Farmer accuses police of acting illegally after they refuse to hand back shotgun he fired at thief

More bastardry from the British police. They HATE self-defence

A farmer, who shot at a metal thief as he attempted to get away in a van, has hit out at police after they refuse to hand back his guns. Bill Edwards, 21, says he has struggled to find work six months despite being cleared of attempted murder because his guns are the tools of his trade.

The man from Scalby, Scarborough claims the police have acted illegally by keeping his property.

He was arrested last summer on suspicion of attempting to murder scrap metal thief David Taylor after he shot at Taylor’s van, loaded with stolen metal from remote farmland at Whin Covert, Riggs Head near Scarborough in North Yorkshire.

Mr Edwards’ four shotguns and two rifles - worth at least £3,000 - were all confiscated when he was arrested last August.

When he was finally released from police bail on December 20, he was given a letter from North Yorkshire Police stating they were going to review his suitability to hold a firearms certificate.

He always maintained he only turned his shotgun on the van because he feared for the life of his mother Louisa Smith, 50, as Taylor sped towards her while he fled the scene.

Taylor claimed that he was simply trying to getaway because Mr Edwards was shooting at him. He was later caught by police in a nearby village after a high speed chase.

Mr Edwards and his mother caught Taylor and an accomplice loading stolen metal cables into the back of his Ford Transit after spotting that outbuildings had been tampered with. The thieves jumped into the van and drove it towards the pair as they desperately dialled 999 for help.

Mr Edwards fired his shotgun, which was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot, several times, hitting the van’s windscreen and bodywork. No one was hurt. Police eventually caught Taylor when Mr Edwards gave chase and gave a running commentary on his mobile phone. But the crook was only charged with metal theft.

The 39-year-old from Scarborough escaped with just a £100 fine for theft after claiming he had been ‘traumatised’ by Mr Edwards shooting at him.

His father Gary, 67, said: ‘It's ironic because when this first happened he was a local hero. The farmers who employ him were queuing up to offer him work.

‘But the police have his guns and his firearms certificate and it seems legally they can take as long as they like to reach a decision.

‘They are still treating him like a criminal for defending his own property and his mother.

‘Bill does not have any work and feels very badly let down by the police.’

Mr Edwards added: ‘They have also got my air rifle which doesn't even require a certificate to possess.

‘They are the tools I need and not having them is costing thousands as my crop is being eaten by pests and I could not have lambs this year without controlling vermin.

‘When I work for other farmers they also require me to control pests. Not being able to do so prevents me getting work and if I do it is low pay.

‘Clay shooting is, was also my main hobby and social activity.’

He argues that once his firearms were taken off him, the police no longer had any legal right to retain them. Legally, Mr Edwards could buy guns and ammunition because his certificate has not yet been revoked.

However, he would need to present his firearms certificate - which the police have also retained.

Mr Edwards added: ‘They are breaking the law. I am left very disappointed with the police as they have illegally held my property since August.

‘Since no further action was taken in December and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] made a very positive statement regarding my case, the police still have not communicated their decision on whether I am still fit to hold the firearms I need.’

The national representative body for shooting sports, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation, supports Mr Edwards’ cause.

Senior Firearms Officer Matt Perring said: ‘A gun is absolutely essential to a farmer. ‘There is nothing like having your own gun to control the land. ‘Otherwise the land owner can ask anyone else with a shotgun certificate to do the job.’

He said employers needed farm workers who were trusted to carry guns to stop pests and vermin attacking crops. Mr Perring said: ‘Otherwise it's like asking someone to put up a fence with a broken arm.’

Mr Edwards said his family has lost thousands of pounds through theft and damage caused in a number of raids on their land.

North Yorkshire Police Professional Standards are still looking into a complaint from the family into how the whole case was handled.

A police spokesman said: ‘The investigation into Mr Edwards' complaint is still ongoing and so we are not yet in a position to comment.’

Original report here, (Via POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Australia: Guilty until proven innocent?

NSW Police repeatedly swear, scream and punch two men in a dramatic video allegedly filmed in a western Sydney park.

The arrests now form part of an internal investigation.

Reportedly filmed on May 4 at 12.44am in Bigge Park, in Liverpool in Sydney's west, the two-minute video shows a police car pull up in the park where a group of young men is loitering.

Officers jump out of a car and one of them grabs one of the men in a neckhold and wrestles him to the ground. The police officers yells: "D***head get on the ground."

A second officer suddenly runs across the park to where a second young man sinks to his knees. The officer grabs the man and yells: "Get on the ground. Get on the f**king ground." "Do as you are f**king told."

As the officer handcuffs the man's hands behind his back, he keeps yelling at him: "Don't f**king move."

Posted on YouTube on May 20 by a user named SydneyCamera, the video has comments that purport that the two men were later released without charge.

NSW Police issued a statement: "Police were called to Bigge Park at Liverpool on May 4 this year, following numerous reports of a violent brawl. The arrests now form part of an internal investigation and further comment is inappropriate."

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Australia: Killer did the right thing: NSW judge concedes at last

When he saw a man holding a knife to a woman's throat, 72-year-old Keith Harold Allen made a judgment call and shot him. It was almost certainly the right thing to do, a NSW Supreme Court judge says.

The actions of Allen, who spent two and a half years in custody and is now terminally ill with lung cancer, were vindicated in court on Wednesday, when Justice Michael Adams handed down his reasons for acquitting the elderly man of murder last week.

Allen shot 35-year-old Todd Sutton in the head after Mr Sutton threatened to kill Allen's landlady and boss on a farm near Mudgee in NSW's central west on December 4, 2010.

The seven-day trial heard Mr Sutton chased the woman, who was his partner, around the yard with a blocksplitter - a type of axe - before cornering her in the kitchen and leading her outside, holding a knife to her throat.

Allen, who worked as a greyhound keeper on the property, fired two shots in quick succession, hitting Mr Sutton first in the shoulder and then in the head.

He then told the woman to call police, walked back to his caravan, sat down and had a beer before making his own triple zero call.

"There's no problem with me darling," Allen said in the phone call played during the judge-alone trial. "I'm sitting here calmly."

