London Burning

BBC News - London riots arrests reach 2,000, Met Police says

BBC News said:
The Metropolitan Police said it has now arrested more than 2,000 people in connection with rioting and looting across London earlier this month.

Scotland Yard said that 2,006 people had been arrested and of those 1,135 had been charged.

Separate figures from the Ministry of Justice show that, across England, almost 1,500 people have appeared in court to answer riot-related charges.

Some 70% of alleged offenders have been remanded in custody.

Scotland Yard said 954 of those charged over London's disturbances had already appeared before the court, 82 had been sentenced and 42 jailed.


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The Met Police Public Relations Plan criminal investigations are in full swing. Trying to repair the reputation damage accrued in the first days of the riots, when they had insufficient officers and the wrong tactics.
Looking better now, good.

* * *
BBC News - England riots: What happened to the rioters in court?

BBC News said:
As at 23 August,2011

More than 3,000 people were arrested in connection with the riots in towns and cities around England. Latest figures from the Ministry of Justice say 1,474 suspects have appeared in court - most of them in London.

* Regional breakdown of court appearances
# London 64%
# Greater Manchester 12%
# West Midlands 9%
# Nottingham 4%
# Merseyside 4%
# Rest of England & Wales 6%

# England riots: Court snapshot
# 1,474 Appeared in court up to 24 August
# 22% Under-18s
# 90% Male
# 70% Remanded in custody
(# 10% Usual custody remand rate)


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Interesting numbers. :think:
 
How stupid do you have to be, firstly to incite trouble on FB, then secondly to admit that you have stolen stuff.

Do they think that the cops can't read or use Facebook? :rolleyes:

Having had contact with a lot of criminals I can tell you that a lot of them do not realise that the police read Facebook. It's not that they think that they can't, it's more arrogance in the sense that they think the police won't do that. I've dealt with someone who said on Facebook where he was staying while on the run from the police and then was surprised when they turned up and arrested him. That's how thick some of these people are.
 
Yes, and cell phone use still seem to baffle a lot of them. Same with DNA from fags left on a scene. Or so I am told.

It seems to me that the problem isn't as much smart criminals, but a lack of imagination by some police forces.

How are things going after the riots, suggsygirl? :)
 
Yes, and cell phone use still seem to baffle a lot of them. Same with DNA from fags left on a scene. Or so I am told.

It seems to me that the problem isn't as much smart criminals, but a lack of imagination by some police forces.

How are things going after the riots, suggsygirl? :)

They do things like rob a house and get peckish so they eat half a sausage from the fridge and put it back (actual case) or they drop their prison ID that they haven't handed back to the prison on release, at the crime scene (again, actual case)

Things are a bit quieter. The prison escort contracts have changed though so from tomorrow I will be working for a new company. They are American. They have never done this work before in this country. Put it this way, my expectations are limited :)
 
I just don't get why they move services like that away from national companies. Strange.
 
I just don't get why they move services like that away from national companies. Strange.

To make money. That's the long and short of it. The private companies cut corners (like our wages, for example) and do things far cheaper than the government can. We have less training and poor equipment and it all costs far less.
 
Pardon my French, but that's not doing things far cheaper than the government. It's not even doing the job more efficiently. It's just, as you say, cutting corners. It's like British Leyland in the 70s. The car will start even if you do use rubbish rubber and don't wire the electrics well, but somewhere down the road, you'll get poor reliability.

As you say, less pay, less training, worse equipment and probably less job security (thought, perhaps not during this period of time in British economy).

I'd like to be very clear I'm not jabbing at you. I'm jabbing at this so called efficiency and the supposed savings that are being made. It's just damn foolish.
 
Pardon my French, but that's not doing things far cheaper than the government. It's not even doing the job more efficiently. It's just, as you say, cutting corners. It's like British Leyland in the 70s. The car will start even if you do use rubbish rubber and don't wire the electrics well, but somewhere down the road, you'll get poor reliability.

As you say, less pay, less training, worse equipment and probably less job security (thought, perhaps not during this period of time in British economy).

I'd like to be very clear I'm not jabbing at you. I'm jabbing at this so called efficiency and the supposed savings that are being made. It's just damn foolish.

I think the problem is that it's cheaper to pay a fine for doing something wrong than to build the infrastructure to do it right. I mean like it or not that sector of service is private now and I don't think there's any way to turn back the clock. I know you're not getting at me and I do agree with you but I think that ship has now sailed. The problem with the private companies is always going to be that profit is the one factor they care about. If it means making less profit to make my job safer they won't do it. I'm expendable. If I do something wrong, even if it's something the company has told me to do, then it's going to be cheaper to fire me than to admit the system is wrong. Unfortunately that's just the way it is.

It's happening in the prison service too, they're employing less and less officers to do the job and eventually the whole system is going to break because they're spread too thinly. That's the real reason prisoners have Playstations and televisions with cable channels, because it means having to employ less officers to keep control.
 
