Category Archives: crime

A little local trouble.

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Interesting events up in Middlesbrough, where it appears someone has taken a dislike to some of the local councillors:

A Middlesbrough councillor whose car was set alight by arsonists has hit back at those responsible.

In attacks carried out over the Jubilee weekend, two councillors’ cars were torched in the early hours.

Hmmmmm.

Mr Cole, who chairs the authority’s planning committee, said his wife woke up when she heard a car alarm and saw flames through the curtains.

Most curious.

The council is to hold a special meeting on 20 June to discuss other instances of harassment and intimidation.

Other instances? Just what is going on here? What was the result of the meeting?

Councillors in Middlesbrough are being given police protection after cars were petrol-bombed by “political obsessives”, mayor Ray Mallon has said.

Mr Mallon said the spate of attacks was a “sinister” hate campaign to drive out certain Labour representatives.

Why Labour? Just what is going on here? It seems unlikely to me that someone, even a nutter, isn’t going to do this without some sort of catalyst.

Other councillors around Middlesbrough have reported damage to their homes and a car was set alight earlier this year.

So it’s not just Labour then.

Mr Mallon believes radical “community-type activists” angry at the town’s social and economic problems are behind the attacks.

What the bloody hell is a “community-type activist”? Is there perhaps an ethnic profile we’re not being told about? That’s just a guess, the statement is devoid of any sense.

Independent councillor Joan McTigue, who has endured several years of vandalism to her property and cars, said: “If we start crying about it, these people have won. We should get the message out them ‘to Hell with you’, we are going to continue doing our job.

So they’ve been going after the indies as well. This gets odder and odder.

Council chairman Stephen Bloundele said he believed that a small number of individuals and organisations were behind the incidents.

He added: “Members must be free to make difficult decisions which are for the benefit of all of the people of Middlesbrough without having to look over their shoulders in fear.”

Whoa, that last statement is telling, obviously the council has made a decision that has really pissed someone off. I’d love to know what it is. I would never condone damaging anyone’s property, but that line has something chilling about it, when people talk about ‘difficult decisions’ and ‘benefit of all the people’ then there’s something afoot. If there’s one thing that is true of politics it is that no decision can ever benefit all people, all policies will result in a winner and loser.

The thing is, try as I might I can’t find anything controversial enough to attract this sort of response.

There’s more to this than meets the eye.

Well you shouldn’t have bloody done it then, should you?

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Here’s a newsflash. If you break the law, you run the risk of being punished. Granted many will think that the punishment is too lenient, but that’s for another day. The formula is simple: Break the law + get caught = punishment. The only person to blame for that is the person that broke the law.

So. . .

A Fife pensioner who killed the Scottish Parliament’s falcon “guard” has been ordered by a sheriff to pay the cost of training a new one.

Andrew Hutchison, 67, a pigeon fancier, was found guilty of killing the bird, called Naph, with an air rifle.

He was fined £350, and ordered to pay £1,500 compensation to Naph’s owners, NBC Bird and Pest Solutions.

Seems reasonable to me.

Mitigation:

He originally denied knowing anything about the falcon, but later claimed to have killed Naph because he was attacking one of Hutchison’s racing doves.

Right, so the best course of action would have been to have waited for the owners of said falcon to turn up, or to have traced them, and to have pressed your own suit for damages against them. What you don’t do is shoot the bird and then try to hide the evidence. You could even have perhaps highlighted the incident yourself and presented the carcass of the dead falcon on the basis of reasonable behaviour to safeguard your property.

The woe:

Hutchison said: “I’m a pensioner. The fine and compensation is going to cripple me.”

Well then you shouldn’t have bloody done it then, should you? Should we just say ‘oh well, let’s forget it then, shall we?’

What is it you’re saying?

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I’ve heard or seen this story from a number of different outlets today, everyone has covered it from the same angle, and there’s been a nagging in my mind about it. This nagging has finally got my attention and I’ve figured out what it is.

Firstly the story:

People who fail to pay their fine after they have been convicted for criminal behaviour could lose up to £25 a week in benefits, the government has said.