He told police he was distraught that he had taken a man's life, but that he opened fire to stop Mr Sutton cutting the woman's throat.

The crown case was that while Allen's first shot was fired in defence of the woman, the second was done with intent to kill, after Mr Sutton had let her go and was no longer posing a threat.

But Justice Adams did not accept Mr Sutton had let go of the woman after the first shot and said the evidence of a child who was on the property at the time was not reliable on that point.

He said Mr Sutton was "drunk and enraged" and Allen "made a judgment call ... that was so far from being wrong, let alone criminal, that it was almost certainly right".

"He acted from beginning to end to protect (her) from sustaining very serious injury and possible death and he did so reasonably, considering the means he had at his disposal," Justice Adams said.

Allen was convicted of three firearm offences but released from custody last week.

He was not in court for the judgment on Wednesday.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

A Different Sort of Bullying

David Friedman

There has been a good deal of talk in recent years about the evils of bullying and what to do about it. Almost all of what is discussed seems to be bullying of low status people by low status people, largely schoolchildren bullying schoolchildren. There is another sort of bullying that is unfortunately common in our society, arguably a more serious problem, and the subject of less, or at least less uniform, condemnation. Some examples are illustrated by two of my recent posts and one older one.

The first is anti-smoking rules carried beyond the point at which they can plausibly be defended as protecting non-smokers. My example is a proposed rule to ban all smoking from my campus. Smoking is already forbidden in buildings and, I'm pretty sure, near the entrance to buildings, so the proposal would have only a tiny effect on exposure to second hand smoke. I am a non-smoker, find cigarette smoke mildly unpleasant, and cannot remember having ever been significantly bothered by it on campus. The document circulated on the ban asserted a number for total excess mortality due to second hand smoke that I argued in my post on the subject was doubly bogus—it misrepresented the claim it was based on, and that claim was almost certainly based on cherry picked data. And, even if the number were correct, it would say little about the effect of the small additional reduction due to the proposed rule.

One motive for such a rule—whether it has passed or will pass I do not know—is probably paternalism, the theory that if you make smoking sufficiently inconvenient smokers may give it up. But I suspect that another motive is bullying. People, unfortunately, enjoy pushing other people around. Such a rule lets people who disapprove of smoking make life more unpleasant for those who smoke, demonstrating the power of the former over the latter.

My second example is the behavior of police officers. There are obvious reasons why police officers would wish other people to be deferential towards them, since the more extreme forms of non-deference can, in that context, be lethal. If the only people who talk back to them are criminals, mostly criminals about to attack them, that provides a useful signal of when to be on their guard. Making things unpleasant for people who demand a badge number (I once got arrested for assisting someone else to do so), point a cell phone camera at them, or in other ways fail to acknowledge their status and authority, is one way of getting that deference.

There are also obvious reasons why people in general want other people to be deferential towards them, making a profession which legitimizes the demand for deference and makes it possible to enforce it with the threat of death, injury, or prison, attractive to those with that taste. Which I think helps to explain the increasingly common pattern of unnecessary SWAT style raids, kicking in doors, pointing guns at innocent people and ordering them to lie on the floor, shooting dogs.

I do not think it would be hard to come up with other examples in both categories. People like pushing other people around. Doing so is generally safer and more effective when you have the power of the law on your side. One way to do so is to make rules or pass laws that make life harder for people you disapprove of, whether smokers, gays, or college students who get drunk and have sex. Another is to get a position one of whose perks is the right to order other people around—and, in some contexts, threaten, assault, beat, even kill anyone who objects, with minimal risk of suffering any criminal penalties for doing so. That includes TSA agents whose opportunities are limited to vandalizing checked luggage and ordering people to stand still while being patted down, and police officers with a wider range.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Australia: Man bashed by police to sue

A MAN allegedly bashed by police under the Surfers Paradise police station has launched legal action against the state of Queensland.

Noa Begic was arrested after a night out in Surfers Paradise in January last year and taken to the basement of the local police station, where CCTV footage appeared to show him being punched and thrown to the ground by officers.

The Courier-Mail posted exclusive footage of the incident on its website and all charges against Mr Begic were later dropped.

However, he has now taken legal action, engaging high-profile law firm Maurice Blackburn to sue the state of Queensland in a civil suit. He is believed to be seeking a six-figure settlement.

A close friend of Mr Begic said it was taking a long time for the mental scars to heal after the ordeal. "He was very anxious about police for a long while as you can imagine," said the friend. "He is trying to get on with his life and sees this as a chance to close the door on that chapter."

Two of the four officers allegedly involved in the incident remain suspended from duty while the Queensland Police Service's Ethical Standards Command runs its own investigation.

Mr Begic had been drinking with friends after finishing his shift at a Surfers Paradise restaurant when he was approached by police officers. He was arrested and taken to the basement of the nearby police station.

CCTV then appears to show a handcuffed Mr Begic being flung to the ground before being punched several times in the head by one of the officers as he is pushed into the back of a police wagon.

One of the officers is then shown pouring a bucket of water over what looks to be a puddle of blood on the basement floor.

Mr Begic was charged with being a public nuisance and obstructing police after he allegedly directed numerous loud and abusive comments towards officers patrolling the Surfers nightclub strip.

The charges against Mr Begic were thrown out last June. Mr Begic has also asked the Queensland Police Service to pay his legal costs from that court action.

The ethical standards investigation into the affair continues, while an investigation is also under way into an officer accused of leaking the CCTV footage to the newspaper.

Original report here.  (Via Australian police news)




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Freed from prison after wrongful conviction, man now “just enjoying life”

Nathaniel A. Johnson spent nearly four years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Recently exonerated, he struggles with questions of why police didn’t follow up on clues that would have proven his innocence.

In the days after Nathaniel A. Johnson’s exoneration for an armed robbery he didn’t commit, he shopped for new clothes, slept in his own bed and, on a whim, took a walk outside. “Just enjoying life,” Johnson said. After nearly four years behind prison bars and a razor-wire fence, Johnson is a free man and his name has been cleared. A judge recently set aside the guilty verdict that put him in prison. “I still can’t believe it happened to me, and I can’t believe it’s finally over,” Johnson told The Buffalo News. “There were plenty of times I wanted to stop fighting because it seemed like nobody was listening.” Johnson all along denied any involvement in the 2009 armed robbery at a North Buffalo convenience store. Thanks to some lawyers who did not give up and a family friend starting a new career as a private investigator, the case against the 44-year-old roofer and construction worker unraveled. But he still lost those four years.

