Police

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

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

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.

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

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

Some good news for Andy Coulson and David Cameron with Yates’s statement that there will be no new police investigation into the matter. It’ll be fascinating to see how much play this story gets in the papers tomorrow.

Meanwhile, in dear old Britain the paramilitarisation of our police continues. The Home Office has announced an extra £8m to help provide police forces in England with Tasers. It’s only a matter of time before someone is killed by one of these weapons. Watch this footage of a police arrest in Nottingham and tell me if you think the police actions are appropriate and proportionate. Granted, some context is missing from this film. The BBC reports that the man being tasered had, it is said, assaulted a police officer. Nonetheless, when he is tasered he is a) lying on the ground and b) there are two and then four police

The appalling thing – apart from his death, of course – about the death of Ian Tomlinson after he was assaulted by the Metropolitan Police during the G20 protests last week is that if it weren’t for the fact that Tomlinson collapsed from a fatal heart attack moments after he was attacked by the police, there’d be very little fuss about the incident. It would just be another example of heavy-handed police thuggery and, consequently, of no news value whatsoever. (incidentally, it also shows why it is important that the public be allowed to take photographs of the police.) The policeman who attacked Tomlinson who was, as the video footage