Seeing the light

Click for linky

Shoulder mounted laser? Wow, like the fucking Predator. We'll show those little pond-life estate scum next time they get a bit fighty, eh lads? What they gonna do when we've each got a las... er... oh.

Expect laws restricting the purchase of welding goggles and mirrors to be around the corner, affecting only the law-abiding, non-rioting majority who won't simply steal them when they want them.

/ facepalm

Justice is also a dish best served cold

Over at Max Farquar's blog and one or two others is an horrific story of a very young child, a baby in fact, who has been brutally raped. As yet few details are known - even the baby's gender isn't certain and whether the poor kid is critical or has in fact died from the injuries is also up in the air. Other than that a really nasty assault with some terrible injuries has taken place and that the parents were arrested and then bailed far more is not known than is known.

Max, who I have a lot of time for as I agree with much of what he says, wrote this:

North Kent police have said that a 35-year-old man was subsequently arrested, on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and rape, along with a 33-year-old woman. They were both from the Gravesend area and were detained in a North Kent police station. However, they have now been released on bail.
Released on bail?
WTF! A one month old baby has been raped!
Who is the 35-year-old man, that is walking free after raping a one month old baby? Is he the father or is he the boyfriend of the 33-year-old woman that has also been released on bail? Do we presume she is the mother? Someone, somewhere out there must know who these loathsome, disgusting and unbelievable evil people excuses for human beings are!
It’s time to name and shame.

Here's my problem.

With respect to Max, we don't as yet know that anyone's walking free after raping a baby and so no it's not time to name and shame. It's time to thoroughly investigate, identify the guilty party(s), build an absolutely watertight case with extra attention to detail given to all the human rights - yes, I know, but hear me out - of any initial suspects and the eventual accused. And there are two reasons - first is that we all know the police screw up from time to time and arrest the wrong people, and right this second we can't honesty say that those arrested are guilty of anything. Suspected, yes, sure, but right now they haven't even been charged and in law they are innocent 'til proven guilty, just the same as everyone else. This is not a triviality. This is not showing more concern for the human rights of the perpetrators, who I repeat are not as yet known to be the perpetrators, than it is for the victim. This is absolutely essential for law to work at all. As Bolt's Sir Thomas More put it:

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

The second reason is more prosaic. I'm appalled by this crime and I want to know that someone is punished for it. I want to hear that they got the bastard, that he was tried, convicted and locked away like an animal. And if he appeals I want to be confident that he's got no hope at all and the Appeals Court will reject it in very short order because the police and CPS did a thorough job, cutting no corners and respecting the accused's rights at every step of the process. I said they were important, and that's why - it's not just that some accused really are innocent but also that you don't want it to become a get out of jail free card for the guilty ones later on.

Naming and shaming now, if the eventual accused is indeed the one who gets named, puts that all that at risk if the defence persuades the court that it's prejudiced the jury and a fair trial is no longer possible. And before we start launching into defence barristers, see above - if you'd been charged and you were innocent you'd be wanting the barrister to do absolutely everything, play every angle at every stage, to get you out of there and back to your life, and if we want that for innocents accidentally put on trial or maliciously fitted up then it's got to be done for the crims too. It's not perfect but that way we know. If there's no trial, no guilt can ever be proven, and I don't trust British mobs to get it right when people have been known to attack the house of a paediatrician.

The disgust I feel over the idea that someone of technically the same species could do this to a tiny baby meant that I struggled to blog anything right away. There is no just punishment for this, none. There can't be. We're not a society that tortures people to death over extended periods anymore, and we're the better for it, but even if we were I'm not even sure Leg-iron's suggestion of hacking their legs off at the knee and standing them in salt is enough. Death certainly isn't, and not just because it'd be sending him off to a hell I don't believe in but because even if I'm wrong and there is one the bastard would get the opportunity of absolution before he got the rope or the needle or whatever. Spending the remainder of his miserable existence hearing the whispers, knowing from the beginning that the first beating - and worse - will come sooner or later, and then over the years learning from the less than gentle ministrations of fellow prisoners that the most frightening sight is an absence of screws and the worst sound is the small metallic click of a door that should remain shut being quietly unlocked, being moved for his safety and living in terror of the moment that who he is and what he's in for will become known in the new prison, that might well be the closest thing a civilised society can do for a just punishment.

We should want as many waking moments of this creature's remaining life as possible to be filled with nervous fear, and as many filled with terror and pain as other guests of Mrs Majesty's prison system are able to supply. The best chance of all that happening is to name no names except to police officers. If folks on the blogosphere or Twitter or Facebook blab enough to screw up a trial, or even any chance of there being a trial, then they'd almost be accessories to the crime. Because the perpetrator of this evil will go free and those who named him will all have helped. Jeez, if he gets a new ID and life somewhere at taxpayers' expense the blogs and twitterers and facebookers might as well have clubbed together and bought the bastard a ticket abroad and a clean docs.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Quite often so is justice.

Well, that didn't take long

I've been meaning to get round to blogging on the actions of John Pike, the American cop who calmly sprayed capsicum directly in the faces of some of Occupy protestors sitting peacefully in a row offering no resistance. On the one hand I'm not a huge supporter of the Occupy mob and think that many of them are aiming at the wrong target (business rather than government) and protesting something that doesn't truly exist (the free market). It all rather smacks of the anarchists for a bigger government protests in London last year. However, free speech and association and all that, as enshrined by our American cousins in their Bill of Rights, which makes it troubling that it was in America - Land of the Free, etc - in which a cop unloaded a canister full of capsicum spray right in the faces of some protestors sitting Gandhi style, unresisting and offering no violence.

