Saturday 19 December 2009

Police Bungling Responsible for Another Death

"But he still loves me"

Unfortunately, I see that Ellie Bloggs has beaten me to this storey but I have a slightly different perspective on it.

A victim of domestic abuse has tragically been murdered. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have looked into this and decided that the police are partly to blame. Silly old police took eleven reports of incidents from the victim. The incidents were all low level and a risk assessment was carried out each time. As they were low level incidents the case was never categorised as high risk. Apparently, we should have come to the conclusion that because there were so many incidents the victim was at high risk. How stupid of us. Why don't we make them all high risk then our backsides are covered?

If the offender/victim had been categorised as high risk would it have made any difference. I doubt it very much. I have attended dozens of domestics incidents from minor rows to serious assaults. If there are any grounds to arrest anyone we do. We try and obtain statements from victims. More often than not they will not provide them. despite the beating they have had they tell us they still love the insecure prat they are living with and he loves her and he won't do it again etc. etc. The victim then gets spoken to by specially trained officers and still refuses to make a statement. The offender gets interviewed by specially trained officers. He knows the victim hasn't made a statement so says nothing, or she fell over etc. We try and deal with it by way of victimless prosecution but there are usually no witnesses and that is it, the offender walks out. If he then goes and stabs her to death, that is our fault apparently.

The family blame the police. They told us he was dangerous. They want to blame someone so the IPCC investigate and after months of pouring over the paperwork we are criticised for ticking the medium risk box instead of the high risk box.

I have two issues with this. I have said before that I am fed up with this nanny state we live in where it never seems to be the fault of the offender who stabbed the victim. It is always the fault of one of the public services who seem to have taken over responsibility for every aspect of peoples lives. If I really thought my sister was at risk of death from physical abuse I would round up the family and use the pressure that families can to deal with the problem. It may not always work and services should help, but can we not get back to a society where people take more responsibility for their own lives and that of their loved ones instead of just foisting it onto some overstretched public service and blaming them when it goes wrong. We cannot do everything unless you want your taxes increased substantially more.

The second issue I have is with the IPCC. Almost every week I read all these wonderful words of wisdom from the IPCC. They tell us when we have failed to investigate someones crime properly, when we haven't looked after someone in custody well enough visiting them every 5 minutes rather than 15. They tell us when we have not attended someones address quick enough to answer their 999 call and when the Neighbourhood Officer has not dealt with some local problem properly. They recommend all sorts of changes to policies and procedures to make sure this does not happen again.

If we really mess up I am all for saying sorry and learning from it. In most cases what the IPCC are recommending is more bureaucracy, more resources and more time spent dealing with a particular issue.

I can assure you that police resources are stretched to the limit. If we put more resource into domestic abuse it has to come from somewhere. That means someones 999 call won't be answered so quickly, someones else's crime won't get investigated and someones neighbourhood problem won't be solved. That will be more criticism from the IPCC and more bureaucracy, more resources moved around on the board and little achieved.

20 comments:

  1. I'm basically with you on this one. I always used to tell my daughter that if ever a boyfriend hit her even once, she must immediately dump him no matter what she thinks. Told her he would promise sincerely and very believably that he would never do it again ... but he always will, I told her, because by doing it even the once he has shown that he lost control of himself, and he will lose control again.

    I have a neice who was given a LITERAL hammering (a claw hammer) by a live-in boyfriend. She was hospitalized but refused to make a statement - we (her wider family) are mad as hell at her. She's a very intelligent girl, a university student, but she just will not see that by refusing to make a statement she's condemning some other poor girl to the same thing ... and it may be fatal next time.

    We suspect she may be refusing because they were both high as kites on something at the time, and even though we've said it doesn't matter if they were ... still no statement.

    At least she had the sense to immediately dump him. I was married 24 years and never once raised my hand to her, despite us rowing nearly every day. It's too easy to do that, isn't it.

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  2. Sir Hal; couldn't you have got some family and like-minded friends together to go and have a quiet (or not so quiet) word with the scumbag who attacked your niece? At least she dumped him.

    The question of drug use making people unwilling to make statements or even tell the truth is a real poser. I am a first aider (amongst other things)in a school. I also do voluntary work with the ambulance service. Sometimes we need to rule out substance abuse but we always get a "no" answer first. The next comment is "Look, we're not the police. Have you taken anything, as it may affect your treatment". Sometimes the patient will 'fess up. Sometimes they won't, even if the evidence is strongly pointing that way. Then I have to take what they say at face value, and dump the problem on a State Registered Paramedic who can make diagnoses and give treatment that I can't.

