Post: #1

The first leader of Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council, Sara Thornton, says that British residents cannot expect police to respond to burglary reports anymore. Because of funding cuts, Ms. Thornton, the former Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, says that online abuse cases and allegations of “sexual assault” will take precedence.

Therefore, the police will take Twitter “abuse” (politically incorrect jokes, maybe?) more seriously than someone breaking into your home with a crowbar and looting it. This is despite the usually ample evidential opportunities burglary reports provide relative to sexual assault cases, of which many are of the he-said-she-said variety.

I am not someone who denies that sexual assaults occur. They certainly do. Like murder, serious assault, corporate fraud and other serious crimes, one case of these incidents is theoretically too many. But they are nonetheless perpetrated by a minority in society. They are not widespread. As the Harvard academic Steven Pinker relates, violent acts in particular are at historic lows. Thornton’s dismissal of the importance of attending to burglary reports gives the illusion that we are somehow facing an epidemic of sexual assaults.

Furthermore, “online abuse” is the most poorly defined and often ridiculous category of criminal offence. Instead of creating actual harm, most of the time “offenders” are punished for hurting someone’s feelings. Unless there is a well-founded fear of real-life harm from a tweet or something similar, there is more of an argument for criminalizing adultery (which I’m not saying should be criminalized, by the way) or low-end schoolyard bullying than the very vague concept of “online abuse”.

Sara Thornton’s priorities only affirm the lack of due process for those accused of sexual assault

Sadly, evidence-poor reports of sexual abuse in modern times result in both social witch hunts and a systemic lowering of the standard of proof. Whilst police investigations are not “court processes” per se, those accused of sexual assault are now required to “prove” to police in Britain that they had consent, whatever that benchmark means and however it can possibly be satisfied.

Functionally, all this does is shift the pre-trial burden of proof, which should be on the state, to the accused. In the meantime, the actual collection of evidence, and the underlying strength of the police case, is left by the wayside.

Of course, the laying of police charges should not have to conform to “beyond reasonable doubt”. The idea is to properly test what is deemed to be evidence in a court of law. The problem is that even when we move to the courts, legal processes have been watered down specifically for sexual assault cases. Without any other evidence, aside from he-said-she-said, you would not see regular convictions for tax evasion, armed robbery, serious assault and other crimes, especially if the alleged incident took place years or decades ago. This is routine for sexual assault cases, however.

Reports of serious crimes must be investigated, emphasizing the EVIDENCE

Testimony of a complainant is part of the overall evidentiary framework. I do not refute this. But for it to be the only or preponderant evidence is a very dangerous path to take. It beggars belief that Sara Thornton, and presumably some of her senior colleagues, would largely abandon responding to burglary reports but divert more resources to investigating crimes where objective evidence of the kind demanded for almost every other criminal category is severely lacking.

The primary responsibility of the police is to protect citizens and maintain social order. “Order” to most people would mean the protection of property and person, which often dovetail where burglaries are concerned. Amidst the protecting, police need to be searching for and uncovering quality evidence that can be used to prosecute alleged offenders.

Clamping down on keyboard comments (which create far less damage and injury than burglaries) and he-said-she-said sexual assault allegations is a slap in the face to the millions of Britons who will suffer from having their property stolen and their homes violated. And what happens when these homeowners and their families are seriously injured or killed?

Burglars now have a much stronger get-out-of-jail free card thanks to Sara Thornton.

Read More: Lesbian Chief Constable Forces Bearded British Cops To Wear Beard Nets

Posted on Sun, 02 Aug 2015 23:00:55 +0000 at http://www.returnofkings.com/68511/briti...burglaries
Comments: http://www.returnofkings.com/68511/briti...s#comments

Post: #2

Reading one of the comments, saw this gem:

Quote:This shift from pursuing actual crime to persecuting people for unpleasant opinions online is simply a function of how the British police services, under orders from the Home Office and Ministry of 'Justice', measure success.

See, the benchmark of success in British policing -- and thus the metric by which the higher echelons are awarded their performance bonuses, promotions, pension pots, and gongs (OBEs, knighthoods, etc.) -- isn't prosecuted criminal acts, but a bizarre bureaucratic invention called 'detected crimes'.

A 'detected crime' is not an arrest, a prosecution, or even a case brought to trial, but completion of the correct box-ticking procedures, correct formatting of the relevant paperwork, and, if you're REALLY lucky, the assignment of a crime to a suspect (whether prosecuted or not). All this means that going through the extended process of getting career burglar Sid Lag banged up in prison for a single burglary = 1 detection, while just getting little Johnny Chav (who knows he'll get little more than a ticking off, thanks to Britain's ludicrously lenient sentencing guidelines) to admit to a dozen instances of petty shoplifting = 12 detections.

Which of these is less demanding of police time, effort and budgets? Exactly.

From this perspective chasing up twitter abuse and suchlike are the perfect crime to pursue for the purposes of the higher ranks of the British police. SOP becomes: receive complaint; fire off an email to the ISP of the person accused of online 'hate speech'; ISP responds with time stamped evidence supporting the accusation; copper files this as a detected crime of 'harassment', all without leaving his desk.

And, if the Powers That Be have a bee in their bonnet over a particular '-phobia' this month, the detection can be followed up with an exemplary prosecution of the person involved. This serves to 1) show that something is being done about the moral panic de jour, and 2) keeps the rest of the populace who might share similarly unfashionable opinions intimidated and in line.

Meanwhile, your poor old Granny has had her house broken into, and her pension, silverware and your late Grandad's war medals stolen. Up rocks PC Plod, under orders to get detections above all else. Burglary, traditionally a police matter, becomes a case of:

"Sorry love, we don't chase these up any more. Here's a crime number; phone your insurance provider."

And back he trudges to field more phone calls/emails about twitter spite from the weak-minded and easily offended.

Hilariously, detected crimes as the official measure of police efficacy were loudly and publicly dropped a few years back, but the Home Office continues to use something uncannily similar as a metric of success. Only the name has changed.

This is Britain in 2015: Big Brother is watching, and he's a lazy, spiteful, arbitrary bully who will ruin your life to make his 'crimes detected' figures look good.

Anyone else able to comment about this?

Post: #3

Well what the fuck did we expect when we put a woman in charge?

Post: #4

I think some of the reasoning behind this article is that they want to scare people into not giving them more hassle because of the people's online playground, I hear the amount of emergency call they get about facebook and twitter arguements from the new comers to the internet is crazy.

The people creating these rules are doing it to attempt to relate to the majority of people who are social media fans and at the same time trying to control it and to prevent people from using it outside the realms of their non existant guidelines. If it was upto them we would be posting meme's of cats and happy colourful pride events or whichever trend they want us promoting next.

People should be given positions based on their skills, experience and ability to do the job, you would never have seen this woman in a film as a sheriff in the wild west actually having to do some work and protecting her town.

Post: #5

Quote:This is Britain in 2015: Big Brother is watching, and he's a lazy, spiteful, arbitrary bully CUNT who will ruin your life to make his 'crimes detected' figures look good.

Fixed to make it more genuinely British.

Post: #6

It was reported yesterday that police in certain areas are only responding to burglaries in houses with even door number.

Live at no10, the police are on their way.

Live at no11, sorry Sir, we don't have the manpower.

You couldn't make it up.

We are truly the land of the calamity cops.