However, not for the first time events have overtaken my blogging efforts and John Pike, whose identity and contact details quickly made their way online, has now become an internet meme. Those UK readers who are old enough to remember Tony Hart's gallery music can start humming it now.*

I thought this only worked on TV

Well, if it works for internet fraudsters why shouldn't offering something for nothing work for police?

More than a dozen suspected criminals have been arrested as part of a British undercover sting operation after being duped into ringing the police to claim free beer.
Derbyshire Police said the suspects were detained after officers sent letters to a string of people who had evaded arrest for several months, urging them to claim a complimentary crate of beer from a marketing company.
A total of 19 suspects, wanted in connection with a range of offences including robbery, burglary and sexual assault, fell for the hoax and called the number on the letters, which put them through to officers based at Chesterfield Police Station.
Police then arranged a time and date for the free alcohol to be dropped off, but instead arrested those awaiting free beer at locations in Chesterfield, Staveley, Alfreton, Ilkeston, Sheffield and Nottingham.

I can't help thinking that at least one of them is still going "But what about me free beer, innit?" to his solicitor.

Guilty 'til proven innocent

I was going to blog on the arrest (with free strip search thrown in) in Germany of Tracey Molamphy on a charge she knew nothing about relating to an incident involving someone she was with more than 12 years earlier, but SadbutMadLad has already done a thorough job on it over at The Raccoon Arms.

Was she unlawfully arrested? No, because the EAW is law. Was she unfairly treated by the German police? No, they were following their lawful procedures. So if everything was above board and followed the law what was wrong? The fact that no evidence needs to be shown to back up the extradition request.

The only thing I'll add is that thanks to the European Arrest Warrant and its provision for detention with absolutely no prima facie evidence, and of course the feckless politicians who signed the UK up to it, that nasty little phrase 'Guilty 'til proven innocent' effectively applies to everyone living in the UK. For that matter it applies to everyone else in the world who might visit any part of Europe - if a British citizen can be picked up in Germany over an incident in Portugal then there's no reason why an American or an Aussie or a Japanese tourist visiting London couldn't be arrested over a years old accusation they no nothing about in a completely different part of Europe. Any protection that might be afforded by a statute of limitations will depend on which country issued the warrant since many don't have one.

'Kinell!

Two old gun clichés

When every second counts the police are only minutes away.

When you criminalise possession of guns only criminals will have possession of guns.

Even as clichés go these two are pretty well worn, yet not only are both still true nonetheless true but from time to time that's demonstrated in a single incident. That's right, I am about to give you an example of that. How'd you guess?

A great-grandfather has told how he used a baseball bat to fight off two thieves who were ransacking his gun cabinet and stole a cache of weapons.
The 70-year-old grandfather-of-10, who has one great-grandchild, told Perthnow he swung his bat at both young men who were smashing into his gun cabinet and attempting to steal his utility at his Alexander Heights home early today.

Now straight away the problem with this should be obvious. Thieves were stealing his guns - his unquestionably legally owned guns which he kept in gun cabinets in accordance with WA and Commonwealth law - and he had to defend his property, and his life if they'd arrived armed or managed to load a gun and turn it on him, with a fucking baseball bat. Surely it's not just shooters who can see the stupidity in this, but just in case it's not I'll note that if they'd stolen a car from his driveway the law would not have insisted that if he chose to give chase he should do so on nothing faster than a bicycle.

Oh, and on that subject they did nick his car too.

He described how he was awoken just before 5am to find his prized Ford XR6 ute on the driveway with its doors wide open and a man smashing his gun cabinet open with a sledgehammer.
[...]
John, who lives at the home with his wife, was awoken by loud bangs from his garage just before 5am.
When he went outside to investigate he found the men trying to break into his gun safe and fought with both of them with a baseball bat before they fled in his ute.
As the robbers drove off John smashed the vehicle's windscreen with the baseball bat.

And predictably enough the ute was found burned out a short time later, minus the six guns the thieves had got away with, natch. As Vincent Vega put it, what's more chickenshit than fucking with a man's automobile? Well, I suppose there is nicking his guns as well, safe in the knowledge that he's highly unlikely to have one out and ready to use to defend himself against you because that's against the law, and the overwhelming majority of legal gun owners are scrupulously law abiding no matter what they might think. And the recently disarmed John is a case in point.

"I've got a crook hip [he took a blow to the side from the sledgehammer - AE] but I'm not as sore as they are,'' he said.
"If they came back I wouldn't have any hesitation . . . (to do it again).
"I confronted them because this is my house, and I've got a right to protect my property.
"Had I had a pistol in my hand, I would have used that as well.
"They've got no right to come in here, I would have used anything to stop them, I've got every right to do that.''
[...]
He shrugged off suggestions he was a hero for standing up to the two thugs.
“It’s just something you do to protect yourself and your property and I feel we’ve got every right to,” he said.
“I’d do it again now, right now, if they were here.
“I think everybody should have a pistol under their bed and use it.
“Had I had my pistol under the bed I would have used it and bugger the consequences . . . this has got to stop.”

But of course John did not have his pistol under the bed, because neither John nor anyone else here is allowed to keep a pistol under the bed. Yes, at least law abiding Australians are allowed to have pistols - providing the local police give permission and that owners comply with various state and Commonwealth laws, of course - and clearly this is a better situation than not being allowed to have one at all. But it's not as good as being at liberty to have one, especially since if self defence is not a valid reason for wanting a pistol, or any other type of gun for that matter, and the law insists that you keep it unloaded and locked away then it's quite useless when dealing with sledgehammer wielding intruders anyway. Jeez, you can have half a dozen guns and for all the good they do you locked away you might as well defend yourself with a baseball bat and hope for the best. Oh, actually that's exactly what happened, isn't it? John didn't have his pistol to hand and resorted to a baseball bat because at least he's allowed to have that lying around, and now doesn't have his pistol or his other guns at all anymore by the sounds of things.

