Zero tolerance
Wednesday 30th December 2009, 3:00PM GMT.
The police will not be tolerating unruly behaviour on New Year's Eve
THE police have warned that they will not tolerate unruly behaviour during tomorrow night’s New Year celebrations.
The States police said that the Christmas period was ‘busy but steady’ and the warning has been issued ahead of New Year’s Eve as the force has a ‘commitment’ to keep Islanders safe.
There were a total of 33 people taken into custody for a variety of offences between Christmas Eve and yesterday.
Insp Lee Turner said that officers responded quickly to a large variety of calls and incidents and, where appropriate, people were arrested and dealt with firmly.
He says that as the New Year comes around, the force want to repeat the message that officers will deal robustly with people whose behaviour and actions cause upset and distress to others.
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Are we to assume it is okay to be unruly on the other 364 nights of the year?!?!
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wow, you mean the police may get out of their cars and vans and actually intervene for a change as opposed to sitting gawping at bother through their windows.
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Unless Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand has anything to do with this, we wouldn’t want to be too harsh on them now!!
So Insp Lee Turner, are you going to make a visible police presence, all in town of course, or will the police all be hiding around the corner waiting till the crime is committed – too late then.
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I’ve been around for over sixty years and still haven’t worked out what is so special about this particular night of the year.
Give the cold and the damp which usually prevails in this season I would expect most people to stay home and go to bed instead of being unruly.
No accounting for human behaviour!
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To C Le Verdic,methinks you are a bit of a party pooper and should get out more!And I am in my fifties!Wrap up warm tomorrow night and let the years pass you by.
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I love a man in uniform
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This is ridiculous – for goodness sake it should be zero tolerance every day of the year – get a grip beanies – I do not know what has happened to the Jersey States they seem to be following the nitwits of England (ie Brown/Blair) do not do anything to hurt anyone – we do not want badly behaved in Jersey and we should lead do not be pathetic – all I can say is please youngsters who know and love Jersey come up and become leaders of the world and keep out the misbehaved – down to parents who cannot parent!!!
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Nor should they, as far as I’m concerned any idiot who can’t drink soup and has a couple of sherberts and causes trouble should be locked up, named and disgraced and fined for the accommodation.
The verbal abuse the police have to tolerate is totally unnaceptable, by all means go out and enjoy the evening but don’t spoil it for anyone else.
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Thanks for the advice, Camelia.
As far as parties go, I’m spoiled. The sort of parties I enjoy would embarrass the News of the World and, wow, they are fun on a summer night.
Fortunately I spend all the daylight hours having so much fun that I am more than happy to get some sleep at night.
If I lived within the Antarctic Circle, or nearabouts, believe me I would be making the most of the daylight at new year!
I’d rather catch up on some reading at this time of year in this hemisphere.
Enjoy the most significant night of the year!
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moan, moan, moan, moan, moan. What a suprise, get a life everyone!
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I agree with some of the other comments on this site about the deployment of police officers on the streets. There should always be sufficient officers patrolling the island to deter and detect crime and disorder.
In the 80s and 90s you could rely on between 20 to 30 officers to be available to deal with any trouble that occurred between 6pm and 6am at week ends. That would include a police van with two officers aboard, plus at least four police cars, each containing two officers, then maybe two or three police motor cyclists and up to six officers patrolling on foot.
The officers on foot patrol would concentrate on monitoring the known trouble spots. Then on top of that you’d possibly have three or four C.I.D. officers and Drugs Squad officers, who could help out if things went haywire.
There is anecdotal evidence that I am unable to verify, that on a normal week end evening, you may find as few as six officers on the street…… if this is true, what has gone wrong? Whilst this mirrors what occurs in many towns in the U.K., it isn’t what Jersey should expect as there is also the Honorary Police. The States Police used to make more use of these guys and girls, who were more than keen to help out.
Whatever happens, let’s hope that everyone has a peaceful new year and that there is little or no trouble in the island……I hope perhaps against hope that the emergency services have a quiet night and that all islanders keep safe.