PM David Cameron said the measure was being introduced as a deterrent, adding that the current system was “too soft”.

At the moment, people who fail to pay a fine on time can have £5 a week deducted from their benefit payments.

So what’s the supposition here? The unspoken message is that people who commit crimes that result in fines are all on benefits. If you read the articles over at Julia’s place, you’d get the feeling that this is true, and that every crime short of murder results in a fine and little else beyond threats of ‘next time’ from the Judge, a threat that is never followed up.

The quote from Labour isn’t exactly enlightening, although it does at least recognise that crime and benefits aren’t in an entirely exclusive relationship:

Labour said it supported moves to make people “pay for their crimes whether they’re on benefits or not”.

Well, there’s a novel approach. Do we really live an age where a political party feels the need to say that all criminals should pay for their crimes? Isn’t that a given?

Or is the real problem from the next line?

The increase will start in 2013 when the Universal Credit comes into force.

Universal credit? That is, credit that everyone receives? Isn’t it that sort of thinking that led to the banking crisis?

Oh, not that sort of credit. How can it be a credit then? It is taken from you, then given back, and they call it a credit? That’s a remarkable display of double think, because to me the fact that it is a credit suggests that you have to give it back. Taken, given back, only to be taken again. Probably in fines, if this story is anything to go by.

It seems to be that this outright bribery of ‘benefits’, whereby the State takes your money and then makes you feel grateful by giving some back when they could have just left it in your pocket in the first place, results in a culture whereby the majority of society are on one ‘benefit’ or another. Give a ‘benefit’ get a vote.

This whole system is arse about face and completely insane.

I also find myself wondering how many of these crimes the man on the Clapham omnibus would think deserving of a custodial sentence of some sort, and how many of these would be better described as ‘crimes’ of the sort of leaving a bin lid open or saying boo to a goose and so forth that have proliferated over the last decade or so.

I was much taken with this quote yesterday over at Witterings from Witney:

“Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly “reforming” their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they’re always busy “reforming” is an implicit admission that they didn’t get it right the first 50 times.”
Lawrence W. Reed, economist, in The Freeman

Here it seems to be the same, the more they interfere, the more they have to interfere to undo the mess they made last time. The hand of the State is a law of diminishing returns.

I won’t even start on the concept of those paying fines from ‘benefits’ aren’t paying anything – others in society are paying for the individual’s crime, and if the pattern is followed to its logical conclusion then when someone wholly reliant on ‘benefits’ is sent down for murder, then what should actually happen is that a random person is swept up from the street to serve the sentence. Sounds like Leg-Iron’s dystopia to me. . .

Compare and contrast.

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From the Telegraph, 8th August 2011:

Twitter users could face arrest for inciting violence in the wake of two nights of unrest in London, a Scotland Yard chief warned today.

Some messages posted on Twitter surrounding the riots had been “really inflammatory, inaccurate”, Mr Kavanagh added.

When asked by reporters whether officers would consider arresting tweeters in relation to incitement to violence, Mr Kavanagh said “absolutely”.

He later added: “That investigation is already under way and that is exactly the sort of thing we are looking at.”

From the BBC this morning:

The head of Britain’s biggest union has urged a campaign of strikes and civil disobedience to fight government cuts.

Speaking on the eve of the TUC congress, Unite leader Len McCluskey said no form of protest should be ruled out including “direct action”.

 

I’m assuming, Mr. McCluskey, that when you call for direct action and no form of protest being ruled out, you’re condoning, perhaps even inciting, crowds of people running up and down streets smashing up property and burning buildings?

No doubt it is fine for you to call for such action though, because for some reason in your simple, addled, little Socialist brain, you seem to think that you think every action you carry out is fine. Hell, if the history of Socialism has taught me one thing it is that some loss of innocent life is acceptable, because your ends are always justified, regardless of anyone else’s feelings or beliefs.

How about a cup of shut the fuck up, you vile, ugly, big nosed, fat little trot?

All getting a bit silly now.

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I wrote yesterday about the bovver in Tottenham on Saturday night. Last night we saw sporadic events in Brixton, Enfield and other spots. This evening I’m seeing pictures on Sky News from Hackney and Lewisham where it is kicking off.