Six guns were stolen including a shotgun and two air rifles.

Terrific, score six for the bad guys, even if John did get a few good whacks in with the bat before they got away. And what about the good guys?

A description of the thieves has not yet been issued by police.

Well, that's not exactly an auspicious start, is it? And of course it's not long before we're reminded to leave it all to the police.

WA Police Sergeant Graham Clifford said the law did give people the right to defend their lives and property, but it was a grey area.
If the defence went too far and became a form of punishment, people would probably be charged, he told AAP.

Which is fair enough, but I don't think home owners dealing with intruders, possibly violent and possibly armed, really give a tinker's stuff about punishing them for breaking in. Driving them off or failing that making them no longer a risk to the occupier and any family there, yes, and if achieving that means one or more intruders lying face down and approaching ambient temperature in a pool of their own vital fluids, well, so be it. Nobody made them break in to someone else's home and put the occupants in fear for their lives, so the consequences of their decision to commit crime are on their own heads. But punishment? Seriously, Sgt Clifford, how many people do you think would honestly give a stuff about punishing intruders when just getting rid of the danger they present is all that matters in that instant?

``Really what we'd prefer people to do is back off and observe and let us know what's going on and we'll chase them down the track,'' Sgt Clifford said.

And I wouldn't want anyone other than trained, professional police investigators doing that, but as for the backing off part, what about when you're at home and have nowhere to back off to? We know we're still supposed to call the cops and let you guys sort that out too, but the problem is the intruders are there already. And in case it's not clear why that's a problem that can be tackled only by people being at liberty to defend themselves we only need to ask one simple question: how long did it take WA police to respond to the report of a break in at the home of a registered firearms owner?

If it was more than five seconds there's your answer.

Another one for the Ambush Predator's collection

Yesterday a Perth teenager said she'd been raped whilst out jogging, and today...

A 15-year-old girl who claimed to have been raped while jogging in Mt Claremont has now confessed to police that it was a lie.

Why? Just... why? I can sort of understand, though certainly not condone, crying rape after a drunken shag or one night stand that's regretted the morning after, but from the sounds of what the ABC say she simply made the whole thing up. Unfortunately the made up description of the made up man who made up attacked her certainly fits the description of a lot of men who are actually real.

Police launched a search on Monday for a sexual predator, who the girl claimed was 20 to 30 years of age, fair-skinned with long light brown hair and had an Australian accent.
[...]
Police appeared hesitant about the claims but still issued a description to the media, which included that the assailant wore "long dark pants and a dark hooded jacket".

Okay, the lie came out before anyone was arrested but that description would have put thousands of men in Perth in the frame, and there's every chance a few of them were in Mt Claremont and wearing dark trousers and a dark hoodie. And if one of them had been dragged in what would she have done then? Confessed that it was all a lie? One would hope so but since these things are known to escalate it's not beyond the realms of possibility that she'd have said: 'Yes, officer, that's the man.' Okay, because he'd done nothing the charges would eventually be dropped or at worst he'd be found not guilty - well, probably - but even an overnighter in the cells along with the associated DNA collection and so on is enough to taint a life.

Senior Constable Naomi Smith yesterday said the girl was still being interviewed about her claims and police were still waiting for a forensic analysis from the girl. [Forensics? Possibly what prompted the admission that it was made up? - AE]
Today Senior Constable Smith said police were now following up the circumstances of the report with the girl and her family

Which I hope means they're considering charging her. It may not have gone very far and it didn't, thank goodness, actually point the finger at any individual, but all the same this could so easily have been an horrific experience for some innocent but unlucky bloke. I'm not normally one to support prosecutions on the basis of what could have happened, though in practice the police in most jurisdictions don't seem shy about the idea and I doubt West Oz is an exception, but even if nobody is arrested after a false rape claim it is not a victimless crime. I'm not talking about the unquantifiable effect it has on real rape victims, though I'm by no means saying that that doesn't happen. No, the victim is everybody who pays for policing since the police themselves have had their time wasted, and because they have much better things to do than follow up on crimes that have simply never happened - an excellent example of which is coming up tomorrow - I don't have a problem when they charge people for it.

Happily this shouldn't be too hard to put a dollar value on for when people admit they've spun the police a fantasy story. So, what's the going rate for some initial forensics, a Senior Constable for about a day or so and I imagine several other officers for at least several hours?

I predict (not) a riot

After what happened in Britain early last month it'll be interesting to see what happens in Sydney as a result of this.

Five police officers surround a car, a number of them with their weapons pointed at a man who was reportedly driving around Sydney streets armed with a gun yesterday.
Moments later, the gunman was dead. Police won't say whether officers or the man fired first - or whether the man fired at all - nor reveal how many shots were fired.
[...]
The drama unfolded on Castle St, Castle Hill, about 12.45pm after a 000 caller told police of a man armed with a gun driving on Showground Rd. Minutes later, the Toyota Hilux was spotted at the intersection of Pennant and Castle Sts, near the police station.
Plainclothed officers ran from the station, and Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford said there was a confrontation with the driver and a number of shots were fired.
[...]
A handgun was removed from the vehicle and placed on the nearby median strip.

As Australian police are routinely armed and in most states are often equipped with tasers as well these sort of incidents are probably more common here. In fact Sydney police shot a guy in his own home only a couple of days ago, apparently as the result of a misunderstanding. And of course Sydney can riot as well as the next city, as the 2005 Cronulla riots showed. Still, despite the fact that so far it appears to share a few things in common with the Mark Duggan shooting in London (not in the race of the dead man because that's not been made public yet and he could be Mr Average White Guy for all we know right now, but just in that police quickly surrounded a car, shot an occupant and recovered a gun) I don't think the shops of Pitt Street Mall are going to need to rush out to buy window boarding before the first wave of looters hits because I don't think anything's going to happen.

