It's the end of PACE. New police powers to stop and question suspects muted.

Oh my good God.

Not content with already having the most oppressive set of terrorism legislation in Europe, the outgoing duo of John Reid and Tony Blair have come up with another little gem.

What the new measures would entail is the Police being able to stop any ask people about not only their identity, but also now their movements. A useful side-dish to ID cards, no?!

Still, worry not, boys and girls. Reid's spokesperson did assure us that the police would still need "reasonable suspicion" that a crime may be committed before using the new powers.

Uh-huh. Consider this then. Out of a total number of 16,206 S44 stop and searches carried out in London alone during 2001-02 AND 2002-03 only 13 (no, really, thirteen) arrests were terrorist related. (Source: Statistics on Race & the Criminal Justice System-2003: A Home Office Publication under Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 (2004))

The Select Committee on Home Affairs, during a sitting of May 2004, found here, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, noted the following here.

Parliament intended s44 authorisations to be given and confirmed only in response to "an imminent terrorist threat to a specific location in respect of which normal police powers of stop and search were inadequate." The Mayor is, therefore, concerned that the "rolling" s44 authorisations across the MPD have become part of day-to-day policing and as such are not in accordance with Parliament's intentions. The Mayor notes the Divisional Court and Court of Appeal judgements that Parliament had envisaged that an anti-terrorist authorisation might encompass an entire police area or district. He is persuaded that it is not the existence of the s44 power that could cause civil liberties infringements but the exercise of that power.

and

Furthermore, very few individuals stopped and searched will know the distinction between the ranges of legislation. If they have been informed by a police officer that they were stopped and searched under terrorism suspicions, or they themselves perceive that they have been stopped and searched for this, then the cumulative negative impact on BME communities is that they feel they are being targeted, labelled and criminalised as terrorist suspects. Indeed Home Office statistics reveal that during 2002-03 per 1,000 population, London's black and Asian populations were stopped and searched almost four times and nearly 1.5 times more often than "white" people under PACE. In 2001-02, more Asians were stopped than black people.

In addition to the problems above, I have serious concerns about where this is heading. The title of this post was "The End of PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act".

PACE - linked here- was a landmark piece of legislation. For the first time, a proper framework of protection for those persons arrested for, or on suspicion, was in place that not only governed police powers around key areas such as Stop Search, Arrest and Detention but also made it compulsory for detained persons to be made aware of their legal rights AND have mechanisms in place to deal with those people who didn't understand their rights in the first place.

However, unlike the current Codes of Practice that describe the circumstances in which the police can interview a person, these new proposed powers would provide officers with the opportunity to ask admissible questions to people without the benefit of legal representation that might result in their further arrest and detention. The very act of not providing an acceptable answer would itself be an offence under the new proposals.

This is an example of legislation creep. I have very little doubt in my mind that if this legislation came to pass, that we would then see other offences for where the police would be able to interview people on the street. No tapes, no PACE codes of Practice, not right to speak with a solicitor etc.

Sounds like a police state, right? Franco and Hitler would be delighted.

The role of the police is not to treat every person as a suspect. It is to maintain the balance between privacy and considered, intelligence-driven policing. I fail to see what right the Police has to stop people under "terrorism" powers (remember just how many "Terrorism" arrests have been made under the existing powers) when there are already fifteen different pieces of legislation that allow the police to stop people.

It is not right, and cannot be right, that we allow the relationship between the Police and the Citizen to be changed so fundamentally with these horrific proposals.

I would rather die a citizen of a terrorism attack in a free country than as a citizen of a terrorist attack in a country with all the civil liberties of China.

All hail to my visitors from the RDVC Forum re. Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and collectors of Zulu or boer war pith helmets

No, really. They even link here!

rorkesdriftvc.com

Good day to you all!

Boing! Out goes Dr. John Reid!

Whoops! That'll be another Home Secretary leaving, then!

Poor old Home Office. Not content with being split into two giant pieces of, er, civil service paper-chasing, it's Daddy has left them for another job. Again.

