Women who tried to kill themselves were charged this year after causing traffic jams
A police force has defended its decision to prosecute two mentally ill women who were charged after they caused traffic jams when trying to kill themselves.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) charged the two this year following the incidents. The force said it would review both cases and stressed prosecution was “rarely a course of action for someone with a mental health condition”.
Continue reading...Bob Lambert may have to pay compensation to son who is suing Met after discovery father was undercover officer
Police chiefs are taking legal action against one of their former undercover officers who fathered a child during his covert infiltration of leftwing groups and then abandoned him.
The son of the former officer is already suing the Metropolitan police alleging that he has suffered psychiatric damage after discovering at the age of 26 that his father was not a radical protester he claimed to be, but was instead a police spy.
Continue reading...Lynne Owens to make challenge to ministers during launch of strategic assessment
The government needs to find an extra £2.7bn to tackle the growth in serious and organised crime that is causing “staggering” damage to the United Kingdom, according to the director general of the National Crime Agency.
Lynne Owens is due to make the direct challenge to ministers on Tuesday as she launches the agency’s annual national strategic assessment mapping out dangers from cyber crime, child sexual exploitation, drugs and other serious and organised crime.
Continue reading...Police’s top child protection officer says fines would be ‘drop in the ocean’ to tech firms
A public boycott of social media may be the only way to force companies to protect children from abuse, the country’s leading child protection police officer has said.
Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on child protection, said tech companies had abdicated their duty to safeguard children and were only paying attention due to fear of reputational damage.
Continue reading...Cressida Dick says more officers and rise in stop and search had reduced stabbings and murders
The Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, has hailed big falls in violent crime in London in the past year, with fights over drugs, predominantly cocaine, playing a key part in the rise in the number of stabbings and homicides in the capital.
Related: Criminals going unpunished because of cuts, says police chief
Continue reading...Police drivers would be held to different driving standards to public when in road chases
Police drivers will be held to different standards to the public if they are involved in a car crash while chasing a suspected criminal under changes put forward by the home secretary, Sajid Javid.
Officers are currently held to the same standards as members of the public when involved in a crash during a pursuit and the Home Office argues this overlooks the training they receive.
Continue reading...We thank West Midlands police’s ethics committee for giving serious attention to the potential for harm arising out of data-driven offending prediction models (Alert over risk of bias in tool to predict who will reoffend, 20 April).
A wider public debate needs to be informed by research into how effectively the use of people’s data predicts and reduces criminality, who else experiences targeting and privacy intrusion due to prediction errors, and whether better use of data could reduce such collateral harm.
Continue reading...Several officers taken to hospital after ‘deplorable’ attack in city centre
Several police officers have been taken to hospital after being sprayed with an unknown liquid in what is being described as a “deplorable” attack in Derby city centre.
Derbyshire police said a number of officers experienced side-effects from the substance following the incident at about 4.45am on Monday. The force said the officers had since been discharged from hospital and tests were continuing to discover the source of the liquid.
Continue reading...Group’s ongoing peaceful disruption in London is gaining it global attention and new members
On Monday morning a strange sight appeared, edging its way through the buses, taxis and shoppers on Oxford Street in London.
A bright pink boat, named Berta Cáceres after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, was being pulled carefully through the traffic, eventually coming to a halt in the middle of one of London’s busiest thoroughfares.
Continue reading...Algorithm that predicts who will reoffend may give rise to ethical concerns such as bias
A computer tool used by police to predict which people are likely to reoffend has come under scrutiny from one force’s ethics committee, who said there were a lot of “unanswered questions” and concerns about potential bias.
Amid mounting financial pressure, at least a dozen police forces are using or considering predictive analytics, despite warnings from campaigners that use of algorithms and “predictive policing” models risks locking discrimination into the criminal justice system.
Continue reading...Rapper cancels headline slot at Snowbombing hours before he was due to go on stage
Stormzy has pulled out of his headline slot at Snowbombing festival just hours before he was due to perform, after accusing its staff of racially profiling his manager.
The Brit award-winning rapper, 25, said his friends had been targeted by security at the event in Mayrhofen, Austria, on Thursday looking for someone carrying a weapon, “despite no one [in their party] fitting the description”.