What is surprising me is the simplicity with which the media are approaching these events. I do not see a connection between the events in Tottenham, where I maintain that a small number who were angry about the shooting were joined by a larger number who were just generally pissed off.

What we have seen yesterday and will no doubt see this evening is a different beast altogether. These are not demonstrations (whether I agree with the focus of the demo or not is irrelevant) but wilful acts of vandalism and looting. A tear-up as the result of emotions running high is one thing, pre-meditated destruction of property is another.

As I drove home from work, there was a discussion on the radio about the causes of this. Both the BBC and Sky have referred to these morons as ‘anarchists’, I’m not sure if they’ve sat down with them and discussed their feelings about the State and how it infringes on the private individual. I get the feeling it is just an easy tag to hang on people.

This has been described as violence by social network. Evil social networking. Before twitter and facebook it was impossible to sort this sort of thing out. Except when it’s happened in the past it was caused by mobile phones and the dangers of text messaging. Before then it would have been people talking to each other in the street and in the pub. Let’s not kid ourselves, this has nothing to do social networking, don’t be lazy. People have always communicated.

‘What could have caused this?’ comes the plaintive cry. Referring once again to yesterday’s posting, I believe that people are just generally angry and frustrated. This ain’t it. It has been suggested that it is due to the cuts. Don’t be bloody silly, it’s nothing to do with that either. It isn’t down to racial tension.

What has caused this is a systematic removal of people’s ability to think and act for themselves. We’ve had twenty years of people being told that they are not responsible for themselves, that the State will look after them, guide them on every step of their journey through life. We’ve had twenty years of the State providing, telling people they are entitled, telling people that when they do bad things it isn’t their fault. We’ve had twenty years of the judicial system, or more accurately the politicians behind it, failing to deal with recidivist offenders put before them, handing them ridiculously short sentences in a prison system which sees prisoners getting more rights and better conditions than those staying in NHS hospitals, or worse still, no prison sentence at all.

These people have been told they can do what they want almost entirely without consequence. They see the actions of the anti-cuts movement, of UAF and the EDL, of the people in Tottenham and they see a police force which seems helpless to intervene, a police force that will arrest people for singing ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ yet that will not move in to stop violent and criminal damage for fear of upsetting the left wing hand wringers, and a police force that has its hands tied by the judicial system. They think to themselves, ‘looks like a laugh, why not?’

The word being trotted out time and again is ‘community’ the community is angry, upset, fearful about and of these disturbances. Yet the powers that be demonstrate that the community doesn’t matter, it is ignored, insulted and destroyed, by successive Labour, Conservative and Coalition governments.

There’s been a spokesman from Lewisham council saying that it is the school holidays and there are many young people with not much to do. Well, who’s fault is that? I used to make my own fun, never stretched to setting light to a police car or a shop though. Once again, it is the people like the fabled ‘community outreach officers’ who have told people that they cannot, indeed must not, do anything unless it has been organised by some agency; controlled, regulated, register checked.

So, we’ve a generation of people who have been told that nothing is their fault, not to think for themselves, that their actions have no consequences, that they have no responsibilities, that they can have and do what they want, for free.

Your monster has just escaped. Scary, isn’t it?

The Hempen Rope

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As alluded to in an earlier post, The Sun has a campaign running to re-introduce capital punishment. Anna has had a couple of articles about the same subject over at her place. I had starting composing a comment before I realised it was going to go on a bit, so decided to express myself here instead.

There are several points as to why I oppose the death penalty completely;

Firstly – If someone were to kill someone close to me, and I went and killed them, I would be, quite rightly, charged with murder. I see no difference between me going and killing someone and the State going and killing someone on my behalf.

Secondly – Taking the above into account, I see no distinction between the two acts, yet if I were to do it, it would be described as revenge. If the State did it, it would be described as ‘justice’. How is it just? It is not justice, it is revenge. Revenge carried out in the heat of the moment is bad enough, but revenge as a dish served cold? That really is chilling.