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Uniforms? Me too!
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What’s the bet that the majority of the fracas will be instigated by those already with a history and known to the Police. Just ban the usual scum from licenced premises and there won’t any need for such a heavy presence.
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A visible presence is a deterrent, and it’s one we need all the time.
However, I actually agree about fining people for taking up a police cell #8. The station has an electricity bill after all. People will think twice about their behaviour if hit hard in the pocket. I would also charge for medical attention required for injuries purely caused by drunkeness (drunken brawls etc).
I’m Scottish so Hogmanay is a big thing for me, but I can celebrate it without getting totally drunk, in fact, getting totally drunk would ruin it. It’s about having a laugh, a dance, being with loved ones etc etc not how p***ed you can get.
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#11
“There is anecdotal evidence that I am unable to verify, that on a normal week end evening, you may find as few as six officers on the street…… if this is true, what has gone wrong?”
A friend of mine who was seriously ill was sent a photograph album featuring all his colleagues back at the nick. All take sitting at desks looking at computers. Not a single shot a couple of rozzers leaning against a patrol car.
A cynic might say that it is easier to use electronics to catch an inoffensive mum’s boy looking at something, that someone far more evil than him has created with total impunity, on his computer than going out and tackling problems which are staring everyone else in the face.
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R B Bougourd # 15. Years ago there used to be a much maligned Sergeant in the ‘Paid Police’, who used to go around Police H.Q. at Rouge Bouillon, ensuring that officers would spend as much time as possible patrolling the streets.
Of course that was in the days when supervisors, were supervisors and not ‘team leaders’, ‘line managers’ or whatever they call them nowadays.
Remember there is a difference between managers and leaders….the Sergeant I refer to led by example and maybe these lessons need to be re-learned. Discipline definately seems to have gone down the toilet and it is up to the Acting Chief Officer and his Acting Deputy Chief Officer to earn their pay and sort things out.
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@ Blue Knight #11
“…There is anecdotal evidence that I am unable to verify, that on a normal week end evening, you may find as few as six officers on the street…”
I don’t know your source, but I heard a story from an officer furious that on one Sunday last year he had only two uniformed officers on duty.
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R B Bougourd # 15. I’ve just re-read your entry and would just like to comment that monitoring computers, “to catch an inoffensive mum’s boy looking at something….. on his computer…..” Well if that something is inappropriate, say indecent images of minors, then that is as important as important – if not more important – as dealing with public order.
Yes we want to stop violence on the streets in the island, but it is vital that every effort is made to detect potential child abusers as well, the so called inoffensive boy “looking at something.”
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Happy New Year Blue Knight.
I wasn’t talking about the relative gravity of the offences, I was talking about perceived priorities. The thread has partly been about whether the police are on the streets or not.
However, since you mention it, I suspect that in many of these internet porn cases the pathetic viewer is merely curious – at least initially, until his appetite is whetted by the skill of the pushers – and very unlikely to be motivated to stray further than his bedroom in search of gratification.
As I alluded, the principle offenders are the pedlars of the porn – and they appear to get away with it -(but you chose to leave that section out from your quote from my post).
They, surely, are the source of “indecent images of minors”.
Without the efforts of the suppliers and their internet facilitators, many of the curious loners would perhaps be looking at planes and boats and trains instead. Cripes, just imagine where that could lead, “it is vital that every effort is made to detect potential” hijackers and terrorists!
An interesting anomaly when compared with drugs where the extreme ends of the chain are mainly left alone and the ones in the middle get all the stick.
Although prioritising, ideally, shouldn’t come into it, I would imagine that dealing with public disorder might be a good starting point for instilling a sense of right and wrong and as a consequence people might think twice before embarking on other forms of malefaction.
Therefore I would say that discouraging public disorder could be no less important in the grand scale of things.
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I asked a Chief Inspector once about a perceived lack of police presence on the streets, he replied:
“Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there…!”
