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| Britain |
| Breakdown of Law in England |
| 2007-05-16 |
| Police spent weeks doing door-to-door investigations to turn a single theft into 542 different cases to bolster crime-fighting targets, a national conference was told yesterday. The operation began after a child was accused of keeping £700 raised for Comic Relief through sponsorship. PC Simon Reed told the Police Federation’s annual conference that officers were sent to talk to every person who had sponsored the child. Mr Reed, who is a senior official of the federation, said that the case was dealt with by an English force but he would not go into further details. “This is a real case,” he said. “To bump up the targets they spent two weeks on door-to-door inquiries sending community safety officers to get 542 crimes. Five hundred is better than one.” The conference debated growing fears that performance targets are distorting traditional policing. But Home Office minister Tony McNulty told the conference: “If there are perversities in the system I want to know about them.” He told delegates that he did not apologise for measuring performance and establishing some targets, but if they were getting in the way of policing then changes must be made. Today John Reid, the Home Secretary, is due to speak to the conference and will face further questions over claims that officers are being told to make arrests for trivial offences to improve results. Yesterday Sam Roberts, a sergeant from North Wales, said that in her force officers have to meet monthly targets and get points for their work. She said that an arrest is worth ten points and so is a penalty notice for disorder. Police have complained that the notices, which are regarded by the Home Office as detecting crime, are being widely used for minor offences. Sgt Roberts said that in the force run by Richard Brunstrom, a controversial chief constable, an officer gets five points docked if they were slow to take statements and penalised another five points if a crime was three months old and not solved. Another officer told the conference that the performance demands left officers terrified. PC Sue Larry, from Essex, said that officers were given monthly targets for cautions, arrests or fixed penalty notices. Even trainee constables are expected to reach them or face poor performance reports. On Monday the federation gave details of a dossier of trivial cases where police had been forced to act rather than use their traditional discretion and warn a miscreant. The cases included a Cheshire man who was cautioned by police for being “found in possession of an egg with intent to throw”. A child in Kent who removed a slice of cucumber from a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and threw it at another youngster was arrested because the other child’s parents claimed that it was an assault. Questioned over the dossier yesterday, federation officials admitted that the sandwich case was more serious than they realised. The sandwich filling included egg and the victim was taken ill because they were allergic to it. Leaders in several forces said that they had not heard of the cases mentioned in their area, but the federation said that they had all come from officers who had responded to a national e-mail message requesting cases in preparation for the conference. In all there were about 30 cases and those publicised were the most serious, according to Meten Enver, the federation’s senior press officer. “The best I can do is take on good faith that they are accurate,” he said. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #1 The cases included a Cheshire man who was cautioned by police for being “found in possession of an egg with intent to throw”. A child in Kent who removed a slice of cucumber from a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and threw it at another youngster was arrested because the other child’s parents claimed that it was an assault. Questioned over the dossier yesterday, federation officials admitted that the sandwich case was more serious than they realised. The sandwich filling included egg and the victim was taken ill because they were allergic to it. While the foregoing is being presented as a "Breakdown of Law in England", the real enemy is shari'a. At present, few Britons have been able to bring themselves to admit that there is, in fact, an elephant in their nation's front parlour. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-05-16 17:18 |