Home Office, EHRC rap top cop knuckles

When is a hole...

In Formula1 "motorsport" (given the last "race" I use inverted commas), every rule is pushed to the limits to provide a loophole (pun partially intended). They are allowed a hole in an under body structure to allow the starter probe to be inserted - one team has extended this hole to an oval shape which provides them with far greater downforce - a simple allowance for a specific reason that has been extended way beyond its intended purpose.*

This is what the police have been doing, and will continue to do. If they can't use s44 of the Anti-terror laws, they will use s43. Or s58. Or dog-fouling laws. Or whatever they can get away with. And the big problem is they get away with it. The government can say that the police should not do this, the EHRC can "rap top cop knuckles", the courts and justices and CRE can point out how lop-sided the searches are. But the police are not going to willing give up their new powers - no matter how much research points out how counter productive it it is - it would be like suggesting to someone with a Porsche that they change to a Trabant.

Unless something concrete happens - an officer being charged with rights abuses, a chief constable suspended pending an enquiry into his force, or similar, no matter what is said, the police will continue to stop minorities and harass photographers.

And there is little or nothing we can do about it - hell - the politicians and bureaucrats can't do anything so what can Joe Public do - start a Facebook petition?

And don't expect the election to help - remember the last paragraph of Animal Farm.

Eeeeh - nowt like a good rant after lunch to help the digestion

Enforced liberty

We must give the police more arbitrary powers to detain you to ensure your freedom.

Those who don't know history...

The police were set up initially with pretty well every power in the book; all the restrictions put on them have been put there because the police abused those powers. So it makes very little sense to wonder if they need them back again as we already know the answer.

The police will ALWAYS ask for more powers and they will ALWAYS justify it as making it easier to catch criminals. Problem is, it usually boils down to arresting everyone and letting the courts sort out the resulting mess.

S44 Authorisations

Interesting to note that S44NPIAguidance-Nov2008.pdf says that "communities should be informed of the existence of a section 44 authorisation".

After numerous FoI requests to see if a train station I was stopped and searched in, was under a S44 designated area, the police always refuse citing national security.

Maybe there *are* more criminals in those areas

So we're in Leicester, home of one of the largest concentrations of Asian-origin people in the UK. Is it just me, or wouldn't you expect more Asians to be stopped around there than is average for the rest of the UK? Don't get me wrong, the whole "sus" thing is dodgy. But trying to set racial targets on who you're allowed to stop when they're really acting suspiciously is just stupid.

Let's be truly non-racist here, and accept that people of Asian, black or Traveller origin can also be criminals.

No solving this problem...

...until Parliament finally accepts that, in 21st century UK, the police aren't just not the answer to so many of our problems - as often as not they ARE the problem. In my own area, if I had to name a dozen of the worst criminals, at least half would be in uniform. You'd probably find them and the other half around the same table at the Lodge. Policing in the UK is out of control, and needs to be brought back under real oversight, with a rigorous buck-stops-here policy with Chief Constables.

That said, I'm not holding my breath...

One layer down, some more to go

I was about to say that the cops need more competence and less clamouring for ```more power, cap'n'', as they have more than they know what to do with it already, and it's affecting the law abiding citizen in his ordinary life.

But really, the problem is deeper than that, again. We have a morally panicked government and associated machinery, lots of exceedingly bad and vague law banning this and forbidding that, leaving the populace all but straitjacketed, cowed by the wars on stuff and abstract concepts.

Indeed, people are now deemed criminal and incompetent by default. This does not encourage anybody to take up responsibility for their own actions, nevermind for taking part in and building up a healthy society.

Knowing to the letter what your rights are simply is no defence against a surly copper. In fact, it's likely to make the copper surlier and get his super to detain you for longer, on a trumped-up charge if he has to.

If the government is to do anything about that, it doesn't really do to rap knuckles of people only doing their jobs, if perhaps a little bit too enthousiastically because of pressure to ``produce'' and with not enough regard for what really is a crime and what is merely transgressing against silly lawyery. It's not their job to figure that out, and anyway they clearly can't, not competent there.

No, if the government wants to mend this, it will have to actually govern instead of panicking. It will have to take its happy pills and start with recinding the worst of the bad laws. Rewind to the legal status quo of 1999 and see if there is anything that breaks so bad it needs fixing. The government'll be surprised how well we'll survive.

It'd be nice if we didn't have to wait another 157 years for them to get around to fix broken laws by finally caving in and repealing them. A revolution would be quicker, even though those do some serious lasting damage themselves.

It seems an odd question, really.

'Whether the police need *more* powers'?

Funny, but I remember them being pretty darn good at their job when they had rather *fewer* powers. They, and we, knew what was OK and what not, and we trusted them to keep the peace, which they did. Good grief, you even got to chat with them occasionally without being made to feel like a criminal.

Now, they have thousands of new laws 'flexible' enough to allow them to do largely what they like, and we're forced to comply with that by, well, force, plus a bit of 'Crown vs Hitesh' (nice post). Whether you can really 'trust' somebody pumped up for instant action who's shouting and pointing a Taser at you is moot, and whether what is thereby kept is "peace" more so.

Progress? Not impressed.

Oh wow

Ehm eye fihve are going to have a field day tracing y'all through tor.

7/7

I remember after 7/7 when the police were calling for anybody/everybody to send in pics they took on/before that date.

Perhaps the chief constables need reminding of that also.

Ignorance

To paraphrase a post on BBW ....

There are now so many laws covering such minor things that ignorance of the law should now be accepted as a valid defence.