As for the two Kats, the world is divided into two types of people. The first think the Police are desperately attractive, the second that they should be avoided at all costs. I tend to sympathise with the latter. V.
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fine words from our boys in blue – threatening to do some actual work for a change.
we all know that they are more than happy to intervene – after the trouble is over.
and as for lack of bobbies on the beat – well, of course – how else would they be able to have so many patrol cars busy handing out so many speeding tickets?
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R B Bougourd # 19. Happy New Year to you as well….or ‘Blwyddyn Newydd Dda’ as they say where I currently live.
I apologise if I missed out some of your earlier submission. I agree that preventing public disorder should be high on the agenda of the operational planning of senior cops. However given the events of the latter part of the last decade, I am certain the police will also seek to put a lot of effort to catching people who are viewing child pornography.
As you will be aware, non police personnel could be employed on monitoring cyber space for the majority of crimes that occur on line. There is also the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in the U.K. and other organisations who will notify the States of Jersey Police of problems of this nature. This should obviate the necessity for too many cops being employed on this sort of task, making more officers available to patrol the streets to prevent and detect crime and public disorder.
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Blue Knight, the problem we face is that policing in the internet is near impossible in the conventional sense.
I want to be clear that distributing child pornography or terrorism related material is and should be a crime, however I do think we need to re-examine our attitudes towards what an individuals keeps and views privately on their computer.
For starters, removing restrictions on what can be stored on a person’s own computer would free up precious police resources or the money needed to hire civilians to perform the same task. Secondly, although the law can be applied admirably in some cases, I have grave reservations about the safeguards that have been put in and feel excessive monitoring may eventually spread from material which is objectionable, to material which may only be perceived by some as offensive.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, it brings the law into contempt to say that we are forbidden to do something which cannot realistically be detected. Not only can people mask their IP addresses through use of freely available tunneling software, they can also encrypt their hard drives beyong retrieval without the correct password.
I know we are veering a little off topic here but essentially we have to be practical about what we can and cannot realistically enforce and more importantly, we have to view any law or policy in light of the rights of individuals, not just the perceived good of society as a whole.
V.
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A policeman once told me that when he joined the ‘job’ he was told these words of advice from his tutor on the first day.
“Remember son, a good copper never gets wet.”
This was interpreted as advice to ensure that he always has an indoor job to do if the circumstances permit.
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V for Vendetta # 23. I can’t dispute your comments about the difficulties in detecting ‘cyber crime’, be that child pornography, identity fraud, or incitement for terrorism.
I am not that ‘au fait’ with I.T., but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to detect these offences, which may be indicators of more serious crimes. In a bygone age it was a police officer’s sworn duty to do all he / she could do to prevent and detect crime and disorder. I suspect the problems today are resultant of confusing leadership, or even a lack of direction from the higher echelons.
Next Bus? # 24. Yes I heard that advice too, but you can rest assured that that not every cop paid attention to that advice. The thing is rain also helps prevent disorder, as most rowdy people are just as anxious as anyone to keep under shelter.
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#25 “The thing is rain also helps prevent disorder, as most rowdy people are just as anxious as anyone to keep under shelter.”
Hence the well known saying around the nick: “P.C. Rain was on duty”.
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Blue Knight,
I appreciate what you’re saying about preventing and detecting crime but of course you and I can sit down and agree to make whatever we like illegal but considering we only have finite resources for policing and the framework of democracy and liberty it underpins, we have to make sure that we are dealing with the art of the possible.
I’m sure you all know enough about computers to know that criminals can cover their tracks pretty well digitally. There are prime examples of criminals being detected through interception of e-mails such as the terrorists who planned to smuggle liquid explosives disguised as carbonated drinks onto planes. There are also examples of people being jailed for possessing supposedly illegal poetry or schematics of public buildings where there is little or no corroborative evidence to suggest that the person involved had criminal intent.
