Welcome to July 7th People's Independent Inquiry Forum. We hope you enjoy your visit.
You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.
Group: J7 Forum Team
Posts: 6,051
Member No.: 235
Joined: 6-November 06
QUOTE
Latest: Police to get power to pre-empt riots with curfews Richard Ford Home Correspondent October 13 2011 12:33PM
Police would be given powers to clear the streets and impose curfews in areas where they fear public disorder under proposals outlined today by the Home Office. The new powers would allow an officer of the rank of superintendent or above to declare a curfew over a limited district for a limited period of time. But ministers have stopped short of making it a criminal offence to breach the curfew by being outdoors. Instead a consultation paper on public order published today said that it will be an offence to ignore a subsequent warning by police to leave the area. The paper also questions whether it should remain an offence to use insulting words likely to cause alarm or distress after concerns that the current law is being used to undermine free speech. It also proposes giving the police wider powers to order people to remove masks and other face coverings. James Brokenshire, Home Office minister for crime and security, said: “It is essential the police have all appropriate powers at their disposal to
Thursday, 13 October 2011 Theresa May is hosting an international conference on gangs at the Home Office
Police could be given more powers to demand face coverings are removed and to impose curfews to deal with crowds in the wake of this summer's riots under plans being considered by the Home Secretary.
Theresa May will host an international conference on gangs at the Home Office as she launches a consultation to ensure police have the powers they need to tackle disturbances.
The consultation will also consider whether it should remain an offence to use insulting words amid concerns from some MPs that the law is being used by activist groups and over-zealous police officers to undermine free speech.
The proposals to expand the powers available to police were first outlined by the Prime Minister after he recalled Parliament at the height of the riots in August.
David Cameron said he had asked police if they needed any new powers and told MPs: "Specifically on face masks - currently they can only remove these in a specific geographical location and for a limited time.
"So I can announce that we are going to give the police the discretion to remove face coverings under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity. And on dealing with crowds, we are also looking at the use of existing dispersal powers and whether any wider power of curfew is necessary."
Mrs May is understood to have spoken to a series of forces about the powers and the consultation will seek the public's views to ensure that traditional British freedoms are not being compromised by the proposals.
It comes as police representatives and academics from the United States, Jamaica, France, Spain, Sweden and Austria gather at the Home Office for a private meeting at the start of what is hoped will become a lasting international network of experts on gangs.
Isabella Sankey, director of policy for civil rights group Liberty, said: "After years of 'something must be done' legislation, the police are hardly short of coercive powers. We can be stopped, searched and dispersed within an inch of our lives and there should be more questioning of the logic of further measures.
"In a riot situation, wouldn't you rather arrest someone for violence than for failing to remove his mask, arrest him for looting rather than walking down the road after dark?"
Home secretary wants curfews to create 'no-go' areas during serious outbreaks of disorder
Alan Travis, home affairs editor guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 October 2011 07.18 BST
The home secretary, Theresa May, is to press ahead with seeking public order curfew powers for the police to create "no-go" areas during riots.
The powers are expected to include immediate curfews over large areas to tackle the kind of fast-moving disturbances that swept across many of England's major cities in August. May also wants to extend existing powers to impose curfews on individuals.
The launch of official consultation on wider public order powers is being announced as May and Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, host an international forum on gangs with experts from six countries. They include Bill Bratton, the retired US police chief.
The consultation paper includes stronger police powers to order protesters and rioters to remove face masks. The home secretary first suggested this in March after the anti-cuts march in London in which 56 police officers were injured.
May said in August that existing dispersal orders, which have to be applied for in advance, were no longer adequate to meet the fast-moving nature of modern public disorder. Human rights groups predicted that blanket curfews would prove ineffective in a riot situation and criticised the idea as a "headline-grabbing initiative".
The consultation will look at repealing section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act, which outlaws "insulting words or behaviour". There are claims the provision hampers free speech and it has been the subject of a strong Liberal Democrat campaign. Parliament's joint human rights committee has called for the removal of the word "insulting" to raise the threshold of the offence, citing a case in which a teenager was arrested for calling Scientology a cult.
