MORE SPIN FROM LABOUR ON OUR FAILING JUSTICE SYSTEM

Extracts from Labour's Home Secretary, Alan Johnson's speech to the 2009 Labour Party Annual Conference:

"Crime is the area of government policy where statistics matter the least and perception matters the most. But the fact is that we have an excellent record to defend".

COMMENT : Statistics matter the least? You would say that, considering the actual level of crime (10million incidents) is twice that reported to the police (4.7million) and the Home Office admit that the higher figure is the most reliable. To admit they matter would mean you having do accept that crime is out of control and the public have lost confidence in reporting it. Tell the victims of crime that statistics matter the least, especially the ones that the Government policing system couldn't respond to because of endemic police bureaucracy, misdirected priorities and ivory tower minority projects.

"Overall crime is down by 36% since we came to power, violent crime by 41%, domestic burglary by 54% and vehicle-related theft by 57%."

COMMENT : What you mean is, you've found better ways to manipulate and misrepresent the statistics. If you mean that fewer people report crime because they have lost confidence in the system, we agree. However, the fudging of crime statistics has caused the general public to take your statistics with a pinch of salt, as political spin. Vehicle related thefts are now swallowed up in re allocated offences, such as burglary, robbery, or simple thefts. Your headlines earlier this year announced that vehicle crime was down by 10%. Yet Jacqui Smith revealed that 18,600 vehicle thefts were not reported as such, being absorbed into other offences. When added back into the vehicle theft numbers, take into account the under reporting and vehicle crime is INCREASING not decreasing. Your numbers are flawed by a serious corruption of the numbers for political gain.

"These achievements are a tribute to our policemen and women. There are more of them than ever before, supported by 16,000 Police Community Support Officers with a budget 60% higher than we inherited in 1997".

COMMENT : Yes, the crime figures are a tribute to our police officers, who do a very difficult job, despite a corrupted criminal justice system. 16,000 PCSO's without the powers to defend themselves and the public adequately. The funding for 16,000 PCSO's would have been better spent putting 12,500 regular officers, with full powers on the streets. 142,000 police officers in England & Wales. How many of them are involved in frontline duties?? The public would be shocked to hear that Government initiatives and projects, supported and promoted by the more senior politically directed officers take the vast majority of those officers off the streets, engaged in adminstrative, office based duties. A ridiculous number of officers are engaged in wasteful activity rather than actually doing the job we need them for, protecting our community and citizens.

The fact is, the thin blue line has become so transparent it is barely visible. Go to any police station between the hours of 9am - 5pm... try and get a parking space. Then revisit the same station at 10pm. That picture tells the story of the ineffective use of police resources when on the street policing is really needed. But hey, there are some lovely flow charts and tables to look at in those offices.

How much of that 60% budget funds frontline officer resources and how many millions are wasted on Government "Wendy House" ideas and projects?? All forces have been presented with a 10% budget cut for 2010/2011, based in part on the manufactured statistics and detections devised and implemented by the Home Office you represent.

"We need to ensure that any breach of an ASBO is prosecuted. Above all, we need to make it clear that anti-social behaviour isn't a low-level nuisance to be tolerated, it's a major source of insecurity and unhappiness that has to be tackled wherever and whenever it occurs".

COMMENT : 60,000 ASBO's with over half being breached, with the Criminal Justice System a toothless tiger to deal with it. The kids are laughing at authority because adequate powers were not put in place to deal with breaches of ASBO's. The penalties for breaching ASBO's are so pathetic, more than 50% have done so repeatedly with NO repercussions. Tell the victims of their behaviour how effective ASBO's have been without the necessary follow up powers to deal with breaches.

"It was Labour that introduced specialist domestic violence courts and helped put 720 fully trained independent domestic violence advisers in place. More arrests are being made and conviction rates are rising".

COMMENT : Domestic violence is an important issue that needs effective solutions. Yet again though, the Home Office saw this as a means of manipulating statistics and detection rates. No one would dispute the benefits of the extra steps now being taken to protect vulnerable victims in these circumstances. However, look more closely at the crime figures you boast about. Ask the front line officers how many cases they have been forced to deal with where complaints are withdrawn but the offence remains on the books for the purposes of ticking the detection box, criminalising thousands more people that the victim does not want to see prosecuted. Genuine cases where vulnerable parties are victimised and want to proceed are applauded, but there remains a massive distortion of the real picture by the Home Officer and senior officers pursuing detections at all costs.

"Gordon Brown has been integral to all of these achievements and he has led the way in addressing the biggest global economic and political challenges of our age".