And I can't really put my finger on why. I don't think it's because this does happen a bit more with armed cops about and that people are blase about it - in fact if you think about it in terms of incidents per X number of 'police hours armed' it's probably quite rare, and possibly rarer than in countries where the police are not all armed all the time (ironically the last coppers I saw before I left the UK were wandering around with MP5s and a semi-auto pistol each). Perhaps it's just that I don't get the same feeling of them and us with Australian police, or at least not to the same extent as in the UK.

That might not be at all representative of the thoughts of Aussies but it's the way I see it, so my feeling is that people will watch and wait and see what comes up as a result of the investigation. If it had happened in Britain right now I reckon people would already be pulling garden walls apart for the bricks.

There's never a cop around when you want one - UPDATED

And The Thinking Policeman may have the reason why.

My boss recently told me that I had not been attending the Town Centre Management Group meeting. I had been missed and they would like me to attend. So I attended. The agenda had nothing on it that I thought need my presence but clearly I was wanted. Item 7 on the agenda was the turning on of the Christmas lights in the High Street. I was excited to hear that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will be the pantomime at the local theatre this year and the actors taking part will be invited to turn on the lights. The actors will stand on the first floor balcony of the town hall. Concern was expressed that people would not be able to see the dwarfs on the balcony. A suggestion was made that the dwarfs could stand on a bench so they could easily be seen. There was then concern that the dwarfs might get caught up in the excitement and fall off the balcony. The solution: We can stand the dwarfs on a bench but have them all wear harnesses and tie them to the building so they cannot fall.

So, nearly two hours into a meeting that has no relevance to the police at all, we have discussed for nearly half an hour whether some dwarfs from the local panto can stand on a bench and whether they should be harnessed and tied to the building to ensure they don't fall off the balcony. I kept having to remind myself, this was not a dream...

Now obviously that's not going to mean that every copper is busy in Town Hall meetings about irrelevant crap all the time - Lex Ferenda is an Inspector after all - but the point is that for however long he was in that meeting for was time in which he wasn't able to do what he's paid for. The guy clearly prefers to do that policework thingy over boring meetings about how to prevent the differently tall (or whatever is the PC term) from falling off things, but attending the meeting sounded less like a choice and more like a three line whip. And it's not like it's never been suggested that it applies to rank and file officers to an extent as well, because of course it has.

Or try the Town Hall - there's probably at least one down there

Let's just remind ourselves of a few salient points. In Britain the law abiding citizen's ability to defend himself is very restricted and they're expected to call on the police, either literally because there has been a crime or figuratively because the very existence of the police force is supposed to deter crime in the first place. There are roughly 145,000 police officers in England and Wales, so at the most basic level there is only one cop for every 380 people, and assuming that roughly 95% of people are law abiding citizens that one cop has about 19 crims to worry about. That cop needs to eat, sleep, have time off, take holidays, and will occasionally be unwell and unable to work, so the workload is divided and realistically it's probably closer to one on-duty cop for every thousand or so people, each of whom has about 50 crims to worry about. And if they're spending half their time doing paperwork and desperately wishing that they weren't twiddling their thumbs listening to plans to attach safety harnesses to dwarfs (side note: did anyone think to ask the dwarfs, who are adults and probably more experienced with the needs of dwarfs than anyone at the meeting, what they thought? I'll leave a comment asking at The Thinking Policeman, but somehow I doubt it) then it's more like one active cop per hundred criminals and per couple of thousand citizens. Who, as I mentioned, are prevented from doing very much if they attract the attention of one of those criminals while the nearest copper is dealing with one of the other 99 crims or 1999 members of the public.

Marvellous.


UPDATE - over at The Thinking Policeman Lex Feranda comments that they did ask the dwarfs - all in the name of consulting the relevant community, natch - and incredibly decided that maybe tying them to a wall might not be a good idea. But before you think that meant actually letting them decide for themselves whether to stand on the bench it should be added that the elf'n'safetee knob said that the council would be liable no matter what so it sounds like everyone stands on the balcony and the crowd get to look at Snow White (or Mild Albinism with Narcolepsy, I imagine) and the Seven Hats.

Another sensationalist headline brought to you by...

... The Mainly Fail.

And I love the way the caption, assuming we can't see for ourselves what's in the picture, spells out that an armed officer is holding his gun right over the actual head of a waittaminute...

Perhaps the article needs a subheading, something like "Well, obviously not the precise moment it's pointed at his head unless teenagers literally have their heads up their arses these days, but if any guns were actually pointed at heads rather than just chests or torsos or whatever than it was probably a moment quite near then". Because I'm sure The Mail wouldn't be beating the story up or have a grasp of anatomy so poor that they'd think that gun was aimed at the kid's head.

Tip of the Akubra to the Ambush Predator.

Police, Camera, Industrial Action

A few months ago I had a short comment conversation with Lex Feranda, The Thinking Policeman, about the British police and industrial action.

Angry Exile said...
How far are you barred from taking industrial action? I mean we all know you're not allowed to strike (and I'd agree that having no right to withdraw your labour is unreasonable and immoral, although you did all sign up to it when you joined). But surely you can take other forms of action. For example, can you refuse to work overtime? I can't see how anything can prevent a work to rule, although it sounds like you lot are tied down by so many rules already that people might not notice...
[...]

Lex Ferenda said...
The police in this country are legally barred from taking ANY industrial action and to encourage or incite another to do so is a criminal offence, so you cannot even suggest it.

If you are required to work overtime you have to. If you are required to work on a day off, you have to. To refuse would amount to gross misconduct and possible dismissal.