Nearly two weeks have passed since his release. Amid his relief, though, are the nightmares about waking up back in prison.

And he wonders why God put him through the ordeal. “They say God does things for reasons,” Johnson said. “I still don’t understand why He let this happen to me though.”

Johnson, who friends know as “Tony,” was arrested four years ago today, May 12, 2009, and charged with using a gun to steal $3,000 from the Wilson Farms store at Delaware and Tacoma avenues around 4:30 a.m. April 23.

Early in the investigation, detectives had a key piece of information: a license plate number for the getaway car. An off-duty police officer happened to pull into the store parking lot as the robber sped away.

But when police ran the plate number, it came back to a car that did not match the description of the getaway car. Figuring it was the wrong plate number, Buffalo detectives focused on another lead. They discovered that Johnson, who resembled the description of the robber, frequented another nearby Wilson Farms, where his then-girlfriend worked the night shift. Johnson sometimes entered areas of the store considered off limits to anyone but employees.

Police showed a photo array that included Johnson’s picture to the manager of the robbed store. The manager identified Johnson as the robber.

During the trial, prosecutor Paul Michalek Jr. used Johnson’s regular presence at the other store to bolster the prosecution’s theory the robbery was committed by someone with inside knowledge of how Wilson Farms stores operate.

The girlfriend agreed to testify for the prosecution, and she told jurors that Johnson had commented to her during one of his visits that the Wilson Farms would be easy to rob.

The prosecutor did not disclose to Johnson’s defense attorney during the trial that the girlfriend had a drug charge pending against her. She was granted an adjournment in her case.

“She had her own charges, so she threw me under the bus,” Johnson said. “Whatever they wanted her to say, she said. She was manipulated by the district attorney.”

Trial testimony from the Wilson Farms manager proved pivotal. He identified Johnson as the robber.

“Once you have a positive identification, where a victim says, ‘That’s him,’ You’re in trouble,” said defense lawyer John R. Nuchereno, who did not represent Johnson at trial but later worked to set aside the verdict.

Jurors found him guilty. And that might have been how it ended, had it not been for Kathie Kuwik. A private investigator, Kuwik is a friend of Johnson who did not believe he was the robber.

“They had a suspect, and that’s all they were interested in,” she said. “They weren’t worried about getting to the bottom of it. They weren’t worried about getting to the truth of it.”

Kuwik sat through trial testimony and came away wondering why police had not looked more closely at the getaway car.

She also had received her private investigator’s license around the time of Johnson’s trial.

So she did some investigating herself. Testimony revealed the license plate number came back to a car used by a woman whose boyfriend also had access to the vehicle.

The boyfriend was Jabari H. Spencer. Kuwik learned he was being held in the Erie County Holding Center on charges related to two Kenmore Avenue armed robberies in 2009, one on June 10 and the other on July 3, just a few months after the Wilson Farms robbery Johnson was accused of committing.

During the trial, Kuwik went to the woman’s home, where she saw two cars in the driveway, including a green Mercury with the plate number that police had early in their investigation. The other unregistered car did not have plates on it. But it matched the description of the getaway car. “All he did was switch the plates, so it wouldn’t come back to him,” Kuwik said.

Too late for evidence: She rushed back to the courthouse to alert Johnson’s lawyer, Giovanni Genovese. But he had already wrapped up his closing argument. It was too late to introduce new evidence. “It was evidence that we unfortunately did not have at the time of the trial,” Genovese said. “At the time, we did the best we could with what we had.”

And Johnson was convicted and sentenced to prison. Vincent F. Gugino, a lawyer for the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo, appealed the conviction.

The appellate court denied Johnson a new trial, but Gugino’s work helped pave the way for Nuchereno’s work. Gugino and law intern Patrick Sheldon dug into the Spencer connection.

Sheldon found photos of Johnson and Spencer and placed them side by side. Although Johnson is 15 years older, the two look remarkably alike.

“I’ve done this for 25 years, and I’ve never found somebody so innocent. It jumps out at you,” Gugino said.

Gugino was so convinced of Johnson’s innocence that he pushed the county’s assigned counsel program to find a lawyer to take the case a step further. That is how Nuchereno entered the case. Nuchereno cited in his motion the new evidence.

Assistant District Attorney Michael J. Hillery handled the appeal work in the Johnson case. When Hillery saw Nuchereno’s motion, he alerted District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III, who decided to take another look at the case.

Sedita assigned Joseph Riga, his chief investigator, to conduct what he called an exoneration investigation. Riga, the former head of the Buffalo Police homicide unit, completed his work convinced that Johnson was the wrong guy for the crime, Sedita said.

“I asked him, what are the chances Mr. Johnson is innocent? And he said 100 percent,” Sedita said. Sedita’s office joined Nuchereno in seeking dismissal of the indictment.

“It was clear as clear can be: This man was 100 percent innocent, and he maintained it all along,” Nuchereno said. “This is everybody agreeing this man is innocent. This is not a technicality. This is a finding of innocence.”

Judge criticizes prosecutors:

Nuchereno credited Sedita for not obstructing Johnson’s exoneration, but State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns expressed concern about how the District Attorney’s Office handled the case.

Before Burns granted the motion, he said he found the case “troubling.” And the judge noted that if Johnson had not brought the new evidence to light, the District Attorney’s Office probably would not have uncovered the injustice on its own.

“The investigation by the police and the DA was sloppy, and you’ve got flimsy identification, and they didn’t look at the car,” said Gugino, the Legal Aid lawyer. “They didn’t put two and two together. We named Jabari Spencer in our brief. We said, ‘This is the guy.’ ”

But Sedita said his office worked as quickly as possible to investigate.

A screening process implemented in 2009 to weed out prosecutions of innocent defendants before trial has resulted in “dozens and dozens” of exonerations, Sedita said. “Unfortunately, none of the screening methods worked in this case,” he said.

