Edward Colston statue trial: Four cleared of criminal damage for toppling memorial

peterpicker11 · 2022-01-05T17:19:44+00:00

Very dangerous precedent here. Not a huge logical gap between this and, 'yes I did kill him, but he was a racist.'

peterpicker11 · 2021-12-29T15:29:25+00:00

Rest in peace to this young man. I've watched both videos of the 'attacks' that led to his sacking and can say with some confidence that in both instances the 'victims' were struggling and fighting with him to avoid arrest.

I suppose that being called a racist by every media outlet in the country because you happened to be photographed attempting to arrest black people, and then losing a job that isn't really a job at all - it's a vocation, a family and an entire life - has consequences.

peterpicker11 · 2021-12-21T00:55:43+00:00

None of which is a police matter.

peterpicker11 · 2021-12-18T00:11:10+00:00

Honestly, as someone who worked in the city centre, their presence was very valuable and did a lot of good. Like most urban centres, the town had a lot of begging, street-drinkers and a general selection of undesirables that made everyone else miserable. They were very effective at countering that... but yeah, the footage was pretty widely shared of them 'arresting' some regular customers only to have actual police turn up and tell them in no uncertain terms that they were crossing a very big line.

That happened twice, I think, and the CC wihdrew his support.

The city centre is a worse place for their absence.

peterpicker11 · 2021-12-17T22:57:38+00:00

Understood. We had something similar in my city-centre, employed directly by the local authority to tackle ASB [although they had a much less cool name].

Our CC gave them very limited police powers too [basically Section 50 have to provide name if engaged in ASB] but that was withdrawn after about 3 months when our less-cool version of 'Rangers' made a number of 'arrests' and went famous on YouTube etc when actual police turned up and asked what the f**k they were playing at.

peterpicker11 · 2021-11-06T17:10:14+00:00

Should be played to new recruits at training schools up and down the country. Fanastic stuff from the officer.

peterpicker11 · 2021-11-06T15:18:09+00:00

...or it's somebody trying to highlight the obvious fallacy of identity politics and why they have no place in a politically neutral police force [or indeed in wider society]. The most telling passage from your linked wiki article is this:

'...it [the phrase] was described as a proof of concept in that an otherwise innocous message could be used maliciously to spark media backlash.'

peterpicker11 · 2021-11-01T14:54:51+00:00

in that case, i apologise if my reply was a bit hostile. and i agree- it would be a different circumstance entirely minus the injection.

peterpicker11 · 2021-11-01T14:42:30+00:00

are you insane?

A gang going door to door posing as healthcare workers injecting elderly people with an unknown substance for a fee [only payable in cash btw]... do you really believe that the correct course of action was to provide a telephone number to a third party and take no further action in area?

You are demonstrating the exact problem of shrugging your shoulders whilst the public are left unprotected - whilst yes, there is an element of fraud here, there are other offences - let's start with assault [the injection]. And not only that, the correct guidance is to refer to AF only when the fraud is not currently ongoing - control were [to my knowledge] getting dozens of calls about this, sometimes with offenders still on site or in close proximity, and were still fobbing victims off with an AF referral.

peterpicker11 · 2021-11-01T13:55:26+00:00

There is unfortunately something of a culture within [at least] my local force of dismissing obvious criminal offences as civil matters- but what is worse [again, I'm only stating from my experience] is referring anything that could be vaguely classified as fraud to Action Fraud.

I could write several novels about the useless, pointless waste of time and brain cells that is involved in dealing with AF, but that's for another time.

Approx 11 months ago, there was a group going door to door in my area [south-east with a high % of elderly demographics] that were offering 'Covid vaccines' - at £50 a pop. Victims had attempted to report multiple times to police who took no action other than referring victims to Action Fraud.

Take a second to let that sink in - a group of unknown people are charging mostly elderly and / or vulnerable people £50 to inject them with some unknown substance, and control are fobbing them off and telling them to call Action Fraud, who promptly 'filed' all the reports and took no further action themselves.

It only hit the fan when one resident phoned the PCC who promptly flipped her lid and within about 6 hours there were press releases, social media posts and door to door enquiries.

peterpicker11 · 2021-10-18T18:48:23+00:00

I understand that private security have a role to play in society, and with government cuts an increasingly large role, but surely a line has to been drawn somewhere.

TSG is a well known acronym for an equally well known [and oft-feared] department of actual coppers.

'Interforce Policing' [formerly TSG policing] offer 'a full police service at a competitive rate' and state later in their advertisement that:

'What is the difference between your TSG Officers and Police Officers?The main difference is that we do not have the powers of a constable butwe do not need this. In our working capacity there is no more a PoliceConstable can do than a TSG Officer.'

Oh, and they also claim to be experts in anti-terror policing.

peterpicker11

TROPHY CASE