Blog of the Blogs

So, to cap it all off...

A new boy blogger, The Special Special spoke briefly on the subject of SOCAP (Serious Organised Crime and Police or something - I forget, I haven't had any training). I was actually surprised that he seems to be pretty much the first UK police based blog to mention it. From 1/1/2006, police powers have changed, as have a few other pegal things, such as swearing out warrants etc. The changes are:

Before 1/1/2006: Police could only arrest you for certain offences, deemed 'arrestable offences', and a couple of other offences for a couple of other reasons. Suffice to say, if you dropped some litter on the floor and refused to pick it up, you (probably) wouldn't find yourself down the station - you could still be summonsed to court, but there was no actual power of arrest*. If you did something naughty enough to be arrested, the police would have to tell you: that you were under arrest (even if it was obvious), what you were under arrest for, and caution you.

After 1/1/2006: Police now have the power to arrest for ANY offence, as long as they can justify the arrest under certain criteria. I won't bore you with the list of criteria, but basically, as with a lot of things in law, you can pretty much make one of the criteria fit if you want it to, so effectively police can now arrest for anything. If they do arrest you, they have to tell you that you are under arrest (even if its obvious), what you are under arrest for, WHY ITS NECESSARY TO ARREST YOU, and caution you.

Its a fairly large change. So then its amazing how many forces seemed to have completely failed to provide any training, let alone decent training to their troops before 1/1/2006! People will obviously start talking about the cost of providing this training, but these changes have been on the cards for a while, and there was plenty of money to print all of those shiny leaflets to hand out around Christmas to the revellers, trying to persuade them not to get to drunk. You know, all of the leaflets which just got chucked on the floor because they were too drunk to read them.

I had a handover package today in which some males had been arrested. Every arrest statement on the package showed an illegal arrest, as they had not been informed why the arrest was necessary. I forget the exact figures, but you can pretty much be guaranteed a four figure sum if you sucessfully challenge the police re an unlawful arrest. I just wish the people in charge of us would let the budgets be handed out by a trained monkey. It could honestly only be an improvement on the way things are now.

In fact, thats probably it - the reason that no other police blog seems to have mentioned these power changes yet is because they haven't been told about them...


* Yes, I am aware of Section 25, but I'm also aware of how much custody sergeants hated it...

posted by A non mouse