Sedita would not comment on whether his office would now charge Spencer with the Wilson Farms robbery. Spencer, 29, is serving time in Collins Correctional Facility for one of the store holdups. He was sentenced to 10 years on a first-degree robbery conviction and will not be eligible for release until 2018.

After the hearing, Johnson returned to Orleans Correctional Facility to retrieve his personal items and was supposed to be freed that day. But the prison did not receive a certified copy of the judge’s order, so his release was delayed until the next morning – yet another indignity in a cycle of them for Johnson.

Johnson said he does not harbor resentment toward those who helped convict him. He has not talked of seeking compensation from the state for the wrongful conviction.

“This has all been about clearing his name,” Nuchereno said. “He’s got his credibility back, and that was important to him. He will look into that, but that’s not his goal now. Right now, he just wants people to know.”

“I think we were more angry about it than him,” said Virginia Ackley, a woman who is like a mother to Johnson. “He knew we believed in him, and he knew he didn’t do it.”

Johnson lived for about a decade with Ackley and her husband, George, in a Riverside duplex, and since his release he has moved in with them again in their Cheektowaga home.

Johnson does not believe any amount of money can compensate him. “No matter what they give you,” he said, “it’s not going to bring back the time you lost.”

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Is this nurse serving 30 years for murders that never happened? Compelling new evidence suggests 'Angel of Death' is innocent

To the judge at his trial, Colin Norris was an 'arrogant and manipulative man with a real dislike of elderly patients'. A cold-blooded serial killer, he had been convicted of murdering four elderly women – and almost killing a fifth – by injecting them with insulin.

For his crime he was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in jail. He is serving his sentence in the forbidding, maximum-security jail HMP Frankland, near Durham, alongside Soham murderer Ian Huntley.

Other inmates regularly contaminate his food with bodily fluids and sharpened foil from coffee jars that can be fatal if swallowed.

But now, compelling new evidence suggests not only that Colin Norris, the former nurse who was dubbed 'the angel of death', is innocent, it also hints that his 'victims' in two Leeds hospitals were not murdered at all – that they died instead of natural causes.

The prosecution at Norris's trial in Newcastle in 2008 said the women all died from hypoglycaemia, extreme low blood sugar, which causes the brain and other major organs to cease functioning.

It was claimed this condition almost never arises spontaneously – suggesting it was triggered by injections of insulin.

There was no direct evidence that Norris injected them with anything.

But it was argued that he was the 'common factor' in their deaths because he was looking after them all when they died. The odds against this happening by chance were therefore 'overwhelming'.

But now, a series of scientific studies has shown that hypoglycaemia often arises in elderly patients admitted to hospital for other reasons – in as many as ten per cent of cases.

At the same time, an investigation by Paul May, the veteran campaigner against miscarriages of justice, and Louise Shorter, the former producer of the BBC Rough Justice programme, has revealed that at least six women who were never looked after by Norris at all died from hypoglycaemia in the hospitals where he worked in the same period.

Yet Operation Bevel, the West Yorkshire police inquiry into the alleged murders at Leeds General Infirmary and St James's, took no account of these further deaths. Apparently officers were fixated on Norris as a suspect. Their chief superintendent had reviewed the Harold Shipman case, after which police were criticised for not catching Shipman soon enough.

Norris was jailed for life in 2008. Now 37, he has already lost one appeal which was fought on narrow legal technicalities.

But the fresh evidence unearthed by May and Shorter is now being 'actively pursued' by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which has the power to refer the case back for a further appeal.

Yesterday, speaking by phone from prison, Norris made a moving statement to The Mail on Sunday, relayed via his mother, June Morrison. 'All I want is for the facts to speak for themselves,' he said.

'I am not the angel of death. I am an ordinary man trapped in a living nightmare. I never killed anyone.

'My family and friends have stood by me, and for that I thank them from the bottom of my heart. But they have done so because they know the truth – not only that I am incapable of committing them, but the crimes I am convicted of never took place.'

Norris's 'nightmare' began early on the morning of November 20, 2002, when Ethel Hall, 86, a patient recovering from an operation to repair a broken hip on ward 36 at Leeds General Infirmary, was found unconscious. Mrs Hall had a long history of losing consciousness for mysterious reasons which had never been diagnosed, and had suffered from pernicious anaemia for 20 years.

In fact, she had passed out the previous afternoon, when she had been given oxygen and recovered.

This time, however, there was no reviving her. It was Norris, who was covering the night shift, who discovered she was suffering from severe hypoglycaemia, and she was given glucose injections.

Her blood sugar level returned to normal, but she did not recover, dying three weeks later.

Meanwhile, a lab in Guildford, Surrey, found that her blood contained a high level of insulin, which, it was claimed, could not have happened naturally.

The police began an inquiry. It was led by Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg, who just 18 months earlier had reviewed the 22 West Yorkshire deaths associated with Britain's most prolific serial killer, Dr Harold Shipman.

Shipman is thought to have killed some 250 patients in his care by giving them overdoses of heroin. The Shipman case had made police extremely sensitive to possible murders by medical personnel because he had been allowed to get away with his crimes for years.

They decided Norris was a suspect on the basis of remarks he made to colleagues on the night Mrs Hall fell ill, claiming they were 'sinister'. Yet all they consisted of were statements such as, 'I don't think Ethel looks right,' and that he had a 'funny feeling' about her. None of his colleagues told police they believed he had contributed to her death.

On December 11, Norris was arrested, questioned and held for 29 hours. He answered all questions freely, denying that he gave her an insulin injection, or did anything else to harm her.

The first Mrs Morrison knew of what had happened to her son was when he phoned her after his release, on police bail. 'I couldn't believe I was hearing him right,' she said.' He was trying to be calm, but I came off the phone and had a good cry. Then we went down to Leeds to see him.'

The Guildford lab test was to be a mainstay of the case against Norris. Mrs Hall, it suggested, did have a high level of insulin in her blood. In some people this can happen naturally, but when it does, there is normally a high level of another substance, too, an enzyme called C-peptide – which was not present in the sample from Mrs Hall.

However, normally two tests should be done on separate samples to confirm such a result.

