matters is are crimes being prevented, are criminals being apprehended, are the streets tolerably safe most of the time? Harder to measure I know. Stop making a fetish of the raw data. It can be interpreted so many ways but it all means absolutely nothing because the citizens don’t believe a word.

4) Get some proper lawyers who can draft law that can be enforced. Lets have it tight and without the Swiss cheese like consistency of the current crop. For example it must quietly alarm the Law Lords that you can’t draft watertight legislation to deal with terrorist suspects without bringing them to trial. I know it worries me. Perhaps you should ask them what they feel would be acceptable before you put pen to paper, just a thought, consulting stakeholders and all that.

So, anyway, here we stand on the edge of the current “New Golden Age” of policing and where are we that we weren’t at 15 years ago? I have to answer that I honestly don’t know. There has been so much change going on at strategic level that I haven’t really absorbed one lot before the next lot starts. It doesn’t seem worth committing to the new way when you have a strong suspicion that it will change within a year or two. Anyway I have been too busy dealing with crime and criminals. You can change the generals, you can bring up or withdraw the cavalry but I am still here in my trench plugging away with my rifle. Morale at the front hasn’t been good for a while but as long as you keep me in ammo and rations I will abide.

“Yum Yum More Thistles”

Dead To The World

Can’t go into too much detail in this post because it is still live. All that being said, I have spent a lot of time today with someone who scares me. Male, late teens, no appreciable criminal record or Police involvement. Jumped straight in at the very deep end of criminal involvement with absolutely no motivation, provocation or precursor offending. He was not an achiever in any sense at school and unsurprisingly he is not now, nor has he ever been, in employment.

So far, so not very unusual. I have met lots of people like him over the years. Some of them have been very bad people who have done evil things and some have been raging, violent damaging people. None of them has ever scared me. Depressed me, worried me, amused me yes but not scared me. This one left me feeling chilled. Asking round the Custody Office, all everybody got off him was the impression of something dead, something that looked human but wasn’t. Not just blank or masked or unresponsive, he was like the dead flat line on a heart monitor made flesh.

For the first time in over 15 years, I have looked into the eyes of a suspect and seen not one slight spark of humanity. I have seen more empathy in the eyes of my pet cat and he is an obligate carnivore.

Hopefully he is off on the big white bus in the morning and it would be a good thing for us all if he never came back. I don’t know if he was made this way or if something made him this way and I don’t particularly care.

“Doctor…..I can’t find his soul”

Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen

Witnesses.

Can’t live with them….errr that’s it. Nothing about witnesses is ever straight forward. From the finding to the getting to the persuasion needed to get a coherent account on a signed MG11. Unless you have to do it, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to sit down with someone and get them to tell you what they have seen.

The worst, by some way is “Flashback Memory Syndrome.” My, how very irritating that can be. You sit down, you talk, take notes, probe for detail, run through it all in verbal form and then an hour later you start writing. Round about page 11, the witness will furrow their brow, shuffle feet, hum and haw a bit and you know it is coming. “You know at the start when I said there were four of us there, well actually I forgot about Dave and Sylvia, they were there as well….Dave picked up the knife afterwards …I hope that doesn’t spoil anything.” No, no not at all, I only spent the first hour and writing the first 4 pages with you going through who was there and describing them. Why would I mind if two entirely new people pop into your head at page 11 when I am writing about the offence you saw.

Closely following in ability to frustrate is the “Something To Hide” witness who usually doesn’t want me to know about the cannabis they smoked on the night, or that they are actually living full time with a partner but not telling the Benefits Agency about it, or that they drove a car after drinking 3 pints. Look, its a serious enquiry, C.I.D. are here and we probably don’t really care as long as you tell us the truth. The last thing we need is a statement with provable lies in it. One of my favourite straight statements began along the lines of “I am the above named person and I live at the address overleaf. My nickname locally is Arthur after Arthur Daley. This is because it is well known in the local area that I will buy stolen property off people.” We knew this anyway, he knew we knew, the rest of the statement was important and involved stuff he had bought. Why not get the truth out in the open instead of the ridiculous “Man In The Pub” story. Someone once said, with truth, that its always the cover up that kills you.

Lets not forget the witnesses who are more keen on watching Corrie that speaking to you. Excuse me, hello, remember me, the detective in the corner. Yes, I’m trying to talk to you over then din from your offensively large and antisocially loud plasma screen TV. Why would you want to turn it off, or down even so that the neighbours can’t hear every word? I’ll come back when there’s nothing on. Oh there’s always something on.

Last in my canon of terrible witness stereotypes is the ditherer, the one where even as you put pen to paper, in your heart you know that it would be wise to ring ahead for the witness summons right away. It saves time. If you are a minor player witness and you don’t want to go to court, tell me and don’t sign the statement. Better still don’t tell me anything. It will save us both a lot of time and heartbreak in the end.

Lord knows I understand witnesses being reluctant to go to court. Beyond a chicory heavy cup of instant coffee and an over thumbed copy of Heat magazine circa 2002, there’s not a lot in it for them. The sudokus in the magazines have all been done. They wait like Christians under the Coliseum imagining that the defence will savage them. Its usually OK but people put themselves into such a state thinking that Perry Mason / Petrocelli is out there waiting to take the jury back to the night in question.

The worst I have had to date was facing a witness attending for the 5th time. Time 4 I had to break the news to him that the case was off again because the judges had gone out on some sort of day long Church Parade cum Splendid Dinner. He was livid. “Didn’t they know? Didn’t you all know this was coming? Why did you call us all when you knew you couldn’t use us today?” he hissed at me. Time 5 he was a quieter, sadder, embittered man. Turns out he had been made redundant by his small business employer. He could never be sure but he suspected that going missing for 4 days on abortive court cases hadn’t helped his cause. I tended to agree with him.

Are you sitting comfortably?