Using electrically-assisted bikes: lazy cheaters or healthy travellers?

[50 Hertz]

I think you may be over estimating the effect of your words.... and certainly under estimating 103alex1 if you thought for one minute that he might leave the forum over this spat ......thankfully

My, estimation was based on a post within this thread made by 103Alex1 sometime between 23:00 and 23:49 yesterday evening. From memory, he said that as a result of my comments, he was considering leaving this forum and joining an alternative one. The post also contained a statement which indicated that he was going to report me to the forum owner and seek to have me suspended or even eddieo'd and that if this failed, he would leave the forum. He has now deleted his entire post, but I responded to his remarks at 23:49 with the following; Request a suspension or a ban for me if you wish, I would be upset to leave the forum, but I'd accept it if that was deemed appropriate. Also, I would hate to think that I had driven you away, you post some nice stuff which I like to read. But the things that you have written about the police aren't nice and they are unfair, so I will challenge you robustly over that.

I was not trying to over estimate the effect of my words, I was simply responding to a person who had said that they were going to leave the forum, by stating that I hoped that they did not leave. This remains the case.

 

[50 Hertz]

While I have sympathy for your views about the great majority of the police, I strongly disagree with this statement. This propaganda is regularly promoted by the police and some government elements as an excuse for the many actions in the reverse direction which have been corrupting our once excellent legal system.

In fact there are now some areas of criminal law where guilt is assumed rather than innocence and defendants are required to prove innocence rather than the prosecution required to prove guilt. Add to that a system which ensures that innocent persons mistakenly imprisoned serve much longer sentences than the truly guilty and we have a corrupted justice system.

Barrister Barbara Hewson's recent protest at just one area of this corruption in action was timely to say the least, and the current exposure of our illegal long term detention of Afghans also reveals how defiled our administration now is.

I do believe that the law is overly protective towards the criminal. Sometime ago I worked with the police for quite a lengthy period of time and after initially being slightly mistrusting of police tactics, I was absolutely horrified how difficult it is to secure a conviction. I was not alone in this experience, several other people came and went into the same role as me and without exception, they were shocked and dismayed at what people can get away with.

I will just give you two examples:

1) University student deliberately knocked off his bike by two men in a van for the purpose of stealing the bike. When he resists, one hits him with a metal bar resulting in him being blinded in one eye. They put the bike in a van and drive off. There are no other witnesses and the van registration number is not taken.

As a result of intelligence, the police arrest a suspect. He refuses to answer any questions, as is his right. He is put on an identity parade. The victim stands directly in from of his alleged attacker and without hesitation says this is the man who attacked me. He is staring straight at him.

Because the victim had difficulty with transport, on the day of the ID parade, he was given a lift to the police station by a police officer. After dropping the victim off at the front counter, that police officer played no further part in the identification process. His involvement started when he picked him up at home and ended when he dropped him at the front counter.

That officer had been involved in the investigation at an earlier stage and because of that, he had technically breached PACE guidelines on identification procedures. The entire identification evidence was deemed inadmissible and because that was the only evidence, the victim had to see the man who blinded him in one eye go free.

2) An alarm activates at a secluded lorry compound at 03:00 am. A police helicopter attends and sees four men running through woodland adjacent to the compound and away from it. They are all detained and there are no other people in the area. There is a hole discovered in the perimeter fence close to where they were seen running. Some tolls are found discarded in the woodland and several lorries have had their fuel tanks drilled and the diesel decanted into barrels, which are still at the scene.

The 4 men refuse to cooperate with the police in any way and will not account for why they were running through woodland close to a recent offence in the middle of the night. Their clothing is seized and sent away for examination, but there is no forensic evidence to link them to inside the compound, so the are not charged and go free.

These are just two out of probably hundreds of similar cases that I alone am aware of. These cases cause me to believe that the odds are stacked in favour of the criminal and that justice is not being done and that the public are not being protected as a result.

