Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

This needs protection (just in case the police state gets bigger and more efficient)

So you are having a bad time with some anti social criminal types who are ruining your neighbourhood, now and then things get so bad that you have to telephone the police, you may have been a victim who suffered some criminal damage, you may have been assaulted, or you may just have been doing your civil duty like this lady and this gentleman. You end up, as a result facing the threat of arrest, charges, trial, and possibly prison!

You read so many stories like these nowadays and sometimes they dent your faith in the forces of law and order, and stories like this don’t help either! (When journalists are investigated for investigating the police, it’s a bad sign.) Going back to the incident with the broken car window and the anti social behaviour from a neighbour, I’ve been invited to fill in a questionnaire for South Tyneside Council’s Anti-Social Behaviour Unit about their performance and help at the time. I don’t think I’ll bother, I doubt they will find the time to read it, I’m still waiting to meet my neighbourhood policing team (just one of a series of failed commitments.)

Anyway, back to the subject matter, talking to the police. If you are reporting a crime or asking for assistance, or helping by way of being a witness, then you might get lucky and feel satisfied with the results, or on the other hand if you try to be just that little bit more helpful you may get unlucky as the stories above illustrate. Most policemen and women who I have met in and around South Shields are thoroughly decent people, nice, courteous, helpful, and would make great drinking buddies. However, they operate in a confused and difficult environment subject to far too many KPI’s and targets and now and then the temptation must be there to tick a few more boxes, make that arrest, press a charge etc. (but only when there is sufficient time to deal with the mounting paperwork during the same shift.)

And here comes the rub, at time such as these, when you are the subject of the inquiry (instead of the real bad guys) then you need to “shut your mouth”, remain silent! In this country we have the right to remain silent, and remember anything that you say may be written down and used as evidence against you. Just remember this in case some apparatchik in NuLabour’s ranks decides to take this right away too!

Here’s a great video of a US Law Professor and a policeman lecturing on the Fifth Amendment and the right to remain silent, it’s around 45 minutes long but worth sticking with, and at times very entertaining. OK. so we don’t have a written constitution in the UK, our laws and statutes have evolved over centuries, and nowadays many of the rights that we have are written down in EU Conventions that supercede British Law, but we still have the right NOT to incriminate ourselves.

Enjoy this video.

Hat Tip – Cllr. Philip Thomas

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