Innocent until... (From Chorley Citizen)
When news happens, text CIT and your photos and videos to 80360. Or contact us by email or phone.
Send your letters to the Chorley Citizen by clicking HERE.
The editor welcomes letters from readers but reserves the right to amend or shorten them, or to refuse to print them. Anonymous letters cannot be accepted; names, full addresses and a contact
telephone number must be given as a sign of good faith, although only a portion of the address will be used. It is policy not to publish letters unsigned, unless there is a compelling reason for
confidentiality. Letters e-mailed to the newspaper must also include address and phone number.
Innocent until...
9:12am Tuesday 6th January 2009 in
Having read the article in the Citizen, December 17, it seems that once again a gimmick is being introduced to the hard pressed police which may suffer the same fate as that of ASBOs a few years ago.
If you can recall, under ASBO legislation teenagers in a Cumbria town were served a similar notice to that being proposed, which would have had the effect of banning all teenagers under 16 from the centre.
The father of a teenager obtained legal advice, and if you recall took the authority to court, where the judge ruled that the measure proposed breached "issues of fundamental human rights". It would seem therefore that whoever dreams up these ideas ignores the legal precedents set in a court of law.
From what I have read, the reasons reported included people arrested at 2am "have been spoken to at 10pm on the same night". The report then goes on "they may not have committed any offences yet, but looking at them, they are likely to cause problems later in the night."
So. People out for a night out may have been drinking, but in the words of the police "may not have committed any offences yet", but yet are still arrested? Are they given legal representation? Are they made aware of their rights under British law to the "presumption of innocence"?
If the police are arresting people, however they may look upon their behaviour, who have "not yet committed an offence", is this some new form of law?
Let’s arrest someone just in case they commit a crime, may sound good to some people, but under legal scrutiny will put the poor police under the microscope as to the age old "presumption of innocence", which, until this present government began to tinker with, had stood Britain in good stead for hundreds of years.
To arrest innocent people, just because you have been given a "yellow card" after a "talking to"...apparently twice in a night... does not mean that police are arresting guilty persons, and our police are not supposed to arrest innocent ones.
The follow up, if a person enters the "zone" within 48 hours, well has anyone thought "What if she/he works in the town centre?"
Perhaps this measure should be run past a barrister before being run out any further, as I am sure that excluding a person from a given area, breaches a number of fundamental rights, starting with the presumption of innocence.
Yellow cards should be limited to football and rugby matches, where the "Laws of the Game" are simpler. We should not be lumbering our hard-working police with measures which I assume will only mean still more paperwork.
How about a revolutionary idea? More bobbies on the beat, scrap the unnecessary paperwork. I remember a time when we had a laugh with policemen, perhaps we should bring back a sense of humour and ban the targets from policing?
J Hill, Chorley
More Letters stories
Most popular
Local Information
Enter your postcode, town or place name
Comment now! Register or sign in below.
Log in with us
Fields marked with * are mandatory.
Or
Log in with