Racism or Political Correctness at its Worst?

Kabeer Hassan, One of the Offenders

You may have read today that a gang of nine Asian males were found guilty of plying young vulnerable white girls with drink and drugs and passing them around for sex. Some of the victims were as young as 13.

At the time of the arrest the police declined to state the ethnicity of the gang involved, sparking a lot of speculation in the press. Today police spokespersons have repeatedly stated that these were NOT racially motivated crimes. Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood, of Greater Manchester Police said: "It is not a racial issue. This is about adults preying on vulnerable young children. It just happens that in this particular area and time the demographics were that these were Asian men." Mmm. If you do a bit of research you will find that 96% of offenders charged with these types of offences have been Asian. In particular, 83% are of Pakistani origin.

The Guardian is at pains to assure its readers that these are not racial crimes. They state. 'Despite the conviction of nine Asian men for child exploitation in Rochdale and worrying signs in the statistics, racial profiling won't help potential victims.' Seems to me that it might, unless they are suggesting racist police are targeting Asian offenders and ignoring black and white offenders.

Personally I don't care whether these crimes are labelled racist or not. The important issues are that we do more to safeguard victims, who invariably come from the ineffective liberal care system, and we do all we can to prosecute offenders, whatever their ethnicity.

I am concerned that in some cases the police seem almost too ready to make public assurances that offences are being treated as racist but, in other circumstances, are anxious to play down any possible racial aggravation.

Targets

The Home Secretary announced last year that the last policing targets were being scrapped and the sole objective of the police is to cut crime. She also stated that red tape was going to be cut to give the police more time to focus on that task.

My force and the Police Authority recently announced its policing targets for 2012/13. These include:
1. Confidence and Satisfaction
Ensuring 85% of the public have confidence in the police.
Ensuring 82% of victims of serious incidents are satisfied with the overall service they received.
Ensuring 76% of victims of anti social behaviour are satisfied with the overall service they received

2. Reducing crime
Reducing serious acquisitive crime by 3% compared to the previous year.
Detect 20.6% of serious acquisitive crime.
Dismantle or disrupt 16 organised crime groups
Arrest and charge/caution 500 offenders for supplying Class A and B drugs

3. Value for Money
Ensure that at least 90% of all officers and staff are available to deliver and support policing in the force.

Underneath all these targets are dozens of measures that have to be recorded and analysed to try and ensure we keep on track. This includes, for example, targets around attending incidents in good time. So the Home Secretary may have directed that we focus solely on reducing crime but police forces are still ignoring this and thousands of hours are being spent on collating statistics and measuring all sorts of others.

There are two main issues regarding this target setting. Firstly, many of the functions we carry out have no impact on the reduction of crime. If we are only measured on crime reduction then either those other functions should become the responsibility of other organisations or resources will be focused away from those other functions so they are not carried out properly. In the last week, half of my teams time has been taken up with incidents that have no impact on crime reduction. For example, we have dealt with a missing teenager who was felt to be at serious risk of self harming. That took six officers the entire shift, plus dogs and helicopter for about half the shift. Five officers took almost the entire shift dealing with a fatal traffic collision and there will be dozens of hours of follow up enquiries and possibly inquest and court. I have dealt with three complaints against police. Each one has been made so that it can be stated in mitigation. The complaints are frivolous and will be withdrawn after he court case. Add to this all the 'missing' people that walk out of hospitals and children's homes. Those responsible simply ring the police and thereby pass the buck. If anything happens to their charges it becomes our responsibility. I could go on.

The second issue I have is how can we be held to account for crime levels when we only play a small part in the justice system? We arrest and report offenders and put them before the court. The Youth Offending Team and Probation are almost totally ineffective rehabilitating offenders who continue to offend. The sentencing guidelines ensure that persistent offenders are never properly sentenced by the courts. The Courts simply provide a revolving door for persistent offenders to continue with their recidivist behaviour. Deterrent sentencing disappeared until the riots last summer, when there was a wake up call. Outside of those offenders, sentencing is ineffective business as usual. Eventually some of these persistent offenders commit an offence so serious that they are incarcerated for a long time. That is why the prisons are bursting at the seams. The police cannot be doing a bad job considering how useless the rest of the system is.

The worry is that police morale is falling and when the police start giving up there is nothing left in the justice system to protect the public.