You don't often get me expressing sympathy for the police, but that simply sucks balls. Yes, I know they signed up for it but Christ, if any other employer in any other line of work imposed conditions that allowed them to discipline people for wanting to have their days off or actually go home at the end of the shift instead of working overtime... well, I was going to say there'd be demands to have laws made against it, but of course there already are. Not for the poor rozzers though.

As a libertarian I feel that everyone should be free to withhold their labour in a dispute, which is basically all the 'right to strike' is.* So of course I think this restriction on British police is immoral and, because I bet some of the compulsory overtime is unpaid, is distinguished from slavery mainly by the fact they do get a base salary and they are allowed to quit (admittedly quite a big distinction, but you get the picture). Whether the ban on any kind of industrial action is, as a practical matter, a good thing for the rest of the public has always had me sitting on the fence. When the thin blue line is all that protects citizens then not letting them take industrial action is understandable, but as I hinted at in the last post I'm far from convinced the thin blue line is far too thin when the chips are down anyway. On top of that in recent years politicians have had that thin blue line turn on citizens in one way and another, criminalising people for technical offences and victimless crimes. And of course one that gets up the noses of Mr and Mrs Middle England on a fairly regular basis is being done for motoring offences, especially speeding, because it's pretty obvious that there's a vast gulf between being a few km/h over the limit and driving like a weapons grade knob. But the pollies like clear up rates and the police can get easy results with speed traps. Just as an example, does anyone want to bet that when the dust settles in the areas of those UK forces that have had riots there will have been more looters arrested than speeding tickets issued for the same period? Or do we think the automated cameras and civilian operated camera vans will have pinged far more for speeding, virtually none of whom will have crashed as a result, than the police will eventually charge with walking down the road with a looted flatscreen TV.

So keep that in mind when I show you what can happen where police are able to take industrial action.

VICTORIA'S water police have plonked a boat between oncoming traffic and a speed camera operator as officers upped the ante in a pay dispute.
The police and the state government are locked in a stalemate over the police union's claim for a 4.5 per cent increase. The government is offering 2.5 per cent.
Leading Senior Constable Matthew Blythe, of Williamstown police, said the water police parked their boat in front of a speed camera to do checks, the first ones conducted inland at a busy intersection.

''Currently, we've got protected actions in place, and one of those actions is to pull up and do a welfare check.''
This, he said, would let the public know that there was a speed camera there.
''Now, the speed cameras are designed to reduce traffic speed, so us being there still has that effect.
''Potentially, if the motoring public see a police vehicle - this time it will be a police boat with its lights on and a police vehicle towing it - logically, if you see any emergency vehicle with its lights activated, it would slow you down.
''So, in theory, people will slow down and not get booked.''
Water police may repeat the procedure in Werribee and Geelong.

Makes me think there's something to be said for letting the cops take industrial action after all, especially as for many police it's very much a vocational line of work and I highly doubt they wouldn't still show for real emergencies.

* Of course the freedom to withhold one's labour does not necessarily mean an automatic right to keep the job.

The (inevitable) riot posts #5 - A call for arms - UPDATED

Click for links:

Two thoughts occur, first of which is good on those who've woken up to the reality that the police simply cannot protect everyone in this kind of situation. They just can't. The Met has about 33,000 officers, and with Specials and PCSOs it's pushed up to about 42,000 or so, plus whatever can be spared from other forces.* Sounds like a lot but of course they can't just stop all other areas of policing or expect officers to go without sleep of food, and if neighbouring forces have serious problems of their own there may be little help available - and of course several now do. They'd be doing well to have 25,000 cops on London's streets and probably even that's a stretch. And since London has somewhere between 8 million and 14 million people depending on where you choose to stop counting you don't need the rioting, looting, scumbag proportion of its society to be even a significant minority for the police to be outnumbered. One percent of ten million outnumbers even optimistic police numbers 4 to 1, and that's before you consider the sheer size of the area that needs to be protected.

Of course the police are equipped and trained and so on, and most importantly are backed up by the state's monopoly on force, so they will eventually get the upper hand and restore order. But that's not much comfort if your home or your business or whatever building or bit of ground that's precious to you and your local community has been wrecked, burned and pillaged by marauding hordes of ferals. The choice then is a simple one: hope like hell the police happen to be around if trouble happens in your neighbourhood or at least come quickly enough to stop it, or to take responsibility for that protection yourself with whatever tools you have and whatever makeshift barriers and weapons you can devise. The police won't like it and have already ordered some to get back in their homes and leave it to them - instructions that I sincerely hope have been ignored pending restoration of the police's ability to protect innocent citizens. And clearly it's not without its risks as those few deaths of people trying to protect what's theirs show. But just living or running a business in the wrong part of the wrong town is a risk in itself at the moment, so it's hardly surprising that a number of people have decided to grab whatever they have that swings well and looks like a looter would steer clear of, and take up stations.**

And the second thought that occurs? It'd be a damn sight easier for people to protect themselves and their property if ownership of the best tools for doing so - firearms - wasn't banned for all of Britain's persistently law-abiding non-offenders, and there might have been less looting if the pricks with the bricks thought there was a fair chance there'd be someone with a loaded gun behind the glass ready to defend the place.

UPDATE - as a follow up to one of the footnotes below, from The Daily Mail article linked above (my bold):

Amarjit Singh Klair from nearby Hounslow, who helped rally the men, said: ‘We are working along side the police, they’re doing what they can but they are stretched.
‘Why shouldn’t we defend our homes, businesses and places of worship? This is our area. There’s lots of talk about it kicking off here. But we’re ready for them.’
Hooded youths could be seen scouting the area but appear to be have frightened off. Only a handful of police could be seen patrolling the area.
The Sikh community were running a military style operation to protect themselves after almost 100 rioters tried to attack the heart of the area early on Tuesday.
With few police around, elders at London’s largest Sikh temple in Havelock Road resorted to telephoning male worshippers for help.
Last night groups of Sikh men stood guard at different parts of the town, keeping in touch via their mobiles.
One man in his 20s said: ‘They caught us off guard last night but we still managed to get people together to protect the area. We saw them putting on their balaclavas preparing to jump out of three cars but we charged at them and managed to chase them off.’

