Category Archives: Police

Hertz apologizes after refusing rental car to Puerto Rican customer

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A worker at the rental chain demanded to see the American man’s passport, apparently unaware that the island is part of the US

The US rental car giant Hertz has apologized and pledged to retrain its staff after an employee denied a Puerto Rican customer a prepaid vehicle on the mistaken belief that he was from a foreign country and needed a passport.

During the encounter with the customer at New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong international airport, the Hertz employee also called over a law enforcement officer even though Puerto Rico has been a US territory since 1898 and has a (non-voting) member of Congress, according to a stunning report the CBS correspondent David Begnaud published on Twitter and Instagram late Saturday.

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Woman in Cornwall died four months after reporting rape, inquest hears

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Coroner raises concerns over police and mental health services’ response to case of Tamsin Dolamore

A senior coroner has expressed deep concern over the way police and mental health services dealt with the case of a vulnerable woman who fell from a railway bridge four months after reporting she had been raped.

Tamsin Dolamore, a 24-year-old carer, was found on the tracks near a railway station in Cornwall and died in hospital the following day having sustained head injuries and had a cardiac arrest.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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Sussex police ‘committed to solving’ Vishal Mehrotra murder case

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Father had criticised force for failing to reinvestigate killing of 8-year-old son who disappeared in 1981

Sussex police are to re-examine the case of a murdered schoolboy who disappeared on his way home more than 40 years ago.

Vishal Mehrotra, eight, vanished from west London in July 1981 and part of his remains were found in Rogate, West Sussex, seven months later. No one has been convicted for his murder.

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Police officer filmed appearing to punch man repeatedly in head during arrest in Wales

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Independent Office for Police Conduct has launched investigation into incident in Porthmadog

The police watchdog has launched an independent investigation after a police officer in Wales was filmed appearing to punch a man repeatedly in the head before arresting him.

Footage of the incident is circulating on social media and has caused considerable “public concern”, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said.

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Sheku Bayoh’s struggle in restraint may have played role in death, inquiry told

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Pathologist says struggle ‘has to be considered as being important’ in 2015 death in custody in Fife

Sheku Bayoh’s struggle while being restrained by at least six police officers should be considered a major part of what caused his death, according to the pathologist who examined his body.

The inquiry into Bayoh’s death in custody heard from Dr Kerryanne Shearer that the 31-year-old had taken ecstasy and another stimulant drug before being restrained by officers in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on 3 May 2015.

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Scotland Yard admits failing to hand over documents to Daniel Morgan inquiry

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Met left dozens of documents in locked cabinet instead of passing to inquiry into its own corruption

Dozens of documents that Scotland Yard should have handed over to an official inquiry into its corruption were instead left in a locked cabinet located on the same floor as its commissioner, the Guardian has learned.

The revelation relates to 95 pages of documents the force now accepts it should have given to the Daniel Morgan inquiry, investigating the unsolved murder of the private detective and the role corruption played in shielding his killers.

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Met stands by officers after man Tasered and two dogs shot dead in London

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Footage on social media showed officers pursuing a man holding two dogs on a short lead along a canal in Limehouse

The Metropolitan police has defended its officers after a suspect was Tasered and two dogs were shot in front of screaming witnesses.

Footage posted on social media showed officers pursuing a man holding the two dogs on a short lead along a canal in Limehouse, east London, on Sunday afternoon. The situation appeared to become heated, as the man was Tasered to the floor and the animals were shot dead.

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Anti-coronation protest leader hits out at police over arrests

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Graham Smith said Met officers should hang their heads in shame after 52 detained in central London

Police who arrested anti-monarchy protesters before King Charles III’s coronation have “destroyed whatever trust might have existed between peaceful protesters and the Metropolitan police,” the chief executive of the campaign group Republic has said.

After six members of the group were arrested at about 7.30am on Saturday – before their protest had begun – and had their placards seized, Graham Smith said officers “should hang their heads in shame” and that police had shown “no judgment, no common sense and no basic decency”.

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Met police investigate more organ trafficking cases in UK

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Modern slavery team reveals further allegations of people being trafficked to London for body parts

The Metropolitan police is investigating more cases of organ trafficking in the UK after new victims came forward following the first conviction for the offence under modern slavery laws.

Detectives from Scotland Yard’s modern slavery and child exploitation team have said they are investigating more allegations of people being trafficked for their body parts to London and other areas of the UK.

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Police accused over use of facial recognition at King Charles’s coronation

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Met says technology will not be used to target protesters or activists, but campaigners say use is ‘extremely worrying’

The Metropolitan police has been accused of using the coronation to stage the biggest live facial recognition operation in British history.

The force said on Wednesday it intended to use the controversial technology, which scans faces and matches them against a list of people police want for alleged crimes and could identify convicted terrorists mingling in the crowds.

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Man shot in front garden of Liverpool house near home of Olivia Pratt-Korbel

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Merseyside police say people who use guns on streets should be treated like pariahs

Police have condemned the “pariahs” using guns on Britain’s streets after a man was chased into a residential garden and shot near where Olivia Pratt-Korbel was murdered.

