I know I've been overly reliant on the Daily Mail in recent times, but here is a story that should be read. It shows what happens when a police force of fellow civilians turns into a lawless paramilitary brigade.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
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11 comments:
And the lesson is clear.
Indeed.
I hope the criminals get shafted. And no I don't mean the police. Sorry I disagree. The outrage should be directed at criminals using public deposit storage. Fuck them. How dare they use public deposit storage for the items listed. Good for the police.
Alison,
... right, and fuck everybody else who hadn't done anything wrong but had their money and property stolen by the filth, who couldn't even stick within the elastic laws labour wrote for them. And fuck all of us taxpayers who are going to have to dip into our pockets to pay compensation.
You seem blind to criminality when it comes in a uniform!
The people running the place (its a business after all) turned a blind eye to the criminality. Fuck THEM. And if the customers had any sense they would sue. The police are supposed to catch criminals. Not turn a blind eye to them storing the fruits of their vile labours where its' extremely convenient.
I admire our men in uniform yes. They get way more shit levelled at them than is due.
Ill accept that the laws they are asked to implement are wrong and that they have been politicised. But that's about it. When it came to saving my arse one night it wasn't regular Joe humanity I came to need or rely on. And I note with interest that CCTV yet again helped see a rape victim get a quick conviction.
Who says they turned a blind eye? The nature is the business is that its depositors have privacy. The vast majority of people using the service have done nothing wrong, and many of them will be suing - and guess who's going to pay the damages? That's right, you and me.
There's nothing new in criminals using safety deposit boxes. The police could have got warrants and searched the boxes of their suspects. They didn't do that. They went fishing. In other words, they took everything, on the assumption that only criminals would stash money in a safe place. In other words, they switched the whole game from innocent until proven guilty, to guilty until proven innocent. This, and other principles were the basis of this country calling itself free, the basis that the police used to defend. Now they are no longer civilians, but paramilitaries, at least the ones involved in this raid.
As for regular Joe humanity, it's not surprising he doesn't help much - he's been conditioned not to do so. Nevertheless some people will intervene, and some cops won't. I've got nothing against the police - I just want them to obey the fucking law - and by law I mean the proper, common English law, and not the latest diktat from our increasingly authoritarian government.
As for CCTV, I don't doubt it helps in some cases, but it's very expensive, and such money could be used in other ways that are more effective. In any case, the rapist will be set free in a couple of years. If you want to reduce these crimes, you have to stop letting out all the dangerous scum that commit them, rather than turning the country into an open prison.
The place was a business. If the owners allow criminals to store whatever then they are liable. I don't really care if there is nothing new in criminals using them but maybe on that basis such business should be closed down completely of the owners cannot manage it properly in this day and age. Why should people using safety deposit boxes be less open to checks than people using banks? I have to provide all kinds of ID and proof to open a damn bank account. And if I used my account fraudulently I would have to accept the consequences. I read the issue as requiring an element of surprise. I thought that was the whole point.
Re the law then direct this at the government and judiciary (as you do). They are the one corrupting the law. It's not the police fault. Plus our police are not properly armed. If you want paramilitary police then look no further than the USA. They with their allegedly wonderful written constitution. Fat lot of good that does them. They have exported half the political correctness along with their civil rights bullshit that the rest of us have sucked up into our law. Law after law after law after law as a result.
The success of CCTV has been hugely understated. But re justice you know I fully agree with you on all the points you make there and always will. You make them brilliantly too far better than me. To be honest I get so depressed about that I try to avoid thinking about it.
Right now ( I mean literally) I am on my own and have been threatened by the man downstairs - a nasty evil thug who has mixed me up with someone else in this building who has made complaints about him. It wasnt me but because I live above him he thinks it is. He just came upstairs knocked on the door and threatened me with all kinds of shit. What am I supposed to do? The only people I can rely on in such instances are the police Trooper. That's life. Quite why a grown man needs to threaten a woman who has done nothing to him is beyond me. If he let me speak for two seconds as opposed to yelling and being menacing he would have learned by now it wasn't me. And that if he just acted like a human and not a thug Im sure whatever the issue is he has with someone in the building could be resolved reasonably. I dont know whats wrong with people anymore. But Im sick and tired of feeling frightened. Im sure he took great delight in me being pathetic enough to want to cry.
Im fed up with thugs.
I bet he has a goddamn safety deposit box somewhere too ;) (just trying to make light)
Alison,
firstly the side-swipe at the USA; you know what I'll say this, but the problem in America is due to a failure to follow their Constitution.
Also in America, you would have a loaded .38 within reach, which is quite an equaliser in terms of unwanted callers.
The unpleasant incident you relate, or rather the feelings it engenders, may also help you understand why some people keep valuables in safety deposit boxes, rather than at home.
"I have to provide all kinds of ID and proof to open a damn bank account. And if I used my account fraudulently I would have to accept the consequences."
Should the bank have to ask the police's permission to grant you a bank account? Are they party to police intelligence with regard to suspected criminals? How would you feel if you, a law-abiding citizen, went to your bank to withdraw some of your own money, and found that a paramilitary swat team had taken it all off, because some other account-holder had broken a law?
If you went to a hotel, and put something in the hotel safe, and then the local cops came and took everything, because another guest had put a stolen diamond ring in the safe, would you see this as fair? Would you blame the hotel owner for not running security checks on the other guest?
You're shifting the blame onto the business owners in a most unfair way. Should all businesses be frisking everyone who comes through the door? Should they be running security checks on us all, whenever we wish to buy or sell anything?
The police line boils down to treating having cash money as almost a crime in itself. They've made a big deal of finding loads of cash and jewelry. What the hell did they expect to find in a safety deposit facility?
Why couldn't the police get a warrant to search the specific boxes belonging to the people they were investigating?