I didn't want to mention the soldier who was murdered a few days ago. It is now clear that the security services had been harbouring suspicions about the alleged killers for some time. I would be willing to bet that there were security officers within MI5 who were frustrated to the back teeth by the fact that they couldn't take action against them because of protections, ill informed public opinion and potential allegations of racism. And I would also be willing to bet that the security services know of many more such characters who are equally as dangerous or more so. But we seem to be putting their protection ahead of keeping the wider community safe. All this will have come about because of people chipping away at the confidence we have in our authorities with unsubstantiated tales and poking their noses into business that they don't understand.

Unfortunately, there are some maniacs out there who want to kill and they don't care who they kill. If we want to stop them, all of us are going to have to be prepared give up a little bit of time and privacy.

If MI5, the police or whoever want to ask me some questions, that is fine, I have nothing to hide and I will cooperate. What's so wrong about cooperating?

 

[Scimitar]

He has been trained/gained his experience at some cost to the public purse, yet we are now going to pay him tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands to sit at home on his backside.

He won't be sitting at home on his backside. Like so many other retired cops, he'll have a nice little sideline going that he can turn into full-time work.

 

[flecc]

If MI5, the police or whoever want to ask me some questions, that is fine, I have nothing to hide and I will cooperate. What's so wrong about cooperating?

I've also worked with the police and my sister was for years until recently a Crown Court clerk.

What's wrong with co-operating is that expert police questioning techniques are regularly used on people who have no prior experience of police procedures. The methods used over many hours in some cases can and do lead to a huge range of replies by a suspect, parts of which can be selectively used to construct false implications of guilt. My advice to anyone accused is to always say nothing, since that is the only defence against such police tactics.

With regard to the cases you quoted, of course one can find many such instances where attempts to convict have failed, but they are as you've shown often due to police errors. That is after all their fault, since like anyone they should know the job they are paid for, handsomely in their case. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with these outcomes, for a long standing principle of our legal system is this:

"Better a dozen guilty men go free than one innocent person be imprisoned".

This excellent principle has a cost as any protection has, and that cost we must accept in the name of decency. However, this is just one of the areas that I'm protesting about, since that principle has increasingly been ignored. One (now ex) Home Secretary actually had the nerve to say that he didn't care how many innocent people were in prison just as long as not one abuser remained on the streets. That was a truly appalling thing to say, people must be in prison for a horrible offence they haven't committed just in order to trap every one of the guilty. It doesn't even work anyway, no-one can ever be sure that all the guilty are trapped, whatever the crime.

You've shown clearly that you don't care about convicting the innocent, for example how do you know with certainty those running men were guilty? You don't, and the fact that it was likely isn't enough to convict with certainty. This widespread public attitude that people should be convicted on suspicion alone has to be opposed to prevent still more of the false imprisonments that have become so common in recent decades. The balance should return to where it was for hundreds of years, that any doubt should benefit the accused.

And now to show how wrong you are in implying that too many of the guilty go free, consider this fact:

In the time that the population of Britain has grown by 15%, the prison population has grown by 700%

Not exactly an indication that there's much failure to convict, is it?
.

 

[50 Hertz]

What's wrong with co-operating is that expert police questioning techniques are regularly used on people who have no prior experience of police procedures. The methods used over many hours in some cases can and do lead to a huge range of replies by a suspect, parts of which can be selectively used to construct false implications of guilt. My advice to anyone accused is to always say nothing, since that is the only defence against such police tactics.

I think that the use of audio recorded and video recorded interviews puts in place adequate safeguards against selectively taking the suspects response to questions out of context.

"Better a dozen guilty men go free than one innocent person be imprisoned".

I agree with that.

You've shown clearly that you don't care about convicting the innocent, for example how do you know with certainty those running men were guilty? You don't, and the fact that it was likely isn't enough to convict with certainty.

Ouch! Careful, I'll block you.

I think there is some pretty strong circumstantial evidence, but you are right, probably insufficient evidence to convict. I still think there should be some obligation for the suspects to account for their movements when detained under such circumstances.

As for case (1), the police did screw that one up, but I don't think that the consequences of the mistake were in the spirit of what CODE D (I think) is meant to prevent. A bad outcome for all concerned except the suspect and their lawyer.

In the time that the population of Britain has grown by 15%, the prison population has grown by 700%

Not exactly an indication that there's much failure to convict, is it?
.

Thats interesting. Who's statistic is that by the way?