Moreover, the lab had breached its own protocols by conducting its single test on a sample taken from Mrs Hall after she had been given glucose – which, say experts, can distort the results.

Now, new evidence has emerged that she may have been suffering from a condition known as insulin auto-immune syndrome, which causes insulin levels to rise dramatically without C-peptide. There is a simple chemical test available which establishes whether this syndrome is present. It was not carried out.

But at least there was evidence that Mrs Hall's blood contained insulin. In the other four cases which the Operation Bevel team examined over the following three-and-a-half years while Norris remained on bail, all that could be said with confidence was that the patients had hypoglycaemia – these patients' insulin levels had not been tested at all.

More here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

The Persecution of Rita Hutchens

Sandpoint, Idaho resident Rita Hutchens is an opinionated 57-year-old quilt artist whose work has earned her international notoriety. Given that Hutchens is also an outspoken proponent of constitutionalist views, it’s possible that some people have taken issue with her political opinions.

Hutchens has never harmed or threatened another human being. Yet local officials, led by Bonner County Deputy Prosecutor Shane Greenbank -- an inventively dishonest official -- are trying to make a criminal out of her. Failing that, they might simply seek to have her imprisoned indefinitely in a psych ward.

Around midnight on April 16, three Bonner County Sheriff’s Deputies invaded Rita’s home while she was asleep and half-clothed on her living room sofa. The deputies were enforcing a bench warrant issued several weeks earlier after Hutchens had failed to appear for a preliminary hearing on a misdemeanor charge.

In Idaho, as elsewhere, it is exceptionally rare for police to serve warrants after sundown. In its ruling in the 2011 case Idaho v. Skurlock, the Idaho Supreme Court recognized that at night time people “have a heightened expectation of privacy that should not be disturbed by a knock on the door and the presentation of a search warrant.” In addition, executing a warrant at night “increases the likelihood of violence because nighttime searches cause an abrupt intrusion on sleeping occupants in a home, thus increasing the potential for a violent reaction from the occupants.”

The bold and valiant deputies who kicked in Rita Hutchens’s door at midnight acted in the serene confidence that they had no reason to expect a violent reaction on the part of their terrified victim.

The officials responsible for the Stasi-style midnight raid maintain that there was an element of urgency because she is suspected of a violent crime, to wit: battery on a city official at Sandpoint City Hall last August 12. If they are in a particularly creative mood, city authorities might embellish that charge by saying that it involved an impact weapon.

The implement of mayhem allegedly employed by Hutchens in the supposed assault on Deputy Clerk Melissa Ward was not a club, a set of brass knuckles, or throwing stars. It was a ballpoint pen.

No, really.

Furthermore, according to the sober and dutiful public servants who witnessed the attack, Hutchens did not hurl that potentially death-dealing projectile at Ward; instead, she threw it down on a tabletop, and the terrorized agent of the public weal was injured by a ricochet.

Somehow, Ward stoically fought through her trauma and finished her shift without being treated by paramedics. Significantly, although she did fill out a police report, Ward never swore out a criminal complaint.

Hutchens filed a subpoena demanding that Ward, the alleged victim, provide a sworn and signed criminal complaint.

Last November 14, the Idaho First District Court granted a motion by Sandpoint City Attorney Scott Campbell to quash that subpoena, ruling that “requiring Ms. Ward, the victim in this matter, to provide a signed complaint is unreasonable.”

What this means is that there is no victim of record in the August 12 “battery” incident, and no criminal intent behind Hutchens’s actions – unless, of course, Greenbank wants to pretend that this middle-aged woman deviously set up a bank-shot for the purpose of wounding the clerk. On the basis of his behavior toward Hutchens – another example of which we will examine anon -- I’m convinced that Greenbank and his comrades possess sufficient cynicism to make that claim.

The patently spurious nature of the charge against Hutchens is brought into focus once it’s understood why she had visited City Hall: She was there to review public records related to an incident in 2011 in which she was assaulted and illegally arrested by Sandpoint police officer Theresa Heberer.

At the time of her encounter with Officer Heberer, Hutchens was in the middle of evicting a deadbeat tenant (who, as it happened, had been arrested the previous day on outstanding warrants). She visited her property to determine if the power and water had been shut off. When Hutchens drove by the property – making two passes when she saw the renter talking with Officer Heberer – the tenant claimed that Hutchens had been “stalking” or “harassing” her. On the basis of that complaint from a manifestly unreliable source, Heberer got into her patrol vehicle and followed Hutchens to her home.

Heberer demanded that Hutchens submit to an interrogation. Hutchens, who didn’t want to be bothered by a police officer – what decent and rational person would? – replied that she had nothing to say, invoked the Fifth Amendment, and turned to enter her home. Heberer responded by committing criminal trespass, then compounded that crime by seizing Hutchens and violently throwing her to the ground.

When her supervisor arrived on the scene, Heberer claimed that the encounter began with a traffic stop dealing with an expired registration. This was a lie, of course. Seeking to find some charge to justify the criminal violence inflicted on Hutchens, Heberer and her supervisor pored over the statute book and eventually decided to charge the victim with “resisting and obstructing” a police officer.

That charge was entirely without merit – a fact recognized by Magistrate Judge Barbara Buchanan when she threw it out of court.

“There was no reason to touch her,” Judge Buchanan observed. “She did not have to answer [Officer Heberer’s] questions. She has a Fifth Amendment right not to do that…. You can’t be charged with resisting and obstructing for exercising your Fifth Amendment right, and she did have every right to say, `I don’t want to answer your questions, I want to go in my house.’ There is no basis for an arrest, there is no reason for a search warrant.”

Unlike Melissa Ward, Hutchens was physically harmed by Heberer’s assault, in addition to suffering the indelible injury of being handcuffed and unlawfully detained. She filed a $250,000 damage claim with the City of Sandpoint, which was rejected by Idaho Counties Risk Management Program. So she filed a notice of tort claim announcing her intention to sue the city for violating her civil rights.

It was in preparation for that lawsuit that Hutchens was researching public records at City Hall on August. As she did so, she was followed by a city official who carried a digital recorder and may well have been trying to bait her into some kind of actionable misconduct.