Thirdly – The signal it sends out is clear; you belong to the State. If the State has the power to decide to let you live or to condemn you to death then it takes the ultimate in power over our lives. Oh, sure there’ll be conditions and qualifiers and what-not, but things change. Remember the free trade block we joined? That’s all it was. How’s it looking now? No. I belong to me and no-one, no-one at all has the authority to say if I deserve to live or die.

Fourthly – It simply doesn’t act as a deterrent. It just doesn’t. Figures from the US show that the number of people on death row in 1968 was 517. In 2010 it was 3242. Granted, you are most unlikely to be executed in the year of your conviction, but even so, if the death penalty was effective we should still expect to see that 1968 figure decreasing, or at least holding steady.

Fifthly – How does locking someone up for 15 years in prison and then killing them constitute justice? If someone’s been sentenced to death, then take them down and kill them. Keeping them hanging around for a decade is expensive, and I would submit, perverse. What are we doing? Teaching them a lesson? Surely the point of doing that is so the offender can see the error of their ways and not do it again of their own free will. Teaching them the lesson and then killing them is a lesson wasted.

Sixthly – For what offences will the death sentence be handed down? The Sun goes for killing children and policemen. Well, what about little old ladies, what about terrorist attacks? How about planning terrorist attacks? Drug smuggling? Human trafficking? Rape? Arson? How about a crime of passion? Showing dissent and disrespect to the State? Eco-crimes? Being a pain in the arse? As I said earlier, that which is implemented today can look very different tomorrow. Once you give them that tool, they will use it and they will expand its use.

Seventhly – What when (and it will be when, not if) you get it wrong? Is it really acceptable to kill an innocent person? This all comes about because an innocent person has been killed, does killing an innocent person in return make it OK? Will ‘sorry’, a posthumous pardon and a compo payout to the relatives make that better? The phrase ‘for the greater good’ looms large in my mind here – that is a phrase which means individuals are worthless, and that if a mistake is made it is regretful but irrelevant, it is for some greater good.

Finally – What method do we use? Stoning? Oh, no, that’s too barbaric. No, no, you want a method that does the job, but doesn’t actually make someone feel like they’re killing another person, even though that’s what they’re doing. It means the executioner will not get upset and add a veneer of respectability to proceedings. Firing squad? Too military? Oh, OK. Guillotine? Too French. Hanging? A bit old school. Electric chair? Yeah, well, I’ve seen The Green Mile. Lethal injection, then. Yes, that’s nice and clinical, isn’t it? Again, I don’t know which is more horrific, the blind fury of a public stoning, or the cold calculated practice of tying someone to a table and injecting them with a cocktail of fatal chemicals.

If we absolutely have to have the death penalty, then I suggest it must be at the unanimous request of the immediate family of the victim and with the agreement of both judge and jury in unanimity. The entire immediate family of the victim (including children) and the entire jury and judge must be present at the execution, and the condemned must be killed by way of beheading, and the beheading must be carried out by a member of the family of the victim no more than three years from the date of conviction or dismissal of appeal. The family member will be obliged to take breakfast at the same table with the condemned on the appointed day. The remaining family, judge and jury must stand face on to the condemned as the sentence is carried out, in the same room, and at a distance of no more than four metres.

There will be no repeat performances, and any failure to meet the conditions above will lead to an automatic commuting to a life sentence.

Update

The good Cap’n has similar thoughts.

Compare and contrast.

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An internet blogger has been jailed for 12 years after admitting soliciting the murder of MPs who had voted in favour of the Iraq War.

Now, he’s a very naughty boy. I may occasionally talk about lamposts and piano wire, but I don’t for one moment counsel such a course of action. You can’t go round inciting people to murder and expect to be given a free pass. And even accounting for:

Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, 23, from Wolverhampton, was also sentenced for other terrorism offences.

We have to assume that as these ‘other terrorism offences’ aren’t disclosed in the article that they aren’t sufficiently sexy or, dare I say it, explosive to bother about.

12 years does seem a little steep, mind. Trying to get someone to off an MP is one thing, actually making them do it is another. Given that no-one is in the dock on a charge of conspiracy to do so, or on a charge of actually doing it suggests he wasn’t that effective.

