We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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In trouble? Threatened? Who you gonna call? Well, call Ghost Busters if you like but for heaven’s sake do not call the Plod.
When a gang of travellers trespassed on her land and allegedly threatened to cut her throat with a chainsaw, Tracy St Clair Pearce dialled 999, expecting protection and reassurance from the police.
But while they took a statement and visited the nearby traveller camp, officers came back and confiscated her shotgun, saying it was a “sensible precaution”.
Well Tracy got quite a life lesson, eh? Where on earth did she get notion the State gives a damn about her right to self defence from some predatory ‘Traveller’ thugs?
The rule is simple… are you a home owner? Never. Ever. Call. The. Police.
They are not there to protect you. Just file this under ‘the State is not your friend’…
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Words to live by.
From the end of the linked article:
‘Police said they were working with the local council, which owns the land on which the travellers are staying, to find a solution to the problem. ‘
Words.
Fail.
Me.
You are the police, G*d-dammit – you’re not supposed to be looking to others ‘to find a solution’ when a crime is reported – you’re supposed to be the solution.
Criminal trespass, criminal damage, common assault, CSC2 or 3 (your mileage may vary), breach of the peace, offensive weapon – I’ve been (a lot of years) out of the UK legal sphere but those are the alleged offenses I can trawl just out of the newspaper report. But you don’t proceed because someone tells you that the alleged offender has ‘gone away’? What the hell kind of nursery-school are you running for a police force over there?
Get up and get after him! You are the f*cking police, you have unique powers to track him down and bring him to book. Use Them!
Words almost fail me, they really do.
llater,
llamas
I bet they didn’t confiscate the chainsaw!
Spot on Llamas.
By that logic, if a house is burgled and the burglar happens to be a Council tenant, would Plod be working with the Council to find a solution?
Ambush Predator has a cracker of a Plod story today. Some poor fucker was arrested for Racial harrassment for singing Kung Fu Fighting at a gig. Fuckin insane!
The link.
Indeed Alisa, not sure quite why the link did not originally show up… I may need to feed the server hamsters.
🙂
Christ. Maybe it’s just me being a Texan, but why aren’t these guys dead already?
We are not in Texas anymore…
Perry’s post, and the comments by llamas and Dick, say it all.
Tresspass, criminal damage, theft, death threats with a weapon……
Yet “the system” can (or rather will) do nothing.
Instead they concentrate on “fitting people up” (framing them) a practive for which Essex police is infamous.
As long as the people being fitted up are not from a special group, of course – that would be a violation of “minority rights”.
Nor is this bad police and criminal justice system confined to Essex.
A friend of mine is being prosecuted (techically by the CPS – but in reality by York police due to links between certain officers in both York and Selby with his former employer).
The charges?
Stealing a laptop – which he PAID his employer for and which was not delivered (it having gong missing whilst in the possession of the employer – indeed in the company office).
Yes – “stealing” something which was paid for and which the person does not have. So the employer gets to keep both the money and the goods – and have the victim charged with theft?
And, the second charge, buying some computer warrentees – which his employer ordered him to buy. The price was standard (agreed to by the employer at the time).
None of the facts above are in dispute.
So no charges can be brought?
Not at all – they have been. And the process of persecution has now being going on since 2009.
The man in question has already had one nervious breakdown (and was put on suicide watch).
This, of course, only encouraged his tormentors – including the local police.
I fear there will be an explosion of physical violence before the end – either directed at himself, or at his tormentors.
However, to go to the authorities with that fear would do no good – on the contrary they would use it as an excuse for more persecution and tormenting.
“So he might go nuts Ah?” “Better lock him up in the loony bin then – and fill him full of drugs….”
Think it can not happen?
Oh yes it can (and does).
A couple of points – which, I hope, cast some light on official attitudes.
Firstly…
The government decided that the number or people being found guilty of “fraud” (the scare quotes are to indicate that in modern English law this word covers all sorts of things that would not tradtionally have been regarded as fraud at all) was “too low”.