Yeah. Not that having happy and peaceful prisoners aren't a good idea anyway. But I do understand your thinking. G?ring did the same thing with Luftwaffe POW camps, trying to make living conditions better to keep the prisoners in. Didn't work all the time those days, but then again, different people and different context. Pardon my digression.

The private sector is fashionable these days. Has been since the 80s. I'll leave it at that.

:)
 
Privatisation of the Police and Gaols - this is a very, very, bad idea. The Tories seem to have only one thought in their little brains, "Lets get the free market/outsourcing in they will do a better job."

Well I can tell you, no they damn well won't. What is worse is that Labour has a very similar idea too!

We never used to care quite so much about material things, seem to have caught the desire, like a nasty disease.
 
There were a time when societies thought 'we'll deal with this because we have to, and we'll find a way to make it work'. And they did. They don't any more, sadly.
 
No further news yet of these people in Birmingham shooting at Police.

[video=youtube;-CIkakrZl64]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CIkakrZl64&feature=player_profilepage[/video]​

But there has been an arrrest of the guy who drove his car at two Police officers in London.

BBC News - London: Man remanded on car police attack charge

BBC News said:
A man accused of injuring two police officers who were hit by a car during rioting in north-east London has been remanded in custody by magistrates.

Jab-Kiel Van Eda was arrested after the officers were hit by a car as they chased looters during disorder in Waltham Forest on 8 August.

The 28-year-old, from Ilford, is charged with attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm with intent.


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Three people were killed in Birmingham during the riots by someone driving into them.
 
Court order prevents BBC from broadcasting film about riots

The BBC has pulled a film about the experiences of rioters during last summer's disturbances just hours before it was due to be broadcast after a ruling from a judge. The film, due to be broadcast on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday, was a dramatisation based on the testimony of interviews conducted for the Guardian and London School of Economics research into the disorder.

The programme, part of a two-part series, features actors who play anonymous rioters speaking about their experiences of the riots last August. The BBC said in a statement: "A court order has been made that has prevented the BBC from broadcasting the programme The Riots: In their own Words tonight. We will put it out at a later date."

The BBC did not give details about the nature of the court order, or which judge made the ruling.

The script from the programme, written by the award-winning playwright Alecky Blythe, was produced from verbatim transcripts of interviews conducted as part of the Reading the Riots study, which conducted confidential interviews with 270 rioters.

The programme was scheduled to be broadcast for several weeks and forms part of a package of current affairs journalism being prepared by the broadcaster in the runup to next month's anniversary of the riots.

In a blog posted before the film was pulled, a BBC producer on the project said that using the "important and illuminating" interviews in the drama would provide insight into "why and how the riots had happened".
 
^Probably trying to postpone it till after the Olympics
 
Its quite likely that one of the participants has an upcoming court appearance, and they don't want to spoil the jury.
 
Its quite likely that one of the participants has an upcoming court appearance, and they don't want to spoil the jury.

Yes, that could be the case and if so, sounds like the correct thing to do.
(Rather than let the program go ahead, have the dude get found guilty, then some lawyer calls foul on appeal.)

There was some scheduling shenanigans on BBC2 on monday 21:00. so that was what it was.
 
Privatisation of the Police and Gaols - this is a very, very, bad idea. The Tories seem to have only one thought in their little brains, "Lets get the free market/outsourcing in they will do a better job."

Well I can tell you, no they damn well won't. What is worse is that Labour has a very similar idea too!

We never used to care quite so much about material things, seem to have caught the desire, like a nasty disease.

Weren't they planning to give alot of the work to G4S...............
 
They were. That said, let's be honest, they weren't going to do a Joe Arpaio and deputize G4S personel to go around the streets with powers of arrest. What they were doing (and have done to some extent) is using G4S to run prisoner transport from the streets to the nick, I'm also quite sure they're being used in police station prisoner handling etc.

Which might make some sense, I suppose. The problem I've got is that all these roles requires the privately employed security guards to have the authority AND the tools to control potentially unruly prisoners. I've got no problem with a bouncer being able to use force or even handcuff someone if the situation warrants it, but in a situation where every single person you're in contact with is someone either under arrest or in a similar situation, the need for application of force exponentially increases, and I think these privately employed security guards will need to have the same rights and powers as a sworn constable with regards to equipment and restraint possibilities to even be safe from let alone a Health and safety perspective.

It's part of the reason I don't like private prisons. Private prisons have the ability to force a prisoner to do things. That's not within the scope of what the private sector should be doing. I don't think strip searches are a good idea all the time. It's not better when they're supervised by some corporation.
 
Privatisation of the Police and Gaols - this is a very, very, bad idea. The Tories seem to have only one thought in their little brains, "Lets get the free market/outsourcing in they will do a better job."

Well I can tell you, no they damn well won't. What is worse is that Labour has a very similar idea too!

We never used to care quite so much about material things, seem to have caught the desire, like a nasty disease.
The Tories' obsession with privatising everything is what destroyed them the first time around, then again they can't be expecting to get back into office anyway can they...

Probably just hoping to create as big a mess as possible for when Labour get back in at the next election.
 
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