Props to the Sikhs - I've always liked the ones I've met, and as a group they seem to know when to stop fucking around and start relying on themselves.


* I haven't counted the City of London police as they have less than a thousand to add and if trouble spread to their patch I could imagine they might to borrow manpower from the Met.
** It's also not surprising, or not to me anyway, that the among the first to do so were Sikhs defending their temple. They're not daft and not shy of taking responsibility for their own defence.

QOTD

From the ASI blog:

A police state that spread itself so thinly in order to control every one of us has failed in its core duty of protecting the peaceful majority's lives and property from the shocking rapacity of a violent minority.

Not a lot I can add to that.

The (inevitable) riot posts #3 - "Oops" say the Met?

Those reports that the bullet in the police radio was a police bullet are starting to firm up a bit, and it's not looking all that good for the Met.

Britain's police watchdog said on Tuesday it found no evidence that Mark Duggan, whose death at the hands of police last week was the catalyst for unprecedented riots in London, had fired a gun at officers.
"At this stage there is no evidence that the handgun found at the scene was fired during the incident," said the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) in an update on last Thursday's fatal shooting in Tottenham, north London.
[...]
he IPCC said that two shots were fired by one firearms officer, and a post-mortem examination revealed that Duggan received a gunshot wound to the chest, which killed him, as well as a second gunshot wound to his right bicep.
A bullet was found lodged in one of the police officers' radios and a non-police issue handgun was also recovered from the scene.
Ballistics tests have now revealed that the bullet lodged in the radio was police issue, "and, whilst it is still subject to DNA analysis, it is consistent with having been fired from" a Heckler and Koch MP5 gun used by the police.

Does it mean the police are guilty of starting this whole thing by virtually executing Duggan? Not necessarily. I'm going to assume, fairly I think, that the police expected Duggan to be armed. The reason I think it's a fair assumption is that you don't send a bunch of cops tooled up with MP5 semi-autos to arrest someone you expect to be unarmed, so it's reasonable to think that the police thought that there was at least a chance and maybe even a strong possibility that Duggan would have a gun. And as it turns out they were right because he was armed, reportedly with a Bruni blank firing pistol that had been converted to fire live ammunition.* Others may claim that the police planted it but that seems pretty unlikely - it's not the kind of thing police just happen to have handy and they'd have only got it in advance if the whole plan was to kill Duggan rather than arrest him, which is simply beyond even tinfoil hattery. This isn't a Dr David Kelly type here, just a guy who's supposed to have dealt drugs in a particular part of London. I'm not saying nobody wanted him dead but was he important enough for a blatantly illegal state operation to kill him? Of course not, and that being so there's no plausible reason for the police to have brought along a criminal's weapon to plant on the body.

In any case that's by the by. The police who were sent to arrest Duggan were clearly expecting him to be armed and dangerous, and that's the important thing. In that situation Duggan need only have put his hand out of sight abruptly for one of the cops to think he was going for a gun, and if you were the cop and that thought was in your head would you wait or shoot? Are you still thinking? Well, you could be dead now. So with that in mind, and again this is an assumption on my part, police are probably trained to shoot if - if - something like that happens when confronting a suspect who is believed to be armed.

Now I stressed 'if' back there because as yet we don't know what happened. Maybe Duggan did something to make the cop think he was going for a gun, maybe he even was going for his gun, and maybe there was a cop who for some reason - maybe a bad reason, maybe a perfectly understandable one that could happen to anybody - thought he saw something that wasn't what he thought he saw, and that made him pull the trigger. We just don't know at this stage, and I'm not going to second guess either the police or the late Mark Duggan. Everyone is still innocent until proven guilty. Yes, everyone, even alleged drug dealers and even the police when they've just shot someone dead. Again, we must wait and see.

That said they're not off the hook either. Inevitably the police have some explaining to do whenever they shoot someone dead, and since that's the kind of thing inquests are and since the one into Duggan's death has only just opened yesterday I'm happy to wait and see what comes out of that. But top of the list are a couple of questions the police could answer right away. First, and most important, they could tell us exactly how it was that the initial media reports carried a story of a firefight in which one lucky plod took a round in the radio when we now know that Duggan's gun was not fired. And secondly, once that incorrect story did emerge how much effort did the Met put into correcting the media and getting the point across that it was early days and much was still unknown.

The reason I ask is because right now it makes the Met look like they lied. It makes people think of the Jean-Charles de Menezes shooting and the reports that he jumped the barriers at Stockwell Tube station and that the police challenged him, neither of which actually happened. And while at this point I always trot out Hanlon's Razor and my preference for believing cock up and incompetence over conspiracy and intrigue, in this kind of situation there's not actually much difference in he practical outcome. The rioters won't care whether the police actually set out to deceive, which would have been a phenomenally stupid decision if they did, or simply failed to correct the media's initial stories with the important qualification: "We're not sure yet." All they will know is that Duggan was supposed to have shot at the police who killed him and now it turns out that he never got a shot off at all.

And that's probably not good news for Londoners. If Duggan's death was enough to go heaving bricks and burning buildings for** then any impression of dishonesty on the part of the Metropolitan police, even if it turns out to have been a mistake beyond their control and that they'd released dozens of PRs correcting it, is only going to pour petrol on the flames.

* Have a look at the website. Convincing looking things, eh? If, and again I stress 'if', a copper caught sight of one of those in someone's hand I could understand him shooting if it wasn't dropped pretty sharpish.
** It should go without saying that I don't think even a wrongful police shooting - and we don't yet know if this was one - justifies smashing up and stealing the property of innocent third parties.

