“Useless” Would Be An Improvement

Today sees the Government unveiling its latest brainwave to tackle binge-drinking / underage drinking / anti-social behaviour.

The proposals also include handing the police tougher powers to disperse gangs of young people congregating outside.

A new offence would make it illegal for someone under 18 to be regularly caught in the possession of alcohol.

I know that in my own area, the local bobbies take it upon themselves, in a dangerous display of initiative, to empty the bottles and cans of errant youth, as well as donating the unopened vessels to the Hayes Village Fete bottle stall (14th June this year - put it in the diary). They seem to be able to do this without any new laws, and I have no doubt that if things really kicked off, they could nick the relevant miscreants using public order laws.

But hey, Something Must Be Done, so let’s have another law. Which adds little to the previous laws, and is no substitute for some decent coppering (when coppers are allowed to get on with the job of coppering, of course). One major reason that dispersal orders and alcohol exclusion zones are so understandably popular is that these days, nicking one errant member of the public the old fashioned way will take the officer off the street for half a shift at least.

While we’re on the subject of useless things to do while waiting for the General Election, this comes just a couple of weeks after the grand but unworkable plan to keep us safe in our beds by recording details of every electronic communication that everyone makes in the UK in the preceding twelve months. Dizzy demolished that one beyond repair, but I suspect it’ll resurface again in a year or so, and will be dutifully reported by hacks working to a deadline and with an inexplicable lack of access to Google.

Finally, in a similar vein, we hear of this fantastic (as in, of a fantasy world) development, from the Register:

EU project scans air passengers for terrorist tendencies

An EU aviation safety project is testing a camera-based passenger surveillance system intended to spot terrorists poised to rush the cockpit.

[The system] … relies on video cameras being built into every passenger’s seat….

Each camera tracks passengers’ facial expressions, with the footage then analysed by software to detect developing terrorist activity or potential air rage. Six wide-angle cameras are also positioned to monitor the plane’s aisles, presumably to catch anyone standing by the cockpit door with a suspiciously crusty bread roll.

But since people never sit still on planes, the software’s also designed so that footage from multiple cameras can be analysed. So, if one person continually walks from his seat to the bathroom, then several cameras can be used to track his facial movements. (Or maybe to track the freshness of the tuna pasta? - NR)

As the Reg correctly concludes:

But isn’t it a little late to be detecting terrorists once they’re already on the plane? And how prepared are we to have our every last twitch monitored and analysed?

As many commenters have pointed out, how many false positives will there be out of all the thousands of passengers flying every single day on the highest risk routes? How many times will a terminal be closed as an escorted airliner is landed with a particularly nervous flyer on board, setting off the system?

The fact that it is billed as an EU project should fill us with both relief and foreboding. Relief, since if the EU’s involved it’ll take decades to actually happen and then won’t work properly anyway and foreboding because when it does happen it’ll cost a fortune, so it’ll be worse than useless.

It’s Not Just the Knives

So, almost days after Jimmy Mizen’s tragic murder in Lee, comes another knife fatality. Rob Knox, stabbed in an apparent fracas at the Metro bar next to Sidcup station, was the latest addition to this year’s grim statistics. Like Mizen, but unlike many of the other knife deaths, this murder was not gang related. (This sort of event is getting closer to home: Knox’s murder took place only a couple of hundred yards from where I used to work.) Just under a year ago, of course, we had the murder of Ben Hitchcock (in what did appear to be a gang incident) in Beckenham.

Clearly, Mayor Johnson’s determination to target knife crime is right, and equally it is right that the police should be emboldened to go in hard when dealing with it, as they did a week ago in Deptford. However, whether it is fuelled by gang culture or just a more general readiness to resort to potentially lethal means of violence, measures to tackle simply the possession of knives, though right and necessary, are largely dealing with the symptoms.

What makes someone seem so ready to put a knife into another human being, knowing that there is a good chance it will kill them? If it wasn’t a knife, would Knox’s killer have simply used a broken bottle?

As with the debate on gun control, it should be remembered that knives don’t kill people, people kill people. Of course, tackling the underlying cultures will take a lot longer and a lot more than just policing. That being said, the police can play a role in demonstrating that it is unacceptable to resort to violence, whether lethal or not, on our streets or off. Part of this is to make it clear that the violence and conspiracy to commit it will be not only prosecuted (which means letting the police get on with the job) but rewarded with fitting sentences. This means that the Mayor or police alone cannot solve the problem – it goes all the way through the criminal justice system, and all the way to the top of Government.