    And that's for the green-suits. Odin help the poor bloody constable trying to get a straight reply - they ARE the police!

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  3. But you see Mark - we're LAW-ABIDING generally as a family. Not "respectable", but law-abiding. I could do it, one of my brothers could help 'cos we're bothe former early-enlisters (me 15, he 17) so we accept violence; but for the current generation in our family, that's about it. Perhaps one of our cousins, but he's not really closely related enough. Anyway - why should we find ourselves in jail for a scumbag like that while he's still walking around (very slowly and with a severe limp) outside?

    Read news from High Wycombe recently to see what I mean.

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  4. Its high time the press and SMT were put back in there boxes so that front line coppers could return to discretionary policing.

    Discretionary policing need not be the uncaring, risky policing that the SMT seem to think it is.

    However effective a police officer may be, the day has not yet arrived when psychic powers are part of the skillset. They can't always know that when the parties involved either don't want to pursue a complaint, or promise not to re offend, that they will actually end up killing or injuring each other.

    And if they do, why the hell is the blame laid at the door of the police? The only person(s) responsible are those presumably adult participants. These people have to take responsibility for their own domestic situations and be prevented from occupying resources that are better prioritised elsewhere. The media and SMT could do a lot more in terms of deflecting the focus away from the police responsibility for DV incidents.

    In the days before all this risk aversion, arse protecting crap, dv incidents were treated on their merits. Most did not command the level of priority and urgency the SMT have implemented. The level of violence seems to have escalated down the years since all this exdtra attention has been focused on the subject. There is the school of thought that participants may actually have resolved their issues without police invlolvement, whereas the authorities becoming involved could have the effect of raising the temperature rather than cooling it.

    Of course police should attend where its obvious to one and all that their presence may prevent injury or danger to life, or where it has already occurred. If it happens, unless a police officer saw a battering going on and ignored it, or had firm evidence someone was in immediate danger, all the risk assessments in the world wont magically prevent a violent incident.

    This SMT risk aversion, fearing the consequences of common sense, peddled through the media by the higher ranks, seems to be a major obstruction to effective policing.

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  5. Analyst - yes. Return to dicretionary policing. All police hold the same Office with no rank differentiation.

    Where I grew up arrests in my village (village constable) and the nearest town (three constables and a sergeant) were extremely rare. I can only recall one ever being made in our village (a known peeping Tom) and it was a very peaceable and safe place to be. Ditto the nearest town. Local men would occasionally have a one-to-one fight. Nobody ever got arrested - it was and is a known Welsh habit to fight. One constable used to collar drinkers on their way home and tell them he was going to follow them home and tell them that he would follow behind them, get home accident-free and he would just drive away; have an accident and he would do you. In an area like that this was good discretionary policing - not because it let people break the law, but because it kept the peace. What is a police constable's oath? To keep the peace?

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  6. A Conservative government would consider strengthening the rights of householders who tackle burglars, the shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has said.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8423043.stm

    Mr Grayling said he wanted to see whether "grossly disproportionate" force would be the right measure, instead. "We've long debated and argued within the Conservative party that there should be a higher threshold built around the concept of disproportionate force...

    "I want to go back and look at the law again... I do want the law to be absolutely clear for the householder to say, right, if something happens to you, the law will protect you if you defend your interests, and at the moment, many people feel that's not certain."

    Instead of the measure being whether or not the force used was reasonable, they would have to replace this with "was it grossly disproportionate".

    They would have to be pretty specific and detailed at definition stage to prevent this being abused. I can just see it now, some scrote kicks off your wing mirror, remonstrate with him, he looks at you arrogantly (which puts you in mortal fear of your life ...) so you take a car jack from the boot and stove his head in until his grey matter is all over the pavement ..... would that be grossly disproportionate?

    Cynical I know, but that apart, I guess a key factor would still be, whether the offender still represented a threat at the time the retaliation takes place. Is it "after the event" and the villain is escaping, where the force used might be disproportionate?

    The measure of force applicable may be changed, but they still have to determine first if force was used or abused in each case.