Indeed, since the relative stability of having Jack Straw in place for four years from 1997 to 2001, the Department's had less than a happy run of it.

David Blunkett - oh, you know - David Blunkett? Yes, the one who wanted to lock everyone up and give us ID Cards, as I mentioned back in Feb 2006?

ID cards? Oh, come on, you MUST remember him? The guy who watered down the right to a trial by jury and who wanted to do away with it altogether? The one who had a fling with one Kimberly Fortier, publisher of The Spectator Magazine...which the, er, Tory, MP Boris Johnston works for? Who allegedly fiddled an immigration claim for his ex-lover's former nanny? The one who purchased a railway ticket for the same woman out of public funds?

Yes, he really did run the Home Office during this. He even had time to write books and write for several newspapers during all this. It's tough at the top!

Then came Charles "Has anyone seen my foreign prisoners" Clarke who lasted a whole six months! Still, not a bad innings for someone who had over 1000 foreign inmates slip out of the net on his watch (although it's worth pointing out the many of these also happened in, er, David Blunkett's time there).

So, Dr. Reid is now bowing out, but - like those before him - he leaves behind a trail of newspaper headlines and bitter aftertastes. One of the best parts, for me, was him really rallying the troops at the beleaguered Home Office almost before the revolving doors had stopped swinging 'round on his first visit by declaring that the Department "isn't fit for purpose".

Way to get people behind you, John!

Still, to his credit, Dr. Reid has never paid much attention to whether people liked him or not - every television interview I saw with him made me roll my eyes as a stereotypically aggressive Minister spent several minutes telling us that we're all going to die and that there were terrorists on every corner of every street. And don't even MENTION the topic of immigration to him.

Fear. Fear. Fear.

So, what now for the poor people of Whitehall? Well, once they've unpacked their crates and dusted off the spankingly new "Department of Justice" headed paper and Tony Blair's finally buggered off once and for all, maybe someone will start actually giving a shit about policy and tackling the mess of overcrowded prisons, repeat offending and a demoralised police service.

NEXT!

Pc Richard Gray

I don't propose going over the circumstances of the dreadful shooting of Richard Gray, since there has been plenty of coverage elsewhere. Needless to say, I found the news somewhat depressing; I can't imagine what it must be like for families to have to deal with at home.

His death did, as expected, reopen the aging debate of whether police officers should be armed and it was only on this point that I wanted to comment.

I've long argued "no" to routine arming of officers. Perversely, I tend to fall on the side of the debate that says that in areas of high crime, especially violent crime, having armed officers will only encourage criminals to come tooled up themselves. It's bad enough the knife crime is on the general increase, let alone gun crime.

I guess my point here would to keep things in perspective. Gun crime in this country is low. Really low.

And, in my mind, the issue of gun control in general is of more pressing importance; the gun that killed Pc Gray was legally held - I simply fail to understand why anyone needs to have a gun, period.

I'm happy to accept less-than-lethal forms such as a Taser, but right now I am uncomfortable that groups like "Protect the Protectors", who claim to speak on behalf of the entire Police service, are cynically using this news item to promote their one-topic crusade.

Updated blogroll

Bobby's Lot hasn't had a post in nearly three months, so it's dropped off the radar and my links for now.

An Inspector Writes, however, has joined the fray.

Internet search engine biscuit-wiping loon bread nonsense

The most popular words that brought people to this blog in the past few weeks, in ascending order:

In third place:

'Police' (no surpise)

In second place:

'Foreigners' & 'Hats' in equal place

In first place:

'Victorian army ovens.'

Huh? What loon looks for "Victorian Army Ovens" in a single search, and then keeps coming back for more?!

Internet plea for Special Constables Part II

I guess I should have posted some evidence of what I was on about previously....and then I found it, gift-wrapped and on a plate.

A discussion thread about baton size on policespecials.com.

I despair.

New addition

I shoud link to more blogs that I do, but it's quality not quantity that counts in this game. All hail to Midlands PC.