In what has been a bad news day for my fair city of Canterbury, I cannot help compare the sentence handed down to Ahmad with the sentence handed down to our former Sheriff:

A former Sheriff of Canterbury has been sent to prison today after admitting indecently assaulting a vulnerable youngster and downloading child pornography.

It turns out he’s got a young girl to undress and sit on his lap, he also seems to have, somehow, managed to get himself into a situation where he’s been able to grope a woman under her clothing, and also whilst she was in bed. I’m assuming he wasn’t in the bed at the time. Then there’s the 11 charges of indecent images, including sado-masochism being visited upon one poor child that he’s also been convicted of.

Fisher [. . .] was jailed for a total of 15 months and banned him from working with children for 10 years.

Really? 15 months?

I’m not going to blame the judge as she has a framework she has to work from, but it doesn’t seem right to me that writing about killing MPs is in the eyes of the courts almost ten times as worse as actually engaging in a physical act of sexual abuse against a child.

Something is very wrong here.

And another one . . .

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Isn’t it weird that when Ken Clarke starts banging on about the right to defend oneself that we now start getting cases that fit the bill?

An elderly shopkeeper has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a armed raider was killed in a botched robbery and a second left in hospital.

Attempted? He’s dead mate. Anyway, I thought this was a defensible course of action now. Scrub that, I thought this had always been a defensible course of action.

Cecil Coley, 72, is in police custody today after dramatic scenes at a florists on Shewsbury Street, Old Trafford, at 9.40pm last night.

 

It is understood the shop was closed at the time and Mr Coley, a well-known Jamaican man known as ‘Papa’ in the community, was playing dominoes with a friend inside when two men armed with. . .

(wait for it)

. . . guns broke in.

 

A struggle followed which saw one of the raiders, a 30-year-old man, fatally stabbed in the chest.

So, two strapping young blokes, tooled up with shooters (as I believe the criminal fraternity phrase it) burst in on an OAP and get stabbed? You’re not supposed to lose when you bring a gun to a knife fight. He probably died of shame.

A second man, who was wearing a mask, was seen running away from the premises.

 

It is thought he went to Manchester Royal Infirmary later where he was treated for a stab wound.

Fair play Papa, is what I say.

A police source said: “Early indications are that this is a robbery that has gone wrong.”

No shit.

The shopkeeper was described by residents as a regular church-goer who had run the shop as a fancy goods store for 40 years before handing it over to his children and retiring six weeks ago. They have been running it as a florists.

 

Local resident Leon Richards, 33, said: “He’s a proud man, very proud of his family. He used to go to the local church regularly and was a real part of the community.

 

“He is a quiet man, but a good man. He never caused anyone any trouble, he just got on with his business.”

Excellent, so when he’s described as being ‘well known’ in the community that isn’t code for him being some Yardie honcho. Well known would appear to mean a decent, respected and admired gentleman.

Perhaps if we get three of four more of these cases, and if, as is right, no action is taken against those who are defending themselves, the message may get back to the sort of sub-human scum who think it is OK to rob 72 year old shopkeepers at gunpoint. The message? Your turn to be scared.

Free Cecil Coley. Free the Manchester One.

 

Well, shucks.

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Police said the stabbed man was found on Hospital Road and died a short time later.


Ch Supt Kevin Mulligan, who heads Greater Manchester Police’s Salford division, said the man suffered “at least one stab wound” during an altercation in the house involving at least one person from the address and four people breaking in.


He said he could not comment further on the injuries or the cause of death until a post-mortem examination had been carried out.

Jesus, so four people break into someone’s house and the householder gets stabbed to death?

Well, no, not exactly.

A burglar has been stabbed to death and the householder arrested on suspicion of murder after an attempted break-in at his house in Salford.

Four masked men attempted to get into a house in Ethel Avenue before midnight on Wednesday.

So, four masked men broke into someone’s house and one of the intruders got stabbed and died. Well, them’s the breaks, the stabber was probably scared out of his wits. The fact that there was only one stabee and that he only got stuck once would suggest that this was not a frenzied, rage fuelled attack of revenge. Preditcably:

Peter Flanagan, 57, son Neil, 29, and his son’s girlfriend are being held.