    The Hussain family speaks out about the sentence here :-

    http://www.policeoracle.com/news/How-Can-This-Be-Justice?_21088.html

    Best Regards
    Steve - on behalf of
    http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com

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  7. I still feel in my bones that the law in respect of the use of force is pretty clear and to legislate and try to come up with a definition would only create wore anomalies, case law and wealthier barristers. As for those currently in authority, who debate the word `reasonable` on behalf of the rest of us in such cases, now there I can see the need for a long hard look.

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  8. "If we really mess up I am all for saying sorry and learning from it."

    I believe you. But I think you might be the only person in a position of authority who is prepared to do that. It is not just the criminal class that tries to avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes: it's everyone from the top down.

    So here it is - a snapshot of the kind of country we live in - everyone criticising everyone else, while desperately shielding their own arses.

    Pretty pathetic when it's all boiled down like that.

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  9. MONDAY, 21 DECEMBER 2009

    A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO ALL OUR POLICE OFFICERS

    Please spare a thought this Christmas for the lads and lasses who will be doing their very best to ensure we all enjoy a safe and peaceful christmas – the police officers who will be working while we enjoy our rest over Christmas. Spare them a kind thought and send them your best wishes. We pray that your shifts pass peacefully and that you are able to enjoy some special festive times with your families and loved ones.

    A special thank you goes out to the unsung heroes of police blogging this year and the years that have gone before. Having worked long, hard challenging shifts, dealing with the worst society can throw at them, they find the time and energy to write their articles, share their experiences, with a great passion for “What’s right” and delivered in the most part, with good humour.

    Thank you to one and all, you know who you are, for all your fine efforts. We look forward to plenty more and perhaps some well deserved reforms for you in 2010.

    With best wishes
    Steve & The Team
    Nice 1 Limited

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  10. Grudgingly, I have to agree with you, Thinking Policeman.

    Three things bring me to this conclusion.

    First, the basic position that a householder should be able to kill the fuck out of whomever threatens them without the State picking a side.

    Second, the realisation that many wimmin are pathetic doormats who will put up with anything because they're so needy and spineless that that they simply can't imagine a life where they take responsibility for their own happiness. Like my wife, bless her and preserve her.

    And third is this: "Naseem Malik, IPCC commissioner"

    Well, spank my arse and call me an unreconstructed white male, but whenever some dusky immigrant who's manipulated her way into a plum job by bleating about Positive Discrimination mouths off, I tend to take the opposite side on the issue.

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  11. Sir Henry

    We in Glasgow have our own way of handling the situation of your niece.

    It works.

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  12. Oh I forgot that when the handling takes place the Polis always never are somehow able to find out what happened. The ned usually has previous and it is put down to old criminal grudges and filed in the bucket.

    I remember on one occasion a hand grenade was purloined, the firing mechanism removed and thrown through his broken window wrapped in a note saying that next time the pin would be pulled. He should remove hiself from the country for a couple of years if he was smart.
    It worked and it is a true story.

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  13. Maybe, a woman that puts herself in danger like this deserves the resultant risk of dying?

    Abusive relationships need two parties, and both of them are often as bad as each other.

    If they do not have the good sense to get out, leave them to their fate.

    Some (if not the majority) of women get off on living with a psycho boyfriend.

    Fuck 'em!

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  14. Women? What can you do with some of them. I see them all the time on the Jeremy Kyle show and it's a depressing spectacle. But they're adults, so fuck 'em if they're stupid enough to get involved with some low-life that beats them. It's only reallythe kids I feel sorry for. They'll likely as not grow up damaged and repeat the cycle. Some people just shouldn't be allowed to breed.

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  15. Now, now, let's not get all Final Solution. It's not about "allowing", it's about the State funding professional breeders with no other occupation. What's the downside to making contraceptive implants a precondition of receiving Income Based Sponger's Allowance?

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  16. Merry Christmas - have a good un!
    Best Wishes - Steve & the gang at Thin Blue Line uk

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  17. I see you guys have the same problems we have. We do everything we can, but when things go bad...blame the cops.
    Never blame the attorney, never blame the courts, never blame the retards who write the laws
    Never blame the abuser
    and most important...never blame the abused because they are the true victim.
    We can take the blame...right?
    Good blog. I invite you to read mine when you are not getting blames for the problems of the world.

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  18. Ew. I can't believe that people on this board are earnestly trying to blame the victims of domestic violence for the offence.
    I suppose that its easier on everyone's conscience if they believe everyone involve got what was coming to them, but that's no excuse for lazy pseudo-morality.

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