RIP Rob Knox.

(Cross-posted.)

A Quiet Word From Left of Field and Blair Is On the Way Out

Met. Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has been given his marching orders in advance for 2010, when his contract was due for renewal.

The news, as revealed in the Sunday Times, and covered elsewhere today (including Iain Dale), was delivered to Sir Ian by way of Len Duvall, member for Greenwich & Lewisham and MPA chair(man), informing him that he was unlikely to be permitted a second term and should start to make other arrangements for his post Met career or retirement. This is, of course, a very gentlemanly way of telling him to get lost, with the only surprise being that it wasn’t Boris, or Kit Malthouse, dropping the word in his ear, but one of the remnants of Livingstone’s establishment who has delivered the pistol and bottle of scotch.

The ST informs us that the new commissioner will be effectively appointed (via the Queen) by the home office (as always), though informed by consultations with the Mayor and MPA. There’s the problem: any commissioner knows to whom he owes his job – and it’s not the Mayor or MPA, mere consultees - but the Home Office mandarins (not even the Home Secretary, let’s face it). He must conform to the current establishment groupthink. Will the say so of a Conservative Mayor and the MPA chairman (which may well be the same person this time) still be enough to steer the process towards selecting someone who will really make a difference - something which almost compels the appointee to publicly upset the Home Office applecart once in a while?

If we are to genuinely have a Police Commissioner to measure up against, say, the NYPD’s head, it will have to be the Mayor that makes the final recommendation to Her Majesty. Let’s hope that Sir Ian Blair’s successor will be the final person to be appointed under the current, tired and increasingly discredited old methods.

Thanks a lot

Full marks in the diplomacy/tongue-biting stakes to West Yorkshire’s finest as they face accusations that they didn’t find Shannon Matthews quickly enough. This, despite mounting the biggest manhunt in the county since the Yorkshire Ripper, and finding the lost girl when many were fearing the worst, against a background of “oh nobody cares about her as much as Madeline McCann is it ‘cos we is working class”.

The statement from the police was loosely coded, talking of “literally hundreds of people in a huge family network” in defending the length of time it took to check out even the “usual suspects” in such a case.

That some of the locals in Dewsbury (it was one of Shannon’s “huge family network” that made the first criticism that received coverage) thought it strange that such a task should take so long says something of the normality that too many children find themselves in. A procession of “uncles” – real and generic – as well as enough “steps” to start a ladder hire shop.

It was, in a roundabout and unintentionally timed way, the sort of thing that David Cameron was talking about yesterday in his keynote speech in Gateshead. Despite the derision that greeted Iain Duncan Smith’s report last year on social and family breakdown, nothing can alter the fact that a stable family background is the best defence we have against a whole raft of social problems. That is not to condemn divorcees, for instance – these things happen, sadly – but to strive to an ideal. To put the onus back on the community – even in its widest sense, including big business and those who drive our culture – is a significant shift away from the expectation that government can save us all – a flawed belief that has created many of the problems.

Deja Vu (again)

Like most wards on most boroughs, my ward (Hayes & Coney Hall) has its Safer Neighbourhood police team details here. As you can see, it includes names of all the officers, a mobile contact number and all the usual contact details you would expect. It has been this way for at least two years.

Except, it seems, when you travel through the worm-hole into the time zone inhabited by Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary:

Police to give out mobile phone numbers

Every household in England and Wales will be given a mobile phone number to call new neighbourhood police teams, Gordon Brown has announced.

Each home will also get an email address for the officer responsible for their street and neighbourhood police chiefs will have to hold regular public meetings under the plans, to be rolled out by April.

The £325 million-a-year plan, one of the UK’s biggest shifts from centralised policing, has been drawn up by Mr Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Tomorrow … Brown and Smith announce a new organisation dedicated to preventing crime and catching criminals, called the “Police”.

Cross-posted on SELBlog.

Yes Minister 2009

Scene: Home Secretary’s office. It’s been six months since the Summer 2008 reshuffle, and the current Home Secretary wants to make his mark.