The men and the 21-year-old woman are being questioned on suspicion of murder.

I cannot and do not support the death penalty, but if you and three mates mask up and break into someone’s house, all bets are off. This, from the evidence at hand, seems to be a clear case of defense of property and life. In my opinion, a murder charge is not appropriate.

It is possible that the CPS will go for manslaughter, but even though the defender may end up escaping a jail term, he or she will still be stuck with a criminal record that could effect their life for the rest of their days. It seems unfair in the extreme to me.

Meanwhile over the pond:

No problem for law enforcement over there, and quite right too, you cannot cross someone’s threshold and expect to be protected. IF the homeowner is lying in wait with the plan to kill the intruder, that is different, but in my opinion in a heat of the moment reaction there should be only one outcome. No charge.

Just to show there’s no honour amongst thieves:

The stabbed man, 26, is believed to have been carried away by the other intruders as they fled, before being dumped in a street in Pendlebury.

Classy.

More of this please.

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The best way of learning is through one’s mistakes.

So when Saeed Khan, the man who, as far as I can make out, runs the only remaining branch of the Post Office in Kent not situated in a bastard WHSmith, was robbed in his shop, he considered the chain of events and wasn’t about to make the mistake of being caught unprepared again.

So. . .

Saeed Khan, 62, was alone in his shop in Byron Road when a man armed with a knife entered and demanded money. 

Mr Khan said he had kept a hammer near the counter to protect himself after his shop was targeted last month.

He said: “I hit him on his arm, but then he tried to come closer so I raised the hammer again and that’s when he ran off.

Fair play to Mr Khan. Mr Khan sounds like just the sort of chap we need more of in this country.

However. . .

Mr Khan, who has run the post office for 27 years, said he believed the same man was involved on both occasions.

So it would appear our robber has now learned a valuable lesson; don’t try and turn over Saeed Khan’s Post Office, because he’ll hit you with a hammer, and that bloody hurts.

The outcome? Well, this may be a little shocking.

You think I’m going to tell you he’s been nicked for twatting this cretin with a hammer, don’t you? Well, he hasn’t been. I doubt this is due to an outbreak of common sense at Gillingham CID, it is probably down to the fact that the robber has not come forward to make a complaint.

No, the outcome is actually quite predictable.

Det Insp Ann Lisseman said: “(Mr Khan) was very brave but I wouldn’t advise that people make use of weapons nearby or try and physically challenge offenders.” 

Now, if we had country where the Police (and I attach no blame to the rank and file here) actually arrived when asked and had a better than average chance of catching the little scrote, where protestations about being hit with a hammer whilst engaging in the act of robbing a Post Office being a flagrant breach of one’s human rights would be dismissed with suitable alacrity, and where the judiciary had the latitude and disposition to lock these arseholes up in a proper prison for a term longer than the 50% handed down, then this would probably be decent advice.

My advice would be the opposite. Keep a hammer near, and if someone tries to turn your gaff over, go at him with said hammer like a kid with ADHD at a fairground whack-a-mole stall. Once someone tries to harm you and/or yours or to take you and yours stuff, all bets are off. You get what you deserve.

Mr. Khan, I salute you.

As an aside, and to highlight the wonderful stupidity of some of the criminals within our midst, a couple with whom Mrs. Wolfers and I are friendly with had cause to have a late supper at one of my city’s numerous Indian restaurants recently. They were surprised when the old bill arrived during an unremarkable dinner service and thoroughly enjoyed the sideshow as two men sat a table nearby were arrested following the inspection of CCTV footage shot within the restaurant earlier that evening.

It transpired that the two gentlemen in question had entered the restaurant earlier that evening and had swiped the tips jar sat on the counter. No doubt having exchanged the contents of the jar for some drinks in one of the city’s fine hostelries, they felt a little peckish and decided to go for a curry.

In the same place they’d turned over earlier, where they were instantly recognised by the staff.

/facepalm.