So it made various changes to criminal procedure – for example allowing the prosectution to change the charges in the middle of a trial (yes you are charged with one thing – then, in the middle of proceedings, you are suddenly on trial for something else, for which you have had no time to prepare a defence).
Think about it – you think you are doing well (you have proved that you could not possibly have done what the prosecution says you did) then, suddenly you are being accused of doing something else – you are knocked sideways, all your carefully prepared evidence and arguments are now of no use. And now you (forget your solictor and barrister, you are just another pay cheque as far as they are concerned) now have to contruct a new defence – against a prosectution who have unlimited resources.
And you must contruct your new defence in line with the vastly complicated rules of the English and Welsh Criminal Justice system – rules that no one will explain to you and which have no connection to reality and justice (for example “what really happened” has no meaning in English law – it is “what the evidence shows” which is a VASTLY different thing, especially when one considers the highly technical meaning of “evidence” and “shows”).
Also various changes made the old principle that “it is for the prosecution to prove its case” void – now (as in so many areas of modern English law) if you could not prove your innocence you were guilty.
“That makes it like French law” – not at all. Contrary to the myth, French law operates under a balance of probabilities- if you more likely not to have done something than to have done it then you walk (and if the other way round – you do not).
The various changes pushed the conviction rate up to over 80% – and the “target culture” government was overjoyed.
The point that a criminal justice system is supposed to arrive at JUSTICE (to convict the guiltyand to VINDICATE THE INNOCENT) did not occur to them. There was a target – it had been achieved, goody, goody, gumdrops.
Also there is the constant propaganda – almost like the “Obey, Obey” posters from a science fiction film or show.
The propaganda includes the endless “remember to plead guilty and get a third off your sentance” mantra.
Posters in police stations, in the waiting rooms of courts, even in letters from the the lawyer you are paying for (yes the DEFENCE lawyer – not the prosectuion, the defence have to put the propaganda line in, the new rules say they must mention it, every time they communicate with you).
The whole new system is designed with the assumption of guilt – an innocent person is someone who is not considered.
I am told that Scots law is still different (that it still, in part, clings to some of the principles of law), but I the English and Welsh legal system is something that is not worthy of any trust.
I’m in the process of moving to France over the next few weeks and one of the things I look forward to is the superior policing.
There are only a tiny fraction of the speed and police surveillance cameras, yet crime in Paris and the neighbourhood I’m moving to is ludicrously lower than in London. Pickpockets are a problem in the Champs Elysées and other crowded places and I daresay it is possible to find a dark alley where on can get mugged.
A key difference might be the lack of a binge drinking culture, I don’t know the figures, but I imagine that Saturday night in a Parisian E.R. is quieter than in any London equivalent. Of course buying alcohol day or night is easy, so supply is not the problem.
My point is that no police cameras, freer access to alcohol and much lower crime in France suggest that UK policing is at best incompetent.
Well, my one experience of the French police went something like
“What do you mean you want to report a crime? Can’t you see we are trying to watch television?”. This was on the Mediterranean very close to the Italian border, admittedly. It’s probably different in Strasbourg.
Well, at least we know the media is trustworthy and couldn’t possibly have left anything important out, like they didn’t on the last “the police are not you friend” article, about the Costco in Nevada.
BTW, Paul, I’m a little confused. Do English courts no longer allow defendants to present alternate theories of the crime?
I suppose one of these would be completely illegal even if it was on the legal limit.
Apparently you can build one for under £100 and don’t need any specialist tools like a lathe or anything.
http://www.youtube.com/user/LibertyAirguns#p/u/0/FsY0b_CRWpg
What winds me up is the arrogance of the police when they say they don’t want people taking the law into their own hands.
Who’s law is it if not the peoples?
‘We are not in Texas anymore…’
Maybe YOU aren’t !!
Russ is right !
Where I live ( Thank God ), somebody would’ve gotten shot, maybe several somebodies and a REAL good chance the bodies would not have been found because NO ONE would waste a lot of time looking for them !!