Permanent Secretary: Well, Home Secretary, we still have a problem with gun crime. It’s up on last year. Most of it is linked to drug gangs it seems.
Home Secretary: Well, we have to be seen to be doing something <cough> I mean, we have to do something.
PS: Hmmm, but I don’t think the Treasury will like anything too … brave. The Chancellor has been quite clear about the need for reining in budgets…
HS: No no. We need to announce that we’re thinking of doing something about it.
PS: Oh, that’s OK.
HS: Now, all this drug fuelled gang violence. They’re using guns, so let’s ban the guns.
PS: Errr, the guns are already illegal. The problem is that the criminals don’t seem to care about the law.
HS: If the guns are illegal then how come they’re still using them?
PS: As I said, Home Secretary, they’re criminals. By definition …
HS: I know! They must be using deactivated weapons and activating them again. We’ll ban deactivated weapons.
PS: Yes, Home Secretary, but the ban on deactivated weapons was already in the Queen’s Speech last November after last year’s Home Secretary decided to ban them. It’s going through the committee stage at the moment, remember?
HS: Right. Well, that’ll sort it then.
PS: Probably not, Home Secretary. You see (sighs wearily) The. Criminals. Don’t. Care. About. The. Law.
HS: What about imitation weapons?
PS: Like children use to play soldiers with?
HS: Play soldiers? That sounds terrible. We must ban imitation weapons to protect the children from becoming violent gunmen.
PS: Errr…
HS: So, that’s the next generation safe. But what about gun crime now? If guns are banned, and deactivated weapons are banned, then … I know! Guns are made of metal aren’t they?
PS: Generally yes, Home Secretary, but …
HS: That’s it then. We’ll ban metal. Draft me a speech for tomorrow will you?
PS: (Mentally weighing up departmental transfer opportunities against early retirement pay-off) Yes, Home Secretary.

Livingstone - Don’t Believe The Hype (no. 42)

Livingstone is at it again. From one month after the election 1st June, 11-18 year olds will have to “touch in” with their Oyster cards when they get on a bus – though they will still be travelling for free. This is apparently to solve the problem of rowdy behaviour by some youths on buses since free travel for under-18s was introduced by El Mayore.

So, yet another token measure to tackle a problem of his own making – in fact, a worse than useless token. The new rules are to prevent youths who are banned from the buses from boarding. Fine, except who’s going to stop them? Without physical tube-style barriers how is a driver supposed to enforce the new rules? The same drivers who cannot deal with the little darlings at the moment without risking either injury or prosecution? Bus drivers, who have enough to deal with as it is, already have access to photos and descriptions of known troublemakers, but their hands are largely tied.

It also emerged, at a recent meeting at Bromley Council, that if a child appears and has lost/forgotten their Oyster, TfL do owe a duty of care and drivers will still be expected to allow them to board rather than leave them stranded. I predict a spate of selective amnesia among the more troublesome element of our teenagers.

Paying the (Old) Bill

As my reader may be aware, the Police Federation has reached breaking point and some officers are seriously thinking the unthinkable – strike action - in response to the government’s failure to backdate the police pay rise to September, as has been the routine for over 25 years. Jan Berry, the Federation chairman, has made a canny move with her “olive branch” to the Home Secretary. Jacqui Smith is hung either way - she can dig her heels in, rejecting the perfectly reasonable overture, and try to contain the anger of every copper south of the border (since the Scottish police have had their pay backdated) or retreat to the last refuge of the incompetent minister and blame her civil servants - and hanging your departmental staff out to dry will do your career no good at all - just ask John Reid.

Now normally when workers in the public sector go on strike or take other industrial action, there will always be some who will suggest that no-one would actually notice if a few Whitehall paper shufflers took a Friday off. It is perhaps an indictment of how the police service has been treated in recent times that someone could almost say the same of the police today – though for very different reasons. Yes, too much of police time is spent paper shuffling, but it is also true that, effectively undermanned, seemingly undervalued, and overburdened with politically-inspired cobblers like stop forms, health and safety assessments, central targets and other red tape, the average copper has less and less time to actually be out there, whether on foot or on wheels, keeping the streets safe. Safer Neighbourhood Teams have proved popular with the public in recent times, and a good, well-skippered SN team can make a difference, but many underlying problems remain nationally.