You! Yes, you with the Murray Rothbard badge. You're under arrest.

Via the Adam Smith Institute, the latest target of the British police:

I’m not quite an anarchist – although some of my best friends are, and the works of people like David Friedman (PDF) and Georgetown legal philosopher John Hasnas (PDF) make me unsure. But saying that "anarchists should be reported to your local Police" is a pretty extraordinary command that should worry everybody. Disliking the state is now enough for your neighbours to report on you, and for plod to take notice.

Per the comments over at the ASI they probably are just referring to those who are mostly pretend anarchists, who are really just socialists, Marxists and other collectivists with perhaps the odd Bakunin type here and there, and who attempt advance liberty by smashing up other people's property. Even so, they've defined anarchist well, and it's the definition that would cover anarcho-capitalists as well as anarcho-collectivists, and possibly minarchist libertarians as well. Alarmist? Possibly, but does anyone really think inconceivable that a conversation along these lines might occur?

"Well, you see, officer, that Exile bloke I told you about keeps saying how the State is nothing but bad news and even the handful of bits worth keeping are more a necessary evil than anything else. Yes, I do know where you can find him on a Tuesday afternoon."

This is thought-crime, no more and no less, and the worst part of it is it isn't a first. It's just the latest opinion that might just get you watched and spied upon, investigated, arrested, charged and even convicted. Welcome to modern Britain, the world's first nation sized Orwell Theme Park.

'Kinell!

Known to the police

With all the other stuff going on, carbon taxes here and tabloid phone not-really-hacking there, it's easy to forget that other things are going on. Good job Nanny Knows Best blogged this because even though I ranted about it last month it had slipped my mind.

Nanny, possibly relieved at the avalanche of data being spewed forth about the Murdoch empire's "moral lapses", recently and rather quietly launched "The Police National Database".

Another day, another database!

This particular database will hold the records up to 6 million apparently innocent people, including every victim of sexual assault and domestic violence.

[...]

Jennie Cronin, a director at the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), the body in charge of the database, estimated that the records of between 10 and 15 million people would be held (that's between 16% to 24% of the entire population).

Given that approximately 9.2 million people in the UK have criminal records, that leaves up to almost 6 million on the database who are we assume innocent.

NKB save the best 'til last.

Approximately 12,000 approved police officers and staff will be able to access the database.

Would these be of the same quality and high ethical standards as those who allegedly sold information and contact details of all and sundry (including the Queen) to News International?

Bullseye! And since some of those six million will have very pressing reasons for wanting their information to never, ever get out - more pressing than most of the rest of us, I mean - it should be a pretty big concern that all this data is sitting there in one place, just waiting for the wrong person to offer the right cop the right incentive. I'd hope that the vast majority would be above that but even if the number of incorruptible officers with access was 99.9% of the total that still leaves a dozen who'll take the money.

Now, hands up who believes that 12,000 with access won't become 20,000 within a couple of years and fifty thousand within a decade. Anyone? No?

Funny that.

Cobbleition out-Labouring Labour yet again

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Oh, here we fucking go again. Another fucking government, another fucking initiative involving another fucking database. I'm getting so fucking dog sick and fucking tired of repeating this, but it really is like Labour never went away, isn't it?

The Police National Database, which will be launched by ministers next week, will hold the records up to six million apparently innocent people, including every victim of sexual assault and domestic violence.
[...]
According to official figures a total of 9.2 million people in the UK have criminal records, which means the new database will hold information about up to six million people who have not committed an offence.

Up to six million innocents? Orly? Because as bad as that sounds, and I think it sounds pretty fucking awful, I suspect it's actually much worse. Because we're told that the majority of crime - sometimes 80 or 90 percent - is committed by a hard core of persistent offenders numbering somewhere in the region of 100,000 or so. With me so far? Good.

Now count the fucking zeros.

No, I haven't missed one, that is one hundred thousand. And 100,000 subtracted from 15 million leaves rather more than six million innocent people on the database. The only way to pad out 100,000 career criminals to 9.2 million plus six million innocents is to add more than 9 million other people who are technically not quite pure as the driven slush. You just know who's going on there, don't you. I'll take a punt on everyone who's ever been given a police caution for absolutely fucking anything from a pub brawl a dozen years ago to allowing smoking in a pub last week, everyone who's done a week or two inside for protesting about council tax or TV licensing by refusing to pay up, everyone who's been convicted of any victimless crime or a purely technical offence and especially everyone who's ever fallen foul of any of the three thousand plus laws the Cobbelition's predecessors and partners in weapons grade cunticity, New Labia, brought in during its thirteen years of savagely fucking the country into a ditch.

Advocates of the database claim that it is the nature of police intelligence that the records of people without convictions would be held.

Why? Give me one good fucking reason why. Oh, I can think of convincing reasons - too much effort to remove the non-crims plus the assumption that lying with dogs gets people fleas so there's the prospect of a few easy collars in the future - but they're not what I'd call a good reason.

More than 12,000 approved police officers and staff will be able to access the database when it is launched next week.

And with the track record of epic cuntishness and bastardry in modern governments we can expect that to be 24,000 a year from now, not all of whom will be police. In five years I bet there will be more cops and various level state drones able to access the database than there will be career criminals on the fucking thing.

Let me take you back to early last year. Let's have a little reminder of things some of the key players said in the run up to the election (my bold).

"If you care about our liberties, if you want people to be free from the clutches of an overbearing state, and if you want a government with liberal values, vote Conservative."

Said the dishonourable member for Beaconsfield and Attorney General for England and Wales, Dominic Grieve.