Home Secretary Resigns 2

Qatada and his family have cost the British taxpayer an estimated £2.8m

Last November I wrote this when our illustrious Home Secretary, Theresa May, was under pressure to resign following a complete mess up within the Border Agency. She managed to survive that one. Whether or not she deserves to survive the Abu Qatada fiasco is another question.

Qatada is a Jordanian who came to the UK with his family is 1993 and was granted asylum in 1994. He was convicted, in his absence, in 1999 by Jordanian courts for terrorism offences and his extradition was requested. Since 2002 Qatada has been in and out of custody while British authorities have tried to secure his extradition to Jordan. Qatada has, unsurprisingly, fought this extradition tooth and nail. In February 2009 the Law Lords decided that he could be extradited to Jordan. Qatada's lawyers appealed this to the European Court of Human Rights.

On the 17th January 2012 the European Court decided that Qatada could not be extradited as it would breach his right to a fair trial. While the British Government sought assurances regarding this issue from Jordon, Qatada was released on bail. Having received these assurances, the Home Secretary decided to have Qatada arrested and deported on the Tuesday 17th April in the belief that this date was outside of the 3 month appeal limit on the European Courts decision.

There have been a number of cases from the European Court that have made it clear that the appeal period starts on the day after the decision of the Court. It has come to light that a number of legal experts contacted the Home Office to ensure they were aware that the appeal period ended on the 18th April. Somehow this information was overlooked and the arrest went ahead followed immediately by the inevitable appeal. This now means that, once again, Qatada cannot be deported and another lengthy and expensive appeals process will now commence.

It has been estimated that Qatada and his family have cost the British taxpayer £2.8 million, to date, in benefits and legal fees.

Theresa May has clearly been badly advised in this matter but she is the decision maker and ultimately responsible. There are always calls for incompetent public sector managers to be sacked. I think it is time Mrs May stepped up to the mark and threw herself on her sword.

Can You Hear Them Wailing?

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five suspected terrorists, Babar Ahmad, Abu Hamza, Seyla Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled Al Fawarz can be extradited from Britain to America. The decision on a sixth, Haroon Rashid Aswatt has been adjourned to a later date.

The Court found that there were no grounds to believe the suspects would be ill treated in America and dismissed their appeals.

The liberal lefties are howling from their rafters. When you get down to it though, the only thing they seem to be wailing about is that in America, if these suspects are convicted, they might actually face some consequences for their alleged behaviour.

I am still wailing about the fact many of these suspects have spent years in British prisons awaiting extradition. They have fought the extraditions tooth and nail while blood sucking lawyers have bled millions from the Legal Aid system and the taxpayer trying to keep them here.

Free Babar Ahmad! You Must be Joking!

I have previously written about Babar Ahmad and his lies being exposed. Ahmad has been in prison for seven years awaiting extradition to the United States on terrorism charges. Today he has been interviewed and has pleaded to be tried in this country rather than the USA.

He claims that he has seen no evidence against him but it is quite clear that he is very well aware of the case against him and he chooses words carefully to try and gain support. Ahmad is a graduate and the son of middle class Pakistani immigrants. He admits that during the Bosnia/Serbian conflict he joined a Bosnian unit fighting against the Serbians. He is not an armchair commentator.

It is alleged, and he did not deny in interview, that he ran a website called Azzam.com which supported Jihad and Chechen and Taliban fighters, although he claims he does not support terrorism. It is alleged that he had possession of a computer disc containing information regarding movements of the US 5th Fleet and the fact that the fleet was vulnerable to attack in the Straights of Hormuz. An American sailor has been convicted of selling this information to Babar and another.

Ahmad states in interview that if he was tried and had been convicted in this country he would be free by now. How true. This is the real issue. The only reason Ahmad is still in detention here is that he has been fighting tooth and nail, at taxpayers expense, his extradition to the United States. Ahmad could have gone to the US in 2004 and faced trial there. He knows that the Americans don't mess about with terrorists and if he were convicted he faces the rest of his life in gaol. He desperately wants to be tried in Britain as he knows that should he be convicted his sentence will be little more than he has already served.

The European Court of Human Rights will announce their long awaited verdict on his extradition next week. Personally, I hope he is packed off to the US for trial as soon as possible.