It is a no-brainer that the police should get the full backing of the Party. I’m not saying that we and the police won’t differ on issues like ID cards or DNA databases, or that the police as a collective service should be immune from any criticism (though such criticism when it comes is largely of the management - both political and senior operational). That aside, the many individual officers whose sacrifices can include family, marriages, as well as their lives, must have the support of any who are serious about improving our “quality of life”.

Finally, for now, there is a dull accounting aspect to all this. When the budgets were set for the 2007/08 year, the pay rise would have been factored in. The Home Office wouldn’t have known the precise percentage of course, so a provision would have been made at a realistic rate. Even by the government’s Mickey Mouse CPI inflation measure, something close to 2.5%, pro-rated from September, would have been calculated and included in the budgets.

So either the Home Office is in such a diabolical financial mess that desperate measures are being used to balance the books, or day-to-day financial control at the Home Office is diabolical, or the Home Office is diabolical at setting proper budgets.

Or perhaps the decision not to observe the traditional backdating to September was made a year ago when the budgets were drafted. Hmmmm.

The Home Office has been either incompetent on a number of levels, or the department responsible for fighting crime and other dishonest behaviour has been … dishonest.

Oh, and … Happy New Year!

Value Your Copper

No, not a post in support of our boys in blue (though I’ll probably do one of those soon). This is actually a genuine public service announcement. It is the text of an email that has been going round council officers – this one from Westminster.

“BT have informed me of fake utility companies that have been operating in the South East and they have reason to believe may be moving into London.With prices for copper at record levels there is incentive for criminal gangs to start removing phone-cables from the highway to sell the component parts.

BT say that they are aware of at least one group by name: “CableTec”. It seems that CableTec operate very professional looking gangs with modern, sign-written, vehicles at each location they hit. They even put up the correct signing and guarding, and wear proper PPE. [I think this means hi-vis jackets and the like - so they look like proper workmen/police/shoplifters.]

If anyone sees this group working … then their activity should be reported to the Streetworks Team and the Police. THEY MUST NOT BE APPROACHED AS THEY ARE CONSIDERED DANGEROUS. BT report that they have had their gangs being robbed, elsewhere in the country, by operatives for this group, and the CableTec guys are often “armed” with potential weapons such as metal pipes.

Any other suspicious activity relating to streetworks should also be reported to [your local council]”

I’m just waiting for the first BBC headline reporting the phenomenon and blaming it on Climate Change.

Nurse!

A senior judge appears to have forgotten his pills and has begun talking cobblers.

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.
Lord Justice Sedley told BBC News the current England and Wales database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was “indefensible”.
He added it would be fairer to include “everybody, guilty or innocent” on it.

Sedley LJ says it is unfair for those who have fallen into the hands of the police at some time have their DNA on record, but those who don’t have run-ins with the Old Bill are absent from the database.

Oh dear. Where do we start?

Compulsory registration will require, presumably, so form of coercion. What if I don’t want to give a swab? Will I be convicted of a criminal offence. If so, where, pray tell, would be the victim of said “crime”?

What my Lord Sedley is arguing is it is wrong for those who have passed through police hands but are innocent/acquitted to remain on the database. Fair point, perhaps, so why does he say that the only option is to expand the database to cover the whole population (and more)? One could argue the prison population probably contains a handful of wrongly convicted people, so instead everyone should spend some time in the slammer, just to be “fair”. Surely instead he should be arguing for tighter controls over how “innocent” DNA is held?

I know this will bring out of the woodwork the “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to hide” brigade. Yet:
(a) If I’ve done nothing wrong, why do I have to prove my innocence? I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
(b) I’m sure there were plenty of Jews, homosexuals, immigrants in Germany in 1933 who felt they’d done nothing wrong. The point is, who decides what is worth hiding and when? As Professor Stephen Bain says in the same article:

“The DNA genie can’t be put back in the bottle. If the information about you is exposed due to illegal or perhaps even legalised use of the database, in a way that is not currently anticipated, then it’s a very difficult situation.”

One last thing: aren’t the judiciary supposed to be the final safeguard of our freedoms in the legal system? Is the time getting closer when I should be buying that remote cottage in the Highlands and stocking up on ammunition?