Does this then excuse people for example who view child pornography within their own home? I agree that such people are sick but the question is really where the harm is done, given that these images are viewed after the fact and that people will still keep taking them regardless of whether that person downloads them or not.
To escape controversy I want to reiterate that the moral evil of doing such things is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the practicality of enforcing such bans at the expense of more serious matters and also whether doing so might infringe on an individual’s personal freedoms as any system we have in place to monitor people’s home computers for child porn for example could also be used to search for evidence of political dissent.
Also, what is lawful in one country may be illegal in another. For example, copying the film from a lawfully purchased DVD to watch on your own handheld iPod is illegal in the UK but not in Denmark. Viewing any Disney film is lawful over here but some are banned in Middle Eastern countries. With the advent of the internet however, such prohibitions are inherently impractical and only really serves to increase the desire to view such material(!)
The difference here is subtle but crucial. It’s the difference between a policeman giving you a quick frisk on the street outside a nightclub and armed officers battering down your door and searching your home without a warrant. It’s the difference between obtaining an order from a Judge to monitor telephone calls of a known criminal and eavesdropping on innocent people at random. Essentially it is what takes place in the privacy of your own home versus actions which affect other members of the public.
In fact, if you think of any type of serious electronic crime such as credit card fraud, trafficking in copyrighted material, organising terrorist action and so on, all of them require the use of an external system and communication with at least one other party.
Ultimately if we decide to outlaw people’s personal privacy then privacy itself will be a privilege only criminals enjoy. I think we can all agree that whatever system we have in place for Policing the public must be both comprehensive and effective. I would also add (and this ties in nicely with what we’ve been talking about viz China), that it cannot be a system which is open to abuse by infringing our right to privacy.
I have said a lot here and this is obviously fairly off topic so will leave it there, I wish there were a forum for Jersey so that we could all air our views on whatever subject we wish!
V.
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#25 + 26. That may be so but rain does not prevent other types of non-rowdy crime which the boys in blue, and not the weather, are being paid a very good salary to be out there to prevent.
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Blue knight and R B Bougourd.
Ref coppers on the beat
15 years ago a victim of an assault had to (if it was working)run to a phone box after the assault and dial 999. slow comms made the copper on the beat the best policy.
In the 21st century everybody has a mobile phone, they can even phone 999 when they have no credit left. The majority of incidents are reported this way and often the informant remains on the line to give blow by blow updates complete with actual as viewed (as opposed to the notoriously inaccurate remembered ones) descriptions of the perpetrators. This combined with CCTV has made the copper on the beat obsolete as a reactive force.
Its far quicker to have a patrol car (complete with all the relevant law enforcing equipment it carries respond to the weighbridge from Bath st than expect a beat copper to run from the Royal square complete with body armour and expect him to be refreshed enough to deal with public order offenders.
Coppers on the beat do still have a purpose as a feel good factor, but unless we have a pair on every street they will never match the effectiveness and bang for buck of strategically placed mobile patrols.
The nostalgia of a beat copper blowing his whistle and shouting “stop thief” should be viewed alongside how many assaults are dealt with quick enough by mobile patrols to stop them becoming grave and criminal ?
How would you split ST Helier up bitwise ?
To effect response times expected of today’s public I would suggest at least 15 beats (30 coppers)they would still need the support of mobile to transfer arrests to custody and act as relief for breaks. Far better and efficient to have 4 or 5 mobile patrols.
To those of you who say you never see a copper in town nowadays stand in a central town place, i.e., the corner of Bath ST Minden Place any Friday or Saturday night (Or have a pint in the Vic and look out the window)and time the period between patrol cars passing. Add to that a response time with blues and twos to anywhere in town and you will come up with a size beats need to be, I don’t think my guess of 15 will come anywhere close.
Everybody with a mobile phone is in effect a policeman on the beat, best put this public spiritedness to the best use than to put brave beat coppers in vulnerable inefficient positions.
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Buster Gut # 28. You won’t get any arguement from me on that subject. The police in Jersey are well paid and should provide a top quality service to reflect that.