Merseyside police said officers were called to reports of gunshots and screaming in the Huyton area of Liverpool at 9.45pm on Tuesday.

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‘We tried to stop her’: Kenyan teenager tells how cult starved his mother

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More than 100 bodies have been unearthed since church leader was arrested on suspicion of luring his followers to their deaths

Two years ago, Issa Ali’s mother took all her belongings and left her family to join followers of the charismatic church leader Paul Mackenzie Nthenge in the Shakahola forest in south-east Kenya.

“He told them that’s where Jesus’ second coming will happen,” the 16-year-old said.

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UN group to tour Los Angeles jails accused of ‘squalid, inhumane’ conditions

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Advocates say it will cast welcome attention on a system mired in scandals of prisoner mistreatment and racial injustice

A United Nations human rights group is touring Los Angeles county jails on Friday, bringing international scrutiny to a detention system criticized for overcrowding, mistreatment and abuse of people with mental illnesses, and conditions described by civil rights groups as “barbaric”.

A panel of experts appointed by the UN human rights council and formed after the murder of George Floyd is visiting LA as part of a two-week trip to cities across the US examining racial justice and police violence. In California, the investigators will meet with families of people killed by police and formerly incarcerated people. They will also enter the LA county jail system, the largest in the country, which is run by the LA sheriff’s department (LASD).

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Sentence of Kenyan man convicted of role in Briton’s murder is quashed

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David Tebbutt’s widow ‘delighted’ as court rules conviction of Ali Kololo for robbery with violence was unsafe

A man found guilty of being part of a gang of pirates who murdered a British tourist 12 years ago has had his conviction quashed by Kenya’s high court.

Ali Kololo, from Lamu County, was convicted of robbery with violence in connection with the 2011 attack that left David Tebbutt dead and his wife, Judith, held captive in Somalia for six months.

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MPs vote to support the Illegal Migration Bill by 289 to 230 – as it happened

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Theresa May had warned bill will cause more people to be consigned to modern slavery while Geoffrey Cox also raised concerns. This blog is now closed

Q: [From Matthew Barber, the police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley] What can the Home Office do to cut bureaucracy for the police?

Braverman says, if someone is having a mental health crisis, there should be a healthcare response, not a police response. She says police officers are having to spend too much time in hospital with people.

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Community-led approach needed to tackle youth violence in UK, report finds

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Calls for police powers to be rolled back in favour of funding for youth services and mental health initiatives

A community-led approach is needed to tackle serious youth violence, such as more funding for youth services and mental health initiatives while rolling back police powers, a report has said.

​​Education is central to the fight against serious youth violence, which must involve an end to school exclusions and the removal of police from schools, according to Holding Our Own: A guide to non-policing solutions to serious youth violence.

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Police Federation chair accepts Met is institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic

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Steve Hartshorn says making his personal views public is an act of ‘leadership’, after damning Casey report

The head of the Police Federation of England and Wales has said the Metropolitan police is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic, becoming the first leader of a major British policing institution to accept the findings of a devastating report last month.

In an interview with the Guardian marking the 30th anniversary of Stephen Lawrence’s murder, Steve Hartshorn said he expected a “backlash” for his comments, which he stressed were his personal view.

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Essex pub that displayed golly dolls seized by police is vandalised

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White Hart Inn in Grays, which has been the subject of a reported hate crime, daubed with graffiti and has windows damaged

An Essex pub where police confiscated golly dolls has been vandalised with graffiti and damage to five windows occurring early on Sunday morning, police have said.

The incident occurred at about 12.40am at White Hart Inn in Grays. Essex police said they have deployed extra patrols in the area.

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Two Met police officers sacked over messages about Katie Price’s son

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Officers sent offensive messages about Harvey Price, who is disabled, to colleagues in WhatsApp group

Two Metropolitan police officers have been dismissed over offensive messages that they shared in a WhatsApp group, including some that made fun of Katie Price’s disabled son.

The two serving officers and six former colleagues were found guilty of gross misconduct after sending sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and ableist comments in a group called Secret Squirrel Shit between 2016 and 2018.

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Joe Biden due to address Irish parliament after saying US relationship with Ireland getting ‘stronger and stronger’ – politics live

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US president praises emerging relationship with Ireland to taoiseach Leo Varadkar

Chris Philp, the policing minister, has published an article in the Telegraph today explaining the changes being introduced to the way that police record crimes in England and Wales. The changes are being introduced following recommendations from the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Philp says:

Firstly, we are dropping the requirement for police to record some crimes twice or more, reintroducing the previous “principal offence” rule. This will remove multiple entries on the database which effectively re-record the same incident many times.

Accurate crime recording is vital, and these changes will better reflect victims’ experience. Recording crime does not equate to investigating crime and the police will continue to pursue all offences involved in the incident.

Accurate records of crime must be kept, and crimes will be recorded. These changes to the crime-recording rules will enable police to target and focus investigations and provide victims the service they deserve.

Ambulance response times for all types of emergencies have got longer, including for life-threatening illnesses and injuries, but remain below record levels.

Meanwhile around one in 10 people arriving at major A&E departments are having to wait more than 12 hours before being admitted, transferred or discharged – the first time data of this kind has been published.

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