COMMENT : This is the same Gordon Brown that did the deal with Gadaffi, trading justice for commerce over the Lockerbie bomber and the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher? How can the British public ever trust a man who would make such a despicable trade off?

Mr Johnson, you may choose to dismiss the statistics, the British public certainly do, they carry no weight when presented by a party that has manipulated and distorted them beyong truthful recognition. You may make your promises at Conference time, when it suits your political ends. However, the front line police officers know the real truth of your falsehoods. The general public are not stupid. They know the Government have been conning them these last twelve years on crime and policing. The see the evidence in the decay of our social fabric every day on the streets of Britain. So don't feed us your spin about crime being slashed, the figures are worthless and the words and hollow promises of your party are no longer trusted.

Britain may not yet be broken, but it is deeply wounded by the lies and spin we have been fed.

The wounds can be healed with transparent reform and back to basics policing unfettered by excessive political influence.

The Government to which you have pinned your flag of loyalty, no longer inspires the confidence and support of the public.

We look forward to witnessing a better future, with a Government whose actions will speak louder than words, delivering the justice and society we seek, with honesty and transparent solutions that will go a long way to regain the trust of the public.

The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Ltd

FIONA PILKINGTON - SOCIETY WITH A BROKEN MORAL COMPASS

The tragic story of the suicide of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francesca shocked the nation this week. Media attention returned to the events of that fateful day, following an inquest earlier this week when a coroners inquest ruled that police inaction had contributed to their deaths.

Years of torment from young neighbors led the despairing single mother to kill herself and her disabled daughter. Fiona Pilkington, 38, and her 18-year-old daughter, Francecca Hardwick, died when Ms Pilkington set fire to their car in Leicestershire in October 2007.

The ringleaders of a gang of children that terrorised Fiona and her daughter continue to be a menace in the area, the court heard. The children, who have virtually no parental control, are said to remain the root cause of antisocial behaviour on the street where they tormented Fiona and her severely disabled daughter, Francecca, for almost ten years. Fiona Pilkington suffered more than a decade of abuse from a gang of youths who terrorized her family by urinating on her house, taunting her developmentally challenged daughter and beating her severely dyslexic son. The family lived for more than 10 years under siege. A 16-strong gang of yobs regularly pelted Fiona’s house with eggs, they set fences on fire, pushed fireworks through the front door and taunted Francecca.

Most of us will never understand the mentality of feral yobs who stalk our streets. Though we’ve seen enough examples of lawlessness to know these knuckle-trailing neanderthals exist in increasing numbers and have utter disregard for the norms of a polite, civilised society.

Undoubtedly, the Leicestershire force will remain under the spotlight as a result of the crtiticism levelled against them. Time will reveal the degree of responsibility they must accept for the tragic events.

Superintendent Steve Harrod told the inquiry how low-level anti-social behaviour is now a local council’s responsibility. And the objective of British justice is to avoid criminalising young people.

COMMENT

Not so many years ago low-lives looking for trouble would have been hauled before courts or had the living daylights scared out of them by coppers determined to keep their beat problem-free. Now yobs tear up Asbos and mock authority. They consider the law a joke and who can blame them? While vile thugs circled Fiona’s family like wolves baying for blood her local force stand accused of doing nothing.

If the police were negligent in their duty, then those responsble should be identified and the appropriate action taken to prevent further similar occurrences involving vulnerable members of society.

The root cause of the problem though is symptomatic of policing in the UK in 2009. In exploring why the police might have failed in their duty it is essential to look beyond the front line officers who attended or dealt with calls.

The current state of the police is not the fault of good officers who want to do a proper job but are hamstrung by the burdens of paperwork and successive Government legislation, the latest being the excessive number of new offences brought in during the last twelve years by this Government.

Due to politically motivated control, bureaucracy and cost, the entire criminal justice system is corrupted from the top downwards starting with the treasury who hold the purse strings, and the Home Office who are allegedly in charge of policing.

Literally thousands of articles and posts echoing these sentiments have proliferated online forums during recent years. They can't all be wrong. There is something radically amiss with police priorities and modus operandi but, much more pertinently, they and the politicians are fully aware of it. There are plenty policemen and women imbued with moral integrity and sound motives. There are many police blogs where officers attempt to convey this very message to the public they serve.

Whichever Government is in charge, there needs to be an urgent and comprehensive review of policing in the UK and fast.