''Whether you've been a Lib Dem voter or a Labour voter or a Green voter - if you care about the environment, if you want action to improve your quality of life, if you care about civil liberties, if you care about people power, if you want a clean break from the past - vote Conservative.
"If you have a view that we need to do more on our environment, more on civil liberties, more on quality of life there is now a modern Conservative Party that can get things done.''

And that would be the dishonourable and discharging member for Witney, the Right Wanker David Wliiam Donald Cameron.

Cunt

Well, you've really fucking delivered, haven't you, you disgraceful pair of hypocritical, deceitful, authoritarian suppurating cunts. Fuck your Cobbleition, fuck its twisted ideas of liberty, and fuck you all. Fuck you deep and hard and right in the lungs.

The spy is not in your pocket, it's on your dashboard

With all the hysteria going on about Apple's and Google's smartphones at the moment it might be easy to forget that as far as anyone knows they've really not done anything with the info apart from maybe used it for tailored advertising.* It seems the same can't be said of Tom Tom, who are helping the police catch speeding motorists.

Dutch GPS maker TomTom went into damage control today after it emerged that Dutch police have been using data collected from drivers who use the company's products to set speed traps.
Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues - including selling traffic data to governments.
National newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that police had obtained the information from the government and used it to set targeted speed traps, prompting angry reactions from TomTom users.
Advertisement: Story continues below
In a written apology, chief executive Harold Goddijn said the company sold the anonymous data believing it would be used to improve safety or relieve traffic bottlenecks.

Now while this doesn't involve tracking specific users the thought occurs that that's also a possibility. My satnav remembers where it's been and how fast it went there, and that information can be downloaded to a computer. What's to stop the program on the computer that manages that information from being collected and sent off to the manufacturers who in turn flog the info to Vic police so they can see how hard I hit the pedal on the freeway? Not much if we don't take action to prevent it as far as I can see, which is a slight worry as my satnav's records have me once doing nearly 140km/h several hundred feet underground below Port Phillip Bay.** Obviously an error and in any case probably not something I'd get a ticket for, though with Vic police's constant hard on for speeding I wouldn't too sure, but I've known satnavs to get a little confused about speed in other places now and again. Not often, but if it thinks you're a block away from where you are and then works out your real position it's going to think you've just moved very quickly. Fifty metres in two seconds is 90 km/h and could get you a ticket on many urban and city centre roads round here, which would be a real pisser if it was just a figment of your satnav's moronic imagination.

Don't think it could happen? Look at that second paragraph again (my bold).

Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues - including selling traffic data to governments.

Yeah, they're back-pedalling like crazy now but if they need the money it could get awfully tempting to build this kind of feature into future units if everybody's smartphones aren't already grassing them up by then. And the moral of the story is we'd all better start thinking about firewall rules to stop things doing an E.T. or avoiding plugging them into the computer at all.


* Not that I am saying that they are not arseholes, but I'm not sure this is particularly arseholish of them.
** I was actually holding it while standing still in a car port at the time, and while I'm not sure of the elevation I was certainly not in the bay, much less underneath it.

"Restorative" justice

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Oh FFS.

The woman officer had visited Purbeck School in Wareham, Dorset, last month to talk to the boys about a playground scrap as her role as a school liaison officer.
It is understood she was called the names 'PC Nipples' and 'PC Ball Sack' while she was out of the room and was told of the remarks moments later.
The boys were sent home and their parents were informed about the incident that night and asked to attend the restorative justice conference which took place last week.

And what happens in one of those, then?

In this instance the woman PC, a sergeant and two other officers met with the boys to make them aware of the consequences their behavior had on the victim.

Victim? Oh, Jesus. I'd explain how ridiculous this is except that one of the parents already has.

"I presume this woman officer will be called other names during her policing career, is she going to hold a restorative justice conference with all of those who do it?"

Quite. I can be contacted by email if PC Thin-Skinned Fragile Chinwobbling Timewaster wants to talk to me about what I've just called her, and in that unlikely event rather than apologise I'll suggest that she could do herself, her sex, her career and her profession some favours in the image department by learning how and when to put down a couple of pretty pathetic comments by teenage boys who, stolen wank mags aside, probably haven't caught sight of a nipple since they were weaned and whose own ball sacks contain little of interest to anyone. You ought to have been able to walk in there and reduce them all to about an inch high each in front of their entire peer group, but instead you chose victimhood. How's that going to play with your colleagues? Are they going to wonder if someone who can't take the pressure of duty at a school without becoming a victim of a few puerile comments can be relied on when the chips are down? Are some of them going to think that PC Delicate might be best off behind a desk in an interior office or even, dare I say it, in front of an oven while the boys and girls who can take the stick that goes with the job go out and get on with it?*

Frankly you'd do everyone a favour if you just came out and said that you were just being officious because the kids gave you an opportunity to do so and you thought 'fuck it, why not'.


* I freely admit that I couldn't take the stick and would probably have quit or been sacked or jailed inside a year if I'd joined the police. Which is why I, you know, didn't. Just a thought.

The best place to live anywhere in the world is...

... Essex. Well, if low crime is important to you it can't possibly be anywhere else because pretty clearly there must be almost none there at all. How else can you explain this?

Police roadblocks are being set up to catch drivers who are breaking the law – by smoking at the wheel of their company vehicle.
Council wardens and Essex Police will carry out random inspections across the county to look for evidence of illicit cigarette use.
They will even hunt for cigarette butts in the ashtrays and smell the air inside the vehicles in order to clamp down on the outlawed practice.

What a paradise it must be that the local police can spare the time to set up roadblocks on behalf of the tobacco gauleiters and their campaign to rid the county of its last remaining criminals - those who smoke in commercial vehicles and company cars. I'm sure the people of Essex must be so happy as they sleep soundly in their routinely unlocked houses.

Wankers.