Selective Reading: the nation's favourite past-time

Judge criticises police


Aside from the silly mason argument, I wonder if the general public is capable of reading and absorbing information properly. The lad hasn't gone unpunished, I hate to tell you folks, his punishment has been deferred to a later date for him to show that he's not the "little scroat" (not my spelling) he's been labelled as. On top of that, he's also spent time on remand. I would like to see some of the commentators say that wasn't punishment in itself had it been them or a family member in that position.


Rather than criticising the judiciary, who at the end of the day have their hands tied by public policy and government busybodies most of the time, surely people should be asking why the police are allowed to be judge and jury. The powers levied to them in recent years, and increased further with the introduction of fixed penalty notices for public order offences etc means that the police can effectively deal with potentially criminal behaviour on the spot. This looks good for clear up rates, no doubt. I say potentially criminal behaviour; I have known people issued with a notice having actually done very little, and had the person(s) been brought before a magistrates' court, the prosecution would fail to convict based on what actually had taken place. 


I was shocked as well when these people told me that they had not been made aware of any process to enable them to appeal the notice. It seems to me that the police have been given a tool with which they can administer justice as and when they see fit. This is clearly wrong. If a person has been accused of behaving criminally, they must be given the chance to answer the accusations in a fair and just way. Every person I know who has received one of these notices had grounds to appeal, and should have done. But in every case, that person did not want to run the risk of being found guilty, and felt that the easiest thing to do would be to pay up, and forget about it. I feel that this is something that is relied upon when such notices are issued. I can feel some further research coming on....


In this particular case, both youths should have been brought before the courts where a judge can listen to the evidence of both to determine where the truth lies. Punishment proportionate to the role played by each could then have been administered. Fairly and justly. Both admitted playing a part in the incident, but the chance to deal with both proportionately was lost the minute a police officer decided to reprimand just the one.