As Sgt. Riffel noted in his official report of the incident, “Rita Hutchens… has a fairly tense relationship with the City, and has pending lawsuits against them.”
Had he possessed a particle of moral discernment and a rudimentary sense of honor, Riffel would have recognized that the battery complaint was an act of petty retaliation against a citizen regarded as an irritant. His reaction should have been to shake his head in disgust, put away his notebook, and tell the “victim” and her cronies to behave like adults. But this would have meant defending the rights of a Mundane, which would be impermissible.

Accordingly, Riffel – acting in the interests of Tax Feeder solidarity – filed his report and swore out the probable cause affidavit.

The criminal complaint against Hutchens, which was composed by Greenbank, is a masterpiece of bureaucratic hyperbole. It claims that Hutchens “did willfully and unlawfully use force or violence upon the person of Melissa Ward by striking Ward with a pen, or, in the alternative, did actually, intentionally, and unlawfully touch or strike the person of Melissa Ward against her will by striking Ward with a pen.” This, sniffs Greenbank with the practiced pomposity of a pampered parasite, was a grave offense “against the peace and dignity of the State of Idaho.”

Ward suffered no injury. There is no evidence that Hutchens intended to do her any harm. By way of contrast, judicial notice has been taken of the incontrovertible fact that Officer Theresa Heberer did “willfully and unlawfully use force or violence” upon the person of Rita Hutchens in an assault that did injure the victim.

It is precisely because Hutchens is seeking redress for the criminal violence she suffered at the hands of Heberer and her comrades that Greenbank – acting on behalf of the local political class – is seeking to imprison her.

As his florid description of Hutchens’s purported offense demonstrates, Greenbank is a bit of a drama queen. This got him into trouble in his last gig, during which he afflicted the residents of neighboring Kootenai County. During opening arguments in a September 2008 domestic violence trial, Greenbank – who at the time was Deputy Prosecutor for Kootenai County – broke down in tears and theatrically asked for a tissue as he recounted the alleged crimes of the defendant.

This display left First District Judge Fred Gilber thoroughly unimpressed. Chastising Greenbank for trying to manipulate the jury, Gilber declared a mistrial. Predictably, Greenbank’s initial reaction was to lie, insisting that he hadn’t been crying and certainly had “no intent to appeal to the passions of the jury.” However, the trial transcript documents that he admitted, “I did have tears running down my face, I did have snot running down my face.”

Nor was this the first time that Greenback or his colleagues had sought to manipulate a jury. As he declared a mistrial, Judge Gilber pointed out: “In [a] recent case the Court of Appeals has singled out the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office for appealing to the passions or prejudice of the jury.”
For the last six months, Hutchens has been acting as her own attorney.

Greenbank, who has no appropriate credentials, claims that she has exhibited “unusually behaviors and affects – both in court and in her filings. It is evident that her mood is changeable, and her thoughts are disorganized.” He filed, and was granted, a motion ordering Hutchens to undergo a mandatory psychological evaluation.

Embedded in that May 2 order is a remarkable claim that was introduced by Magistrate Judge Debra Heise without a particle of supporting evidence. Listed among the examples of Hutchens’s “unusual behaviors and affects” was the act of “battering the assigned prosecuting attorney [Greenbank] outside of court when he served papers to her in the clerk’s office….”

That description would lead the untutored reader to assume that Rita Hutchens, a 57-year-old woman who stands about 5’1” and weighs all of 110 pounds, boldly attacked the intrepid paladin of the public weal in full view of witnesses, and somehow managed to avoid being dragged away in chains.

What actually happened was that Greenbank shoved a sheaf of legal papers in Hutchens’s face – and she replied in kind by shoving them right back at him. In other words, just as she had “battered” Melissa Ward by accidentally striking her in the arm with a ballpoint pen, she “battered” Shane Greenbank by pushing papers at him. Although this would hardly be enough to injure a child, it should be acknowledged that on Greenbank’s previous performance, trivial contact of this kind would be quite enough to make him cry.

It should also be noted that Greenbank’s sense of moral outrage over crimes of violence is oddly adaptable. While he is treating Rita Hutchens as if she were a public menace, last August he agreed to a plea bargain by a man accused of hog-tying one handicapped 12-year-old child, and choking another one. The assailant in that case agreed to misdemeanor charges that led to a total of two weeks in jail.

The May 2 order for Hutchens to undergo a mental evaluation specifies that Dr. Carl Haugan, a “designated licensed psychiatrist,” will file a report on Hutchens’s mental condition by May 23. If she refuses to cooperate, the order explains, “the report shall so state and shall include, if possible, an opinion as to whether such unwillingness of the defendant was the result of mental disease or defect.”

Judge Heise – whose trough is filled with a $107,043 annual salary plundered from more honest people in the private sector -- clearly sought to prejudice the evaluation by imputing to Hutchens, as a matter of record, “unusual behaviors and affects” as well as a tendency toward “violence” – as supposedly demonstrated in the two instances of “battery.” If, on the other hand, Hutchens refused to submit to an evaluation foreordained to find her incompetent, her refusal is to be taken as proof of her mental incapacity.

Not surprisingly, Hutchens has refused to play her scripted role in this cynical charade – in defiance of threats to have her arrested and jailed for defying the court order. If Hutchens were taken into state custody, it’s entirely possible that Greenbank would seek to have her involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment. While thus detained, she would be unable to pursue her lawsuit against the City of Sandpoint – which is almost certainly the point of this entire campaign of official persecution.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Australia: Woman sues police after six months in prison

Arrested on an allegation. No attempt to check the facts

A south-west Sydney woman is suing the NSW police for malicious prosecution and false imprisonment after she was charged with intent to murder and jailed for six months pending a trial, only for the matter to be dropped due to a lack of evidence.

Palestinian-Australian Hayam Abed, 51, says she was the victim of false allegations, concocted by her ex-husband Khalil Younis and his new wife, Wafaa, which police had accepted without properly examining the evidence.

The NSW District Court heard this week that on the evening of December 8, 2006, after a series of ongoing and, at times, violent disputes between Ms Abed and the Younises, Mrs Younis rang the police.

She said Ms Abed had leapt over the six-foot fence separating their properties in Austral with a large knife.