I am certain there are many good officers in the States of Jersey Police, but there is little evidence of any leadership from the higher echelons, who are being paid a substantial amount of money for apparently being just administrators.
V for Vendetta, I really do have a limited knowledge of computers. Just enough to log on, use search engines, cut and paste, use word and send e-mails. I can’t understand why systems can be introduced to prevent pornography being sent via the internet.
I agree that what constitutes an offence in Jersey, may not be an offence in another part of the world and vice versa.
I don’t agree that viewing pornographic images of children could remotely be deemed to be innocent. I believe it is a possible indicator that a person has an interest in paedophilia – I stress, ‘possible indicator’. Even if it isn’t an indication of such tendencies, it is highly improbable that the subject of the image would have given their permission for the picture to be published on the internet. So when you speak of of personal privacy, this aspect should also be considered.
I agree it would be useful to have a discussion board, to air our views and hold debates on matters we feel passionate about. This should be monitored by our politicians, so they would have a better idea of how discontent people are about their policies. But then the J.E.P. provide an excellent medium for this on their website – hence our recent exchanges on the subject matter.
I would probably agree with you on many matters, but on other matters I think we will agree to disagree. Diversity of ideas makes life so much more interesting.
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Blue Knight,
Yes indeed, variety is the spice of life! I have just been informed about the forum called Planet Jersey but agree that this place is far more likely to be seen by our politicians.
I deliberately chose the example of child porn because it is controversial but obviously the same arguments can apply to viewing copyrighted material such as films on your computer.
I am sure that the majority of people who use computers are like yourself, capable of writing letters and checking their e-mail and wouldn’t know how to use their machine for unlawful purposes – ironically such people are actually the ones most vulnerable by detection to big brother.
You would think in the nature of things that if we can trace a phone call and even listen in on it, that we could tell what somebody was viewing on their computer. It has to do with the way information is sent from your computer to mine and vica versa. In layman’s terms it is broken down into small ‘packets’ of information and sent piecemeal over several different routes, only to be reassembled at the other end.
As such, even if you catch some of these ‘packets’ halfway, it is still very difficult to work out exactly what someone was receiving or sending with their computer, be it an e-mail from their family or the latest episode of Eastenders.
Obviously people who do download illicit material such as copyrighted films use computer programs deliberately designed to make it difficult to snoop on information.
As the crime is usually the actual downloading of material, even when suggestive intel is gathered, the Police would still have to seize the machine in question. Once they have the machine it can become a lot easier to see what the person has downloaded, even if they have deleted it. Once again though, people who wish to maintain their privacy can download freely available encryption software to protect their computer to it cannot be accessed by anyone.
More recently they have introduced the RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) in light of this which means that if asked a person must divulge their password to the Police or face up to two years in Prison – obviously it would be up to them whether they want to have their privacy breached or chance the alternative.
I’m pleased to say that our little island isn’t covered under this act though and long may it last. The government may claim the law exists to protect us solely from evils such as child porn but if it’s done at the expense of personal liberty, people like you who do not use the internet illegally, I for one want no part in it.
Considering how the Chinese government have tried to use internet monitoring in their country and seizure laws to silence dissenters, even those who support rival politicians within the same framework, it is all too easy to see how the system could be open to abuse.
Given the alternative, I would say that the risk of someone privately storing illegal films on their computer is a necessary evil – naturally you and others may well disagree and I’m very happy to listen to all that you say and do understand where you’re coming from.
V.
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#29 I would prefer to not get attacked than to have a brilliant response time when I do!
The response time won’t prevent an attack, a visible police presence will.
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Leah Holmes # 32. Leah is spot on, prevention is better than detection. The presence of numerous coppers on patrol would make most people think twice about being disorderly.
Unfortunately CCTV can’t always assist with identification. If cops are out on patrol, their response times to assist someone under attack, or being threatened, is likely to be that much quicker.
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