Someday I hope enough of you, in what I now consider ‘that pathetic country’, will grow at least ONE pair among you and start taking back some of the RIGHTS you have had STOLEN from you in the name of fairness, non-discrimination, and just plain old metrosexual-cowardice !!! ( why do you think the cops went after the lady and not the thugs ? Right. cowardice – nothing more )
My God
Easy on the trigg…er, the exclamation marks there, Jerry:-)
Sunfish: what was the end of that Costco story?
Hmph. This is why, for all its immense and protracted financial problems, I still think America is a better place to live than the UK. In most states, she could have shot them and she’d have been ok.
Tory wrote:
‘In most states, she could have shot them and she’d have been ok.’
Not So!
However, in most states, if she’d have called the local police and said ‘there are men here trespassing, cutting down my trees, threatening me with knives and chainsaws, cussing me out and indecently-exposing themselves’, the response would have been ‘we’ll be right there!’, and they would be, and there would be some pretty-serious steps taken to apprehend the wrongdoers.
And if an older, wiser officer had been there to counsel here he would say something like ‘I don’t know whether you have firearms about you’ (he has no way to know that unless she tells him) ‘but if you do, if I were you, I’d keep one handy, and if you feel your life is in real and immediate danger, you have the right to defend yourself with force’.
Nothing that these jamokes did (that has been publically described) rises to the level of threat that would justify the use of deadly force in all but one or two of the most-backward of US states. It’s mostly property crime and extremely obnoxious behaviour. In no US state can you shoot someone solely for cussing you out or making rude and unpleasant gestures at you, and expect to get away with it.
later,
llamas
There but for the passage of a bit more time goes us…the US is trotting at a good pace to catch you Britain. Some states/cities are real close to you on this issue now…
With our Great Leader using the bureaucracy to bypass Congress with enviro and gun laws (he is pushing to get the UN Small Arms Control treaty sent to the Senate which his partisans control) we seem to be embarking on the that path to unarmed and law bound serfdom.
Alisa-
The short version is, a man decided to engage in armed drugged douchebaggery with regrettable but predictable consequences. His father then tried to use his corpse as a ghetto lottery ticket and grab some headlines.
The longer version would take more time than I have the heart to spend. This thread is going to go full retard and imho it’s time to pull the handle.
Thanks Sunfish, I get the general picture. I realize that the following is much easier said than done, but it would be great if that kind of news’ items would get routine followups by whoever puts them out in the first place – especially while accompanied by a personal opinion.
Sunfish.
Firstly what “crime” is has changed radically.
And any defence of “but that just does not make sense” will be dismissed with the reply that “ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it” (even if it is impossible to find out what the law is in advance).
Also any alternative theory of events must be presented in a certain way.
Someone who stood up in court and tried to tell the truth (as a layman – unversed in the ways of the modern law) would be doomed, utterly doomed.
And rely on council?
This would be council that could not actually give a toss. They care about being paid – and that is it. They will go though the motions (so you have no formal grounds for complaint against them), but no more than that.
And, remember, what you are on trial for can change (in the middle of the trial), so if you think you are doing well (and the prosecution agrees that you are) you can suddenly find yourself on trial for something else.
For example, let us say that you have proved (beyond all reasonable doubt REVERSING the traditional burden of proof) that you were ordered by your employer to buy warrentees for a computer system.
Are you then innocent and walk?
Perhaps not.
You may find yourself on trial for filling in the wrong form or filling it in the wrong way.
That is “fraud by misaccounting”.
“Ah fraud – you mean your friend in Ulster pocketed some money”.
NO.
Under “fraud by misaccounting” you do not actually have to make a material gain of any kind. Just doing the paperwork wrong can be considered “fraud”.
“So do the paperwork right”.
What is the “right” way to do the paperwork is often very unclear, and the system may change its mind about what the “right” way of doing it is.
For example – “you did not do the paperwork this way – that is a crime”, “but I did – look I can prove it….”
“So you admit you did the paperwork that way – you criminal!”
To cut a long story short…..
Think of Alice in Wonderland (or the Looking Glass book) mixed with Kafka (specifically “The Trial”).
Then you have a good picture of the criminal justice system of England and Wales.