Ms Abed then allegedly smashed and crawled through the bathroom window, before threatening to kill Mrs Younis.

Police arrived soon after and arrested Ms Abed, charging her with breaking and entering with intent to murder.

"I said to the police, 'Why?' " Ms Abed told the court.

"I said I want to change my clothes . . . I'm going to the police station in my clothes for the bed, but they refused.

"I screamed to the police, 'I need my headscarf!' They say 'no'."

She was refused bail and sent to Mulawa women's prison where she remained for the next six months until prosecutors advised all charges should be dropped because the evidence would not support a conviction.

In her statement of claim, filed by her solicitor Anthony Porthouse, Ms Abed said she was incapable of leaping over the fence at the time because she was suffering from two broken ribs, allegedly inflicted by the Younises the day before.

Police were allegedly made aware of this fact but failed to investigate it further until April the following year, when they obtained the X-rays showing the broken bones.

"You have got this sharp, six-foot Colorbond fence that this woman supposedly leapt over like Superman, not once but twice," Ms Abed's barrister David Higgs, SC, said.

The court also heard the broken glass from the bathroom window, which Ms Abed supposedly climbed through, was lying outside the house, suggesting it had been broken from the inside.

The knife Ms Abed supposedly carried had no fingerprints or DNA on it.

Phone records showed that at the time Ms Abed was, on Mrs Younis' account, breaking into her ex-husband's home, she was on the phone.

"If there is a lead that can bear on the possible innocence of the accused, it should be followed up," Mr Higgs said. "The police didn't follow it up."

Ms Abed said her time in prison contributed to the depressive disorder she now has, and is suing the police and the Younises for punitive and aggravated damages.

But the court also heard this week that Ms Abed and the Younises had been engaged in disputes, at times violent, since they divorce and Mr Younis returned from Palestine with a new wife. Ms Abed had been arrested by police and became the subject of an apprehended violence order.

The Younises maintain their allegations against Ms Abed are true.

The police will argue they acted properly in arresting and charging Ms Abed given the seriousness of the criminal allegations against her, and the subsequent investigation was run normally and appropriately.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Former British woman cop 'leaked confidential intelligence and tactics'



A former woman police officer allegedly disclosed confidential intelligence and tactics, a court heard today.

Rebecca Swanston, 28, of Hampshire Police, is alleged to have logged onto information systems including the police records management system and passed on confidential intelligence.

Swanston, who today faced three charges of misconduct in public office, also allegedly failed to report a man for possessing class A drugs, plus confessions to assaults and other offences.

Instead of upholding the law, she shared details with the intention of frustrating ongoing probes, detection of crime and the apprehension of offenders, prosecutors claim.

Swanston, who was based at Southampton Central Police Station, is alleged to have committed the offences over a 10-month period between January and October last year.

Swanston, from Portsmouth, appeared at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court this morning for a brief hearing to hear the charges against her.

Dressed in a purple and black dress, she stood to hear the counts against her. Magistrates asked if she understood the allegations, from prosecutor Zoe Martin, and she replied 'yes'.

She denies wilfully neglecting to perform a duty as a holder of a public office from January 1 to October 18, 2012.

The allegations of misconduct include accessing intelligence on the records management system other than for a policing purpose, passing confidential police information to a Miguel Sewell and failing to report his possession of class A drugs and his confession to an assault with a weapon.

She also denies disclosing confidential police information to a Robert Morris, failing to report a confession, advising him about police procedures and giving him two police shirts.

The third count relates to accessing and leaking information and briefings about a suspect, Tariq Khan, to be passed onto him with the intention of frustrating an ongoing probe into serious offences.

Magistrates adjourned the case for trial and Swanston was bailed to appear at Winchester Crown Court for a plea and case management hearing on June 4.

She must sleep at her home address, not enter a given area and her passport must remain logged with Hampshire Police. These conditions have been in place 'for some time', the court heard.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Desensitization training: Police practice fighting “angry parents”

From time to time, I have been highly annoyed with the school that my daughter attends. I have set up meetings with teachers, principals, and administrators. I have brought in paperwork and pleaded my case on a variety of topics. I have made scathing remarks. Once, I even had the utter audacity to argue a point with the principal with my daughter right there in the room, which is apparently a no-no because it “undermined the authority of the principal”.

However, I haven’t yet gone on a rampage against which the police would need to come in and defend the school against me. They must do things differently in Puyallup, Washington.

Did you catch that? “The idea was to test the response of police and firefighters to a situation that was right out of the news headlines.”

What news headlines? I read a lot of news every day and these “angry parents” taking over a school at gunpoint, requiring SWAT intervention, somehow completely escaped my notice!

Well, it must be true, because the police officer in charge said, “We’ve been dealing with this across the country for years.”

Where? When?

It’s very obvious what this actually is. It is desensitization training.

de·sen·si·tize: "to make emotionally insensitive or callous; specifically: to extinguish an emotional response (as of fear, anxiety, or guilt) to stimuli that formerly induced it."

So, by this definition, they want to make it easier for normally moral people to perpetuate an attack on a group of people that would ordinarily not be their targets. They don’t want these officers to have hesitation caused by anxiety or guilt before unloading on an “angry” mom or dad at a school.

This is very similar to the recent scandal of the targets of gun owners that were supplied to the DHS in order to make it easier for them to fire upon everyday people. The targets included an elderly woman, an elderly man, a little boy, and a pregnant woman in a nursery.

Once upon a time, police were there to protect people like parents, children, the elderly, and pregnant ladies. But the lines are being drawn and great effort is being undertaken to create a new breed of villains for the “authorities” to fight – and those villains are us.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Florida Man Flees Seatbelt Stop on Foot, Cop Runs Him Over and Kills Him

Channel 13Channel 13Shortly after 12:30 a.m. this morning a Volusia County Sheriffs deputy saw Marlon Brown driving without a seatbelt, and attempted to pull him over. When Brown kept driving, the deputy gave up pursuit while reporting a fleeing vehicle. Almost immediately, reports the Daytona Beach News-Journal, officers with the DeLand Police Department (the county and city share a dispatch system) said they'd spotted the vehicle and began their own pursuit. What happened next absolutely should not have:

Two DeLand police officers got behind the car as it headed west on Beresford Avenue. Brown did not stop and made a left turn on South Delaware Avenue, a dead-end street that ends near an empty lot. Brown stopped the car and ran from it, as one DeLand patrol car stopped behind Brown's Toyota Camry. The other patrol car, driven by Officer Harris, drove past on the left of the other stopped patrol car and struck Brown, who was running, with the right front, Montes said.

