Police

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Johnson caught in the crossfire

The shrapnel from the phone-hacking scandal is scorching more flesh by the day. This morning, it’s not Andy Coulson nor the Metropolitan who are under question – but Alan Johnson and the Home Office. According to a leaked memo obatined by the Guardian, the department considered launching an independent inquiry into the Met’s investigation last year, but abandoned the idea after a Home Office official stressed that Scotland Yard would “deeply resent” any such action. The police, continues the official, would have taken it as a sign that “we do not have full confidence” in them. And so it went no further. Johnson was, of course, in charge at the

Monday

David Blackburn

Coulson loosens the noose

The New York Times has produced what last year’s Guardian phone-hacking campaign lacked: direct testimony against Andy Coulson. Sean Hoare and an unnamed former News of the Screws editor allege that the practice was widespread and that Coulson encouraged it. These new revelations have rightly forced the Met to re-consider the case. At present, the political furore surrounds the Met’s incompetence not just the allegations against Coulson. Bill Keller, executive editor of the NYT, has claimed categorically that the ‘police already have evidence that they have chosen not to pursue’. Critics always believed the original investigation’s remit was too narrow, and Yates of the Yard was less than convincing when

Saturday

Andrew Taylor

Fearful symmetry

Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the fourth in her series about Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier, ex-police officer and ex-husband who now works in a desultory way as a private investigator. Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the fourth in her series about Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier, ex-police officer and ex-husband who now works in a desultory way as a private investigator. Like its predecessors, Started Early, Took My Dog takes place in an exhilarating and occasionally infuriating version of modern Britain that reads as if designed by a theoretical physicist with a sense of humour. The novel is equipped with two epigraphs. The first is the rhyme beginning ‘For want of

Saturday

David Blackburn

PC Plod picks up a packet

Back in May, Sir Paul Stephenson, Britain’s most senior police officer, insisted that the police should forgo bonuses to prove that their sole motivation was a sense of public duty. Such grandiosity looks absurd when a freedom of information request reveals that the police were awarded more than £150million pounds in bonuses last year. The Telegraph has the excruciating details. ‘Bonus payments across all ranks have risen six per cent over the past three years. The extra payments were introduced in 2002 by David Blunkett, the home secretary at the time, to offer incentives for performance. Five types of bonus are available, including extra payments for officers who show “professional

Saturday

David Blackburn

Insane culture

I’ve just flicked on the television in search of fresh disasters. The news that Raoul Moat shot himself when cornered in a kessel is still ‘breaking’. In this heat I’d be surprised if he wasn’t oozing by now, but 24 hour news doesn’t concern itself with such trivialities. The ‘Yours Concerned’ BBC reporter intoned in horror that 2 tasers had been used in the operation.  Now, I wouldn’t arm the officious clown who asked why I was carrying a bottle of Crozes Hermitage through Waterloo station yesterday evening. I oppose the adoption of tasers in anything other than extreme circumstances. But Mr Moat was fairly extreme in my book, given,

Friday

Alex Massie

The Prisoner’s False Dilemma

Does prison work? I’m very pleased that John McTernan – who is one of the brightest and sanest of Labour buttons – is now ensconsed at the Daily Telegraph. Unfortunately he’s not inoculated against daftness: Suddenly it’s become fashionable to see ending short term sentences as common sense. Alex Massie is the latest victim of this strange policy meme. He praises “the presumption that prison sentences of fewer than three months are generally to be avoided on the reasonable grounds that they don’t do much good for or to anyone”. This is quite an odd argument. You need to be a fairly bad person to get a prison sentence –

Tuesday

Dale Bassett

The case for elected police commissioners

This afternoon I had the privilege to speak in a panel discussion at the National Policing Conference in Manchester, held jointly by ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) and the APA (Association of Police Authorities).  The subject was the future of policing – a particularly important one given the potential 25 per cent cut in budgets the service is expecting.   To the credit of the Police, they’re already pioneering examples of the kind of changes that can save a lot of money while seeing services improve. Surrey, for example, has greatly increased the proportion of civilian staff in its force, acknowledging that they can do many jobs better and

Peter Hoskin

Hugh Orde’s rhetoric is encouraging for Osborne

Whatever happened to Sir Hugh Orde?  A few months ago, he was threatening to resign over the Tories’ plans for elected police commissioners.  But later, in a speech to the Association of Chief Police Officers, he seems to have come over considerably more cooperative.  On spending cuts, he stresses that police numbers will likely be reduced, but adds that “we fully understand that all will have to share the pain.”  And on elected police commissioners, the worst he can bring himself to say is that “the test is reconciling it with operational independence for policing … we have an absolute right to clarity on how this system will work.”  There

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Death by Taser: Coming to a Street Near You

Meanwhile, in other police news, Coppers in Birmingham are being armed with Tasers as a matter of course. Until recently, only firearms officers were so equipped. Sadly, this means that it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed by one of these things. That’s what happens when you start flinging 50,000 volt charges about. This isn’t a question of if but of when. It will happen. What’s more, I strongly suspect that handing more weapons  – even of the supposedly non-lethal type – actually makes everyone less safe. When the police are encouraged to think of themselves as paramilitaries then we shouldn’t be surprised when they start acting

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Another Disgraceful Prosecution

Like the Devil’s Kitchen, I’m late getting to this story travesty. The most enraging aspect of it is, of course, that one can no longer be surprised by this kind of behaviour. Yet again the police and the criminal justice system prove themselves out of touch with common sense or decency. A grandmother has been jailed for five years for possessing a “family heirloom” World War II pistol. Gail Cochrane, 53, had kept the gun for 29 years following the death of her father, who had been in the Royal Navy. Police found the weapon, a Browning self-loading pistol, during a search of her home in Dundee while looking for

Monday

Alex Massie

A Disgraceful Prosecution that Should Shame Britain

Let’s suppose you were heading off on holiday and then let’s suppose that snow had closed the airport and your plans were ruined. You might be vexed and then you might post a message on Twitter that hinted at your frustration. Suppose this Tweet read something like, oh, I don’t know, this: “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” Would you then be surprised to be arrested under the Terrorism Act? I think you might be. Well today poor Paul Chambers was found guilty under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 for sending an “indecent, obscene or menacing” message.

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.