The sad case of Fiona Pilkington and her family are symptoms of a society whose moral compass is badly broken. It can be fixed but the repair work required needs to be more than the cosmetic surface level damage. A previous post from this site talked of the spoiled society, where some sectors of the younger generation are badly in need of a firm hand with a return to back to basics discipline and control. click here to read the article

If the Government are to start the task of fixing our society, then surely there is no better place to start than here. By instilling some firm handed forgotten disciplines within the "spoiled sector" of our youth, there will at least be a glimmer of hope that the UK may once again be a pleasant, less threatening place to live.


The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

POLICE FEDERATION LETTER TO GORDON BROWN RE MURDER OF WPC YVONNE FLETCHER

http://www.polfed.org/Letter_to_Rt_Hon_Gordon_Brown_RE_Yvonne_Fletcher_150909.pdf

The team at Nice 1 Ltd, would like to take this opportunity to endorse the sentiments contained in the letter by Paul McKeever, Chairman of the Police Federation, addressed to Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

The letter details the Federation dismay and disgust at the recent disclosure of the Government deal that traded justice for the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in return for commercial gain.

To see the letter in full click here or the link pasted above.

Never mind the question of public faith and confidence in its police service, only a complete reversal of this decision would go some way to restoring any remnants of confidence in Mr Brown at this stage.

Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

GORDON BROWN SHUNS BEREAVED VICTIMS FAMILIES

It seems somewhat of a contradiction that the Government plough so much funding into committees to encourage a "Victim Focused" strategy of policing, yet fail to deliver when it comes to supporting the tragic real victims, the families that experience bereavement through criminal acts. This includes families of police officers.

The work of the National Victims Association has been repeatedly spurned by Gordon Brown and his Government that are only too ready to pose for photographs and strike scandalous deals with Mr Gadaffi and his Libyan terrorist regime.

THE NVA

The National Victims Association provide a comprehensive advocacy, advice, counselling and support service to families bereaved through murder or manslaughter, and are widely regarded by many Government Ministers, statutory agencies, Police forces and Churches as the leading Charity specialising in this field of work. Their website provides details of their ground-breaking work, campaigns on behalf of bereaved families and the fight to obtain core funding from the Government.

BROKEN PROMISES FROM THE GOVERNMENT . . .
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker MP made public promises to murder victims' families which were subsequently broken. He assured his audience that he would both fund and attend a conference in 2009, then refused to do either.

After numerous complaints about him breaking his promises, Mr Coaker wrote to David Hines of NVA, astonishingly claiming an entirely different interpretation to that of the 100+ bereaved families present. His letter and the reply of David Hines are available and we invite anyone interested to draw their own conclusions.

The next day, following a letter to Mr Coaker from Tim Boswell MP in which Mr Coaker was asked about not delivering on his conference pledges, Mr Coaker wrote to Mr Boswell. His letter was utterly and knowingly untruthful, claiming as it did that the Government had provided substantial sums of money to fund NVA’s core activities. The truth is that since 1992, NVA has received not one penny in core funding from any Government.

What Gordon Brown says...
“Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.”
House of Commons, 25th Feb 2009

What Gordon Brown does...
The Prime Minister has, for over a year, resolutely refused to acknowledge multiple requests to meet several NVA parents bereaved through murder. In May 2008 and on behalf of the families of 38 homicide victims - including one triple murder and two serving police officers - NVA wrote to Prime Minister Gordon Brown requesting a meeting to discuss their plight. He refused. Read the National Victims Association first letter to Mr Brown here.

Government Funding : The Truth

Because of the Government’s consistent refusal to tell the truth about NVA funding, the charity have now published a letter sent to Justice Minister Maria Eagle MP in April 2009. We also detail below, every payment ever received from the Government.

Core Funding - Amounts Received

1999 : Nil
2000 : Nil
2001 : Nil
2002 : Nil
2003 : Nil
2004 : Nil
2005 : Nil
2006 : Nil
2007 : Nil
2008 : Nil
2009 : Nil

Conference Funding : Amounts Received

1999 : Nil
2000 : Nil
2001 : Nil
2002 : Nil
2003 : Nil
2004 : Nil
2005 : Nil
2006 : Nil
2007 : Received £10,000 (50% of total costs)
2008 : Received £10,000 (50% of total costs)
2009 : Cancelled due to lack of funding

Project Funding : Amounts Received

2007 Project Costs £48,000, Received £25,000, Shortfall £23,000
2009 Project Costs £48,725, Received £30,985, Shortfall £17,740
2009/10 Project Costs £73,000

Yet another example of this Governments true motivation.

This is political spin at it most abhorrent, where tragic families most in need of compassion and support are denied assistance, where justice for murdered police officers is traded for commercial gain, and where the words "Victim Focus" only count for something if they can be used to political advantage.

Shame on you Mr Brown.