Police say family of 17-year-old have asked for privacy after she was fatally struck by car on motorway in Somerset
A teenage girl who fled a stationary police vehicle on the M5 and was fatally struck by a car has been named as Tamzin Hall.
The 17-year-old from Wellington, Somerset, died after being struck by a vehicle travelling southbound on the motorway between Bridgwater and Taunton shortly after 11pm on Monday.
Continue reading...Matthew Pennycook says Tory position now unclear on cap on tax rises that was in place when Kemi Badenoch was local government minister
A minister has criticised her Tory shadow for talking about “joy” in the health sector about the funding it received.
Karin Smyth, a health minister, said it was a strange word to use given the state of NHS finances left by the last government.
Many in the health sector would have been pleased to hear the announcement of the extra funding going into the NHS [in the budget], only for the joy to be struck down by the realisation of a broken manifesto promise not to raise national insurance contributions.
This was only compounded further on the discovery that a raft of frontline care providers – care homes, hospices, care charities, pharmacies, GPS, to name but a few – found themselves not exempt from the NI rises, leaving them with crippling staff bills and the threat of closure and redundancies.
He talks about joy. There was no joy when we inherited the mess that they left back in July.
The chancellor took into account the impact of changes to national insurance when she allocated an extra £26bn to the Department of Health and Social Care.
There are well established processes for agreeing funding allocations across the system, we are going through those processes now with this issue in mind.
The British government needs to start now indicating for them what they believe is the tipping point at which they believe a referendum would be called.
Continue reading...Ombudsman’s report on death of Katie Simpson, 21, adds to concerns at levels of gender-based violence in Northern Ireland
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) “failed” the family of a 21-year-old woman after her death two years ago in Derry, initially treating it as suicide rather than a suspected murder, the police watchdog has said.
The report by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland comes amid renewed concerns that gender-based violence is not being taken seriously enough in the region with the highest rate of femicide per capita of all nations in the UK and in the island of Ireland.
Continue reading...Avon and Somerset police referred themselves to watchdog, who said girl was being transported to custody
A teenage girl who was killed by a car while on foot on the M5 had fled a police vehicle before she was struck, it has emerged.
Avon and Somerset police said the motorway was closed between Bridgwater and Taunton in Somerset after the fatal collision involving a pedestrian and a car at 11pm on Monday.
Continue reading...‘Distressing’ images and videos were circulating after 74-year-old was struck by a single-decker in Cowgate area
Police have asked the public to stop sharing “distressing” images and videos after a man died in Edinburgh on Saturday evening.
The 74-year-old man was struck by a single-decker bus in the Cowgate area of the city, when the streets were busy with weekend revellers.
Continue reading...Seven Met officers accused of accessing X-rays and witness information after Wayne Couzens was arrested
Police viewed confidential information about the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard such as her X-rays out of “curiosity”, a disciplinary hearing heard.
Seven Metropolitan police officers were accused of looking at sensitive information relating to the case after the arrest of the firearms officer Wayne Couzens, the Times reported.
Continue reading...Martyn Blake shot Kaba, who was unarmed, in 2022, saying he feared Kaba would use his Audi to kill officers
A Metropolitan police armed officer on trial for murder after shooting an unarmed suspect in the head has been acquitted.
Martyn Blake shot Chris Kaba in September 2022 on a residential street in Streatham, south London.
Continue reading...Andrew Talbot took drugs from a Greater Manchester police evidence store and supplied them to criminals
A cocaine-addicted detective who stole drugs with a retail value of almost £400,000 from a police evidence store and supplied them to criminals has been jailed for 19 years.
Andrew Talbot, formerly a Greater Manchester police (GMP) detective constable, conspired with convicted drug dealer Keith Bretherton, 50, to sell the stolen cocaine, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
Continue reading...Inspector dismissed emergency services’ concerns that incident was similar to Skripal poisonings, KC says
Police officers urged paramedics and firefighters to treat the second novichok incident in 2018 as a drug overdose despite warnings from the ambulance and fire services that it had similarities to the first poisoning four months earlier in Salisbury, a public inquiry has heard.
The UK government believes the novichok was brought into Britain by agents tasked by Vladimir Putin to target the former spy Sergei Skripal, who had been settled in Salisbury after a spy exchange, the inquiry heard earlier this week. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned on 4 March 2018 and both survived.
