Category Archives: Police

Met officers who restrained boy, 14, on ground committed misconduct

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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.

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Met police chief hails race action plan as ‘a step in the right direction’

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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.

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Worboys lawyer joins team working for alleged Fayed victims

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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.

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Drones seized in Liverpool after breaching Labour conference airspace

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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.

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Met officer who held Taser to black boy’s neck found guilty of gross misconduct

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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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Domestic abuse specialists to be embedded in 999 control rooms

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The measure – part of ‘Raneem’s Law’ – will speed up referral of domestic and sexual abuse victims to support services

Domestic abuse specialists will be embedded in 999 control rooms from early next year in the first step towards the government’s goal of halving violence against women and girls in a decade, the home secretary has said.

The advisers will make risk assessments on cases involving rape, domestic and sexual abuse claims to ensure that victims are referred to support services as quickly as possible, as part of an initiative to be announced by Yvette Cooper on Friday.

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Pedestrian in his 60s dies after being hit by police vehicle in Nuneaton

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Warwickshire police officers were responding to an urgent incident on Friday evening when the collision occurred

A pedestrian in his 60s has died after being hit by a police vehicle, Warwickshire police have said.

Officers were responding to an emergency incident in Nuneaton when their vehicle collided with the man at about 8.45pm on Friday, the force said.

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Police ‘left to deal with fallout’ of poorly planned early release of 1,700 prisoners

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Police association chief says criminals potentially being freed in England and Wales without proper rehabilitation plans

Police are at “the centre of a storm” caused by poor planning after 1,700 prisoners were released early across England and Wales to ease overcrowding, a senior officer has said.

Amid concerns that hundreds of inmates could end up homeless or return to crime, the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, Nick Smart, said some inmates were being set free without a programme and that the police would be left to deal with the consequences.

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Rape investigators diverted to police football matches and festivals, inspection finds

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Damning report shows victims can wait up to four years for trials, and half of investigators are not fully qualified

Specialist investigators who are supposed to hunt down rapists are being diverted to police football matches and festivals, with victims waiting up to four years for their alleged attackers to come to trial, a report from the official police inspectorate has found.

In some cases big delays mean victims are dropping out of supporting prosecutions, risking attackers getting away with it.

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National Crime Agency threatens extraditions over rise in sextortion cases

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Exclusive: Agency says foreign gangs not safe from prosecution in UK and plans new recording label to track extent of the crime

The National Crime Agency has warned international cybercriminals that it could seek to extradite them as part of a crackdown to tackle an alarming rise in the numbers of young people being targeted for sextortion.

The agency said the gangs, often based in west Africa, were “not safe from prosecution in our country” and that it would seek justice for all victims of the crime.

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Stop and search study in England and Wales ‘casts doubt’ on effectiveness

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Controversial power had less impact in 2022-23 than tactics such as focused deterrence and hotspot policing, says charity

Stop and search is one of the less effective tactics to tackle rising violence such as knife crime, according to the results of a study.

Research by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), a charity funded by the Home Office to combat youth violence, found that other tactics – such as community-led focused deterrence, putting more officers on the streets in troubled areas or mentoring and diversion for potential suspects – produced bigger cuts in violence.

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Prison crowding emergency measures a ‘sticking plaster’, Starmer told

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Ministers activate Operation Early Dawn, so defendants can be held in police cells as more are sentenced over riots

Ministers have been warned that they have placed a “sticking plaster” over a crumbling criminal justice system after emergency measures were activated to ease prison overcrowding, as more people are sentenced for their role in the recent riots.

The longstanding measures, known as Operation Early Dawn, allow defendants to be held in police cells until prison places become available and could mean their court dates are delayed or adjourned at short notice.

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Police believe strip-searching children can be effective, but suspicions of misuse remain

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A report by the children’s commissioner says nothing is found in half of strip-searches of children and its use has a racial disparity. Can its implementation ever be balanced?

When is it reasonable, necessary and proportionate for agents of the state, such as police officers, to take actions that are likely to leave a child traumatised?