Continue reading...Relaxing of rules means police in England and Wales no longer need grounds for suspicion
Police in England and Wales are being given more power to stop and search people without “reasonable suspicion” in an attempt to tackle knife crime.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced he is making it easier for officers to impose a section 60 order, which allows them to search anyone in an area if serious violence is anticipated.
Continue reading...Sara Thornton says police are ‘really struggling’ with routine responses to crime
Government cuts left police retreating from the streets, solving just one in 10 offences and “really struggling” to deal with routine crime, the leader of Britain’s police chiefs has said.
Sara Thornton steps down this weekend as chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, after a four-year tenure during which her and her colleagues battled to get the government to recognise cuts were leading to fewer officers and resources to fight crime.
Continue reading...Suspect, 28, taken to hospital after firearms officers attend domestic disturbance
A man has been shot by police responding to reports of a suspect “armed with knives and making threats to kill” in east London.
An officer was slashed during the incident in Hackney on Tuesday night, the Metropolitan Police said.
Continue reading...Alleged killers and woman, 64, arrested after discovery of man’s body in cement wall
A 64-year-old woman allegedly hired four Sicilian mafia henchmen to murder her ex-lover who had stolen her jewels, according to police. The killers, all Sicilians, carried out their order by walling the man in cement while he was still alive.
Related: Is this the end for the Sicilian mafia?
Continue reading...‘Extremely frustrating and disheartening’: investigation held up by public inquiry
Survivors and the bereaved from the Grenfell Tower fire have expressed their “extreme frustration” at the pace of justice after Scotland Yard admitted no charges were likely for at least two years.
Detectives investigating the possibility of manslaughter and corporate manslaughter offences said their investigation must take into account the public inquiry into the disaster, the second phase of which will not start until the end of this year. Inquiry lawyers have been swamped with 476,000 separate documents.
Continue reading...Home secretary insists he will back chiefs despite cabinet clash with May
Sajid Javid has said the government must listen to police chiefs’ demand for more resources after they asked the home secretary for emergency cash to fund an immediate rise in the number of officers in England to tackle knife crime.
Javid met chief constables from seven of the areas worst affected by knife crime on Wednesday to discuss solutions to the problem, which has been described as a national emergency.
Continue reading...Met launches inquiry over packages capable of lighting small fires when opened
The Metropolitan police counter-terrorism command has launched an investigation after three suspicious packages were received at transport hubs in London.
The three package sites were the post room at Waterloo station, City Aviation House at City airport and the Compass Centre in Hounslow on the grounds of Heathrow airport.
Continue reading...Hearing ruled claims against Met officers over musician’s death in 2008 were unproven
Five Metropolitan police officers have been cleared of misconduct over the arrest and detention of the musician Sean Rigg, who died in custody in 2008.
PCs Andrew Birks, Richard Glasson, Matthew Forward, Mark Harratt and Sgt Paul White all faced disciplinary proceedings more than a decade after the 40-year-old died.
Continue reading...The remarks made by the 19-year-old British Islamic State recruit Shamima Begum to a journalist in a refugee camp in eastern Syria are horrifying. She described being unmoved by the sight of a severed head, showed no sympathy for executed hostages, and said she had no regrets about her decision to leave the UK. We do not yet know whether she played any role during her four years with Islamic State other than that of a wife and mother. Other western recruits have acted as propagandists and recruiters. Ms Begum, who is heavily pregnant, wants to return to the UK and is entitled to do so, as security minister Ben Wallace has acknowledged. Bernard Hogan-Howe, who was Metropolitan police commissioner when the teenager and two friends left their homes in Bethnal Green, east London, in 2015, said then that the girls had “no reason to fear” returning, provided they had not committed terrorist offences. The official tone has now changed, with Mr Wallace saying on Thursday that he would not risk British lives to rescue UK citizens from Syria.
Ms Begum, who married a Dutch Islamic State fighter 10 days after arriving in Raqqa, told the Times she had lost two young children to illness, lived through six months during which her husband was imprisoned and tortured, and witnessed unimaginable brutality. Whatever her degree of culpability, she and her friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, were children when they left the UK and are thought to have been groomed. Ms Sultana is reported to have wanted to return, but been too afraid following the murder of another jihadi bride who tried to escape. Mr Sultana is thought to have been killed in an airstrike three years ago.
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