Continue reading...Source says backstage ‘brush-by’ did not include discussion of VIP protection given to star, a decision made by Scotland Yard
Keir Starmer met Taylor Swift at one of her London concerts days after a decision was taken to grant her a “blue light” police escort, No 10 sources have confirmed.
The prime minister and his family had a 10-minute meeting with the pop megastar and her mother, Andrea, backstage at Wembley on 20 August, with the conversation covering the Southport murders, which took place at a Swift-themed holiday club.
Continue reading...Guardia Civil report on Piia Hokkanen indicates Spanish detectives believe cause of death was suicide
The family and friends of a British IT executive who fell to her death from an apartment block in Spain on the evening of her 50th birthday have called on the Metropolitan police to intervene in a Spanish police investigation into the fatality.
Piia Hokkanen, who at the time of her death had borrowed her sister’s holiday home for a three-day mini-break in Torrevieja, near Alicante, was found lifeless after falling from a communal window on to a neighbour’s patio shortly after midnight on 4 September.
Continue reading...Hitachi digger tracked down to town of Pruchnik, with arrangements made to reunite it with its owner
A digger stolen from a development site in Dorset has been found five months later and 1,200 miles away in a rural town in south-eastern Poland.
Dorset police received a report on 1 April that a Hitachi digger and a JCB digger had been stolen in the small town of Ferndown, near Bournemouth.
Continue reading...Two other male occupants of Ford Fiesta pursued by police driver remain in hospital after crash
An investigation has been launched after a 17-year-old boy died after a police chase.
The teenage passenger was one of three males taken to hospital after the crash outside Central Middlesex hospital in Harrow, north-west London, at about 5.25am on Monday, the Metropolitan police said.
Continue reading...Seized dog, named Bruno, euthanised while owners were applying for exemption to keep him
Lancashire police has apologised after putting down an XL bully dog while the owners were in the process of applying for an exemption to keep him.
The seized dog, named Bruno, was euthanised due to an “administration error”.
Continue reading...PC Ross Benson accused of smacking the girl, who was known to him, multiple times in 2018
A Metropolitan police officer has been sacked and banned from policing after allegedly spanking a 12-year-old girl’s bare bottom.
PC Ross Benson, of the North West Basic Command Unit, was accused of smacking the girl several times between April and August 2018 when she was aged 12 to 13, and there was an alleged sexual element to his behaviour.
Continue reading...Police watchdog finds boy restrained for longer than necessary by officers involved in stop and search in London
Officers who handcuffed and restrained a 14-year-old black schoolboy on the ground during a stop and search in London committed misconduct, the police watchdog has said.
PC McCorley Clewes and former PC Benjamin Morgan were among four Metropolitan police officers involved in the stop in Blackhorse Lane, Croydon, on 23 June 2022 at about 5.30pm after reports of a stolen mobile phone.
Continue reading...Mark Rowley launches initiative that includes reset of stop and search, but acknowledges ‘there is still a lot to do’
Scotland Yard has launched its latest steps to try to rebuild trust with London’s black community, which the Met police commissioner acknowledged had been let down for many years.
Mark Rowley said “there remains a long way to go and there is a lot more work to do”, but that the force’s race action plan was a step in the right direction.
Continue reading...Phillippa Kaufmann KC, who helped black cab rapist’s victims sue the Metropolitan police, is helping examine whether the force should have done more to bring Harrods boss to justice
The lawyer who helped victims sue the Metropolitan Police for failing to investigate John Worboys, the black cab rapist, is working with women allegedly attacked by Mohamed Al Fayed.
Phillippa Kaufmann KC has joined the legal team examining whether police had a duty to do more to bring Fayed to justice when allegations were made against him.
Continue reading...Police warn unauthorised drone users could be prosecuted as restrictions are in place for conference week
Drones have been seized by police after they were flown in breach of airspace restrictions during the Labour party conference in Liverpool.
Merseyside police said they seized three drones on Saturday after a temporary airspace restriction covering much of Liverpool city centre was put in place.
Continue reading...Jamar Powell says PC Connor Jones should be sacked rather than receiving written warning over traumatising action
A Metropolitan police officer who put a Taser to the neck of an innocent black child after he had been forced to kneel in the street has been found guilty of gross misconduct but allowed to keep his job.
Jamar Powell told the Guardian he had feared he might die during the incident in September 2020, was left traumatised and would struggle to ever trust the police again, having been stopped and searched more than 30 times with nothing ever being found.
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