There is little dispute that compelling anyone, let alone a child, to expose their intimate body parts against their will to a stranger causes real emotional pain. But police believe strip-searching can be a useful tool.

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Black children in England and Wales four times more likely to be strip-searched, figures show

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Children’s commissioner finds wide disparity with white counterparts in year to June 2023, with 88% of searches aimed at finding drugs

Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched by police officers across England and Wales than their white counterparts, according to the latest nationwide figures disclosed by a watchdog.

The children’s commissioner also found that children under the age of 15 are a bigger proportion of those subjected to intimate searches, official figures from the year to June 2023 showed. Fewer than half of all searches of children in that year (45%) were conducted in the presence of an appropriate adult.

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‘We fear the police’: young people share their concerns with Yvette Cooper

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Home secretary says predecessors ‘turned their backs’ on a generation as she discusses her young futures programme

Yvette Cooper has had a baptism of fire as home secretary – a national tragedy when three girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance club and an ensuing week of race riots fuelled by dangerous misinformation.

It has not been easy, but Cooper has been in waiting for more than a decade to take the home secretary job – in the shadow role and as chair of the powerful home affairs committee – and is not about to waste a moment. In fact, her only complaint about the job so far is that her busy schedule and tight security means she is struggling to get enough exercise – apart from the many flights of stairs to her Home Office desk she must climb each day.

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‘Two-tier’: UK treats far-right attacks less harshly than Islamist violence, says thinktank

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Exclusive: Defence thinktank Rusi says rightwing violence ‘often classified as mere thuggery’ by politicians and prosecutors

The UK has a “two-tier approach” to extremism that fails to treat far-right attacks as seriously as Islamist ones, a leading thinktank has said.

The Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) says rightwing violence “is often classified as mere thuggery” by politicians, prosecutors and the security services. Equivalent acts by Islamists would “swiftly be labelled as terrorism”, it says in an article in the Guardian.

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Priti Patel’s ‘laughable’ claims of two-tier policing putting officers at risks

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Neil Basu, ex-head of counter-terrorism, says former home secretary’s remarks are divisive and untrue

The former head of UK counter-terrorism has accused Priti Patel of putting officers at risk after the Tory leadership hopeful made “divisive” comments about two-tier policing.

Since far-right riots erupted across England and Northern Ireland last week, there have been false claims on social media that police are treating white people taking part in the disorder more harshly than minority groups.

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Anti-racism activist in London reports break-in attempt after far-right threats

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Ulrike Schmidt says police have not investigated incident in Walthamstow, which was interrupted by passersby

A key organiser of Walthamstow’s mass anti-racism rally on Wednesday has said someone tried to break into her home after she received threats on social media from the far right.

Ulrike Schmidt, an activist with Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) and Amnesty International, said she woke up at 5am on Friday to the sounds of someone trying to break into her home in the north-east London borough.

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MI5’s posthumous discovery of Stakeknife files alarms inquiry chief

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Release of intelligence year after death ‘casts doubt’ on security service’s previous claims about British spy in IRA accused of murders

The police chief investigating murders allegedly carried out by Freddie Scappaticci, a British agent in the IRA known as Stakeknife, has expressed alarm that hundreds of pages of files providing “new investigative leads” have been found by MI5 a year after Scappaticci’s death.

Sir Iain Thomas Livingstone, a former head of Police Scotland who leads Operation Kenova, has written to the Northern Ireland secretary of state to highlight the troubling timing and warn that the new intelligence raises questions about MI5’s previous claims of knowledge about Stakeknife.

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UK police monitoring TikTok for evidence of criminality at far-right riots

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Footage of disorder can reach hundreds of thousands of viewers and often shows faces of those committing crimes

Police officers are watching TikTok in an attempt to catch far-right demonstrators livestreaming self-incriminating footage of their illegal behaviour.

TikTok’s Live function has become one of the defining outlets for coverage of this summer’s riots, with hundreds of thousands of viewers watching live streams of rioting over the last week in cities such as Stoke, Leeds, Hull and Nottingham.

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