Harris then ran over Brown, killing him on the spot, Montes said.

At the scene behind some apartment buildings at 901 S. Delaware Ave., tire tracks lead from the paved road into the empty lot for more than a hundred yards, running over bean plants and knocking down a chain link fence. This is where witness Sabrina Waldron said the car stopped on top of Brown.

Waldron said Brown's car pulled along the woods and stopped.

"There was no need to run him down," Waldron said. "After the car hit Marlon and landed on him the back end of it was up in the air."

The Deland Police Department is refusing to comment on the case until the Florida Highway Patrol concludes its investigation. The only information it's released at this point is that the officer who killed Brown, 25-year-old James Harris, has been on the job since August, has an otherwise clean record, and is now suspended. As for Brown: One explanation for his decision to not pull over may be that his license was suspended and he was on probation. But really: Chasing people over seatbelt violations? Isn't that a bit much?

This incident--like the one Brian Doherty noted in which a NYPD patrol car pursuing a dirt bike slammed into it and killed one of the passengers--didn't need to happen. But it seems DeLand police simply aren't very good at chasing pedestrian suspects.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

Pedophilia hysteria in Australia: Police investigate frolicking child

It wasn't the original plan for Emma and her grandfather Leo to head to Balmoral Beach, but the six-year-old "water baby" had set her heart on it.

"We hadn't packed her swimming costume but she was in one of her determined moods so I certainly wouldn't have dared say no," said 70-year-old Leo, who was helping Emma's busy parents last Tuesday.

When the pair arrived at lunchtime, Emma stripped off her clothes, including her T-shirt, despite Leo's suggestion she keep it on. She then happily splashed in the shallows for about half an hour while Leo kept a watchful eye a short distance away.

"She didn't stop beaming from the time she got in to the time she got out," he said.

But he was left shaken by what happened next. "I helped Emma get dressed and then the police arrived," he said. "They wanted my name, they took my identification. They also talked to Emma and asked her name and date of birth. They informed me a complaint had been lodged."

NSW Police confirmed an anonymous call was received from a member of the public expressing concern about an elderly man "sitting with a naked child at the beach".

While it took a matter of minutes for the officers to establish that a misunderstanding had occurred, the issue did not end there.

In the days since, a bewildered Leo has questioned his own role in the incident. "Should I have insisted she keep her top on?" he asked, adding: "Would they still have complained anyway?"

His questions don't stop there: "Would this have happened if I had been a female? Would it have occurred had I been a younger man?

"I would like to meet the person who made the call. I'd like to ask why they couldn't have at least approached me, so we could have avoided all this."

But the person most affected has been Emma herself. "When she got in the bath that night, she said: 'I did something wrong, I'm in trouble'," her mother Jessica said. "This was a child in her element. Who could have complained about that? If she was in distress, sure, people should maybe call the cops then. She was totally carefree.

"It's not long before she'll lose that and become more body conscious."

Chief executive of the Australian Childhood Foundation and registered psychologist Joe Tucci said raising community awareness about child abuse had inadvertently triggered "widespread anxiety" instead of "confidence".

"In the past, adults would turn a blind eye. These days, more people respond … but not necessarily in a helpful way. In this case, the execution is not what I would have recommended.

"Given it was so public, the person could have at least approached the grandfather for a few words. Yes, it might have ended up being a little embarrassing to both parties but at least it would have avoided that young girl's involvement and negative experience with police."

But Hetty Johnston, founder of child protection advocate Bravehearts, disagreed. "That member of the public did what, we hope, everyone now does in such situations.

"They held concerns so in the best interests of that child, they called police. It was not a malicious or vindictive move. It turned out to be a false alarm and that's great."

Detective Acting Superintendent Linda Howlett, the acting Sex Crimes Squad commander, agreed.

"It's better to be safe than sorry," she said. "If a member of the public does see something that causes them concern, we encourage them to contact police and we will follow that up."

But several days on, Jessica still cannot help but feel the situation was overblown. "It started several years ago with families not being able to take photos of their own children at swimming pools and now it seems to have progressed to scenarios like this," she said.

"As a society, I believe we have grown too paranoid. I feel so sorry for all the grandfathers who face this sort of scrutiny and persecution, simply for spending time with their grandkids."

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here

British cops warn girl, 10, her chalk hopscotch grid on the pavement outside her home is criminal damage

A schoolgirl was told off by police for drawing a hopscotch grid on the pavement, according to her father.

Officers even warned the 10-year-old she might have committed criminal damage as she played the traditional game outside her house in Ramsgate, Kent.

Lilly Allen had marked out a grid in chalk - which washes away in the rain - when she was apparently approached by two officers.

'Two policemen in a car drove up to her and said it was illegal to draw on the floor as it was criminal damage,' her father Bob told The Sun. 'I am absolutely seething they have done this.'

After posting evidence of the incident on his Facebook page, Mr Allen, 51, joked: 'I call her Banksy now.'

The angry father has lodged a complaint with Kent Police about their heavy-handed behaviour.

Authorities are now investigating the incident, and admit that the officers may have gone too far when they accused Lilly of committing a crime.

A police spokesman said: 'We are trying to trace the officers who are reported to have made this comment. 'From the circumstances described, it would not appear to have been necessary to advise the young girl that chalking a hopscotch grid may be criminal damage and illegal.'

The traditional children's game of hopscotch is unlikely to be wiped out by officious policemen any time soon.

The game, in which children hop from box to box in a set pattern, has been played for centuries.

Many school playgrounds have hopscotch grids built in, but children can also draw a grid in chalk with ease.

Original report here




(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today. Now hosted on Wordpress. If you cannot access it, go to the MIRROR SITE, where posts appear as well as on the primary site. I have reposted the archives (past posts) for Wicked Thoughts HERE or HERE or here