I'm sure I can dig up plenty of incidents from around the world where cops do things you will not be prepared to excuse. In lots of places they're not much better than any other gang or mafia outfit. We must try to ensure that the police in this country are the best they can be. If the police do something that is wrong, they should be criticised, the same as the judges. If you don't see the thing in question, you won't accept the criticism, but you seem to be saying that criticising the police at all is wrong, like their an untouchable vitimised group.
I'm just a copophobe, right? Honestly, some of my best friends are cops, well one, kind of...
The US Constitution was always going to wind up ignored abused or binned. But that's another issue
So if its all about vigilante law and I need and have to own a gun to feel safe apparently then why does the US have a police force?
Why do banks need checks in place re fraud which most people would accept as reasonable precautions and yet these businesses can operate so freely criminals get to bank their stolen goods in there and we should turn a blind eye? It's obvious the police won't get a free pass from you on this Trooper but I can easily see why they did what they did and just don't see this as a big issue at all.
The business concerned should protect its consumers better in future just like any other business or bank or risk losing customers. Im not shifting the blame anywhere. Im looking at the way I would a bank or any other business where precautions are in place to protect customers and avoid fraud and criminal activity.
I'm not saying they are an untouchable victimised group at all.
Has Yvonne Fletcher's family ever received justice? It's not as though the police aren't subject to hideous injustice themselves. Noone gives a shit about that. It's so easy to point the finger at the police and hold them responsible for everything well I just dont see that as one of these times.
Meanwhile re the neighbour - I am not going to threaten him with a gun on my own and run the risk of having that used against me. In the event he threatens me again as expected, Ill call the police. I've had a gutful of his vile shite this weekend and so Ill leave it at that Trooper. Im so sorry for the people in the post but I have far more direct issues which requires police help and simply don't seem them as the social menace and threat that you do. Sorry.
have a great week.
On reflection where I do agree with you is that we need to hold various officials to task.
In this particular area with judges and the malicious judiciary and frankly evil and corrupt lawyers I can fully see your point and agree with you as you know. None of these people ever ever EVER suffer injustice in their line of work. They merely wax lyrical on it and hold court over us all. The police on the other hand are often subject to injustice themselves – they are criticised, hated, examined and rebuked.
I will never forget reading about the officers in the Jean Charles de Menezes case who has since suffered a complete nervous breakdown. This was after being subjected to hideous accusations in court and coming out and saying how he would never ever be able to live down what happened that fateful day the fucking terrorists put us and the police in that awful situation. The man dissolved into tears in court on several occasions. I imagine him as a father a husband and ordinary man under orders and doing his job in unprecedented circumstances being accused of murder for crying out loud. When have we ever seen our judiciary or court system suffer such humiliation and examiniation? When do they egver suffer? Do they have sleepless nights over the consequences of their actions when yet another woman is brutally raped because they cant be bothered to see rape as a serious crime? Do they have sleepless nights when a father is hacked to death my yobs whom the system slaps on the wrist and no more? Does the court system or judiciary have an organised body who exist solely to examine their actions as the police have?
Then there are the numerous officers who have been injured in the line of work, several of whom have been killed. Two in Northern Ireland only recently. Noone writes about these officers or even cares that armed criminals can ruthlessly cut them down for having nothing more than the temerity to investigate a crime. I don’t doubt that it is the very same kinds of criminals who use safety deposit boxes to store their goods. In the article the sheer volume of such boxes given over to criminal gains was staggering and disgusting. That a business would turn a blind eye to that and can operate so easily is also plainly wrong.
A good site that I think covers the above issues and also writes honestly about the shit they have to deal with as well as acknowledging their failures is the blog Inspector Gadget.
I appreciate that libertarians have no qualms about condemning the police but I wish for every article written slamming them about stuff there was equal concern about what we the public put them through – from riots to terrorism to armed robberies where policewomen walk into situations they are grossly inadequately prepared for.
By the way I inherited a bunch of stuff from my father which he had no issue keeping in the house. He couldn’t give a rats arse about the legal ramifications when it came to protecting his family. Noone in this country takes the law in any seriousness. We never have. But there is a limit to everything. And that limit comes with opening the front door as a female on my own and deciding what action to take on balance. I wish people would stop telling me I could manage these situations if only I went back into my bedroom and grabbed a shotgun. It’s beyond annoying when I full well know my own limitations and also know what kind of a society that creates. Standing on the porch and firing off a weapon to deter potential robbers is one thing. Standing half a foot away from a menacing thug in a London block of flats is another. I wish you could understand that.
You're not reading the same story. According to the one I linked to:
"the vast majority of those caught up in the raids were innocent."
That's the key point. The police smashed into all the boxes and took everything. If you want your stuff back, you have to prove you're innocent. It would have been amazing if there was no contraband in any of the thousands of boxes. So once they get their cavalier warrant, they justify the raid a posterioi with couple of pistols, some nose powder and distract everyone with stacks and stacks of money - which as I pointed out before is hardly surprising for a safety deposit facility.
This is about asset seizure. The police went there for the money.
They broke all the rules of Common Law. Didn't have a proper warrant, didn't say what they were looking for, treating everyone as guilty until proven otherwise.
Contrary to some, I do care about the law, and this was historically one of the characteristics of the English people - a reverence for the law. That law has been dismantled, and replaced by something far worse. The judges and their appalling decisions is one aspect of this. The police, on their journey from local constable to high-tech paramilitary robocop, are another.
As for the right to bear arms, you see it as no doubt the majority in this country. Owning a gun is foolish if you don't know how to use it. Training in its use is very important. This would allow you to defend yourself without having to call the police. If, given the freedom to choose, you prefer the unarmed/call the cops option, that would be up to you.
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