Those supporting the reform say it would still cover threatening, abusive or disorderly behavour. Evangelical Christians have complained about the use of section 5 to fine street preachers who proclaim that homosexuality is sinful or immoral.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said police budget cuts would undermine any changes. She said: "The home secretary should come clean with the British people – the truth is she is cutting the police we need to tackle crime and disorder and making it harder, not easier, for the police to do their job.
"The police need strong powers to deal with disorder, but this consultation won't make any difference if there aren't enough police. As long as she is cutting 16,000 police officers and weakening police powers on DNA and CCTV, the reality is she is undermining the fight against crime and disorder."
The Home Office forum on tackling gangs is one of the initiatives announced by David Cameron immediately following the riots. The victims' commissioner, Louise Casey, has been named as head of the government's unit to tackle 120,000 of the most troubled families as one of the measures. This week Bratton denied he had been appointed by Cameron as his "gangs tsar" and said he was acting only as a consultant to the Home Office conference.
David Cameron appoints Louise Casey to lead government response to riots
Prime minister announces that Tony Blair's former 'respect tsar' will lead unit to oversee issues raised by summer riots
Patrick Wintour, political editor guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 October 2011 12.16 BST
Tony Blair's former "respect tsar" Louise Casey, one of Britain's least conventional civil servants, has been appointed to head the government's broad response to the riots, David Cameron has announced.
It is an extraordinary return to the centre of social and criminal policy enforcement for Casey, who is not regarded as a natural ideological soulmate of the Conservatives.
She is to work as a director-general in the Department of Communities and Local Government, where she will lead a new unit overseeing issues raised by the riots, including problem families, school truancy, antisocial behaviour and gangs.
Casey will be the head of a troubled families unit tasked with addressing Britain's 120,000 problem families by the end of the parliament.
She is expected to produce an action plan by November, and has already warned the prime minister that there is a high risk of failure if resources and effort are not dedicated to tackling the issues.
Casey, seen as someone who understands what works in dealing with youth crime and problem estates, has surprisingly won the enthusiastic support of the communities secretary, Eric Pickles.
The importance Cameron attaches to Casey's appointment was underlined by his decision to make the announcement himself at prime minister's questions.
The prime minister said she had been a superb official over the past decade. He said many agencies were working with problem families, including in schools and social services, but "no one was really getting in there", adding that the initiative could make a huge difference and reduce the burden on taxpayers.
Casey also has a strong ally in Sir Jeremy Heywood, the permanent secretary at No 10, who is to succeed Sir Gus O'Donnell as the cabinet secretary in December.
She will also work alongside the home secretary, Theresa May, and the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, who has studied the social issues raised by the riots as the chair of his Centre for Social Justice thinktank.
One of her first tasks will be to ensure that all three departments work together to produce a programme that is tangible but protects the localist agenda the Tories have advocated, and she will also need to find a vocabulary that respects the "big society" agenda.
More practically, Casey will have to assess quickly the extent to which organised gangs were a central force behind the riots. The growing perception is that gangs were less crucial than first thought and issues around parenting, schooling and the youth justice system need greater emphasis.
She will also need to handle the calls for parents of children found breaking the law to lose access to social housing or child benefit. Behind the scenes, there has been a Whitehall battle over whether magistrates courts should be able to dock the benefits of a parent if a child is found guilty of an offence.
Casey is currently the victims' commissioner, and has previously undertaken work from the Cabinet Office on public alienation from the closed world of the criminal justice system.
She has long been an advocate of greater rights for victims and less tolerance of perpetrators of antisocial behaviour, and was also one of the first advocates of intensive, sometimes residential help for the small group of problem families that disproportionately blight estates.
She is outspoken in public in a way very few civil servants match – sometimes landing herself in hot political water – but also appeals to the public in a way that most jargon-ridden civil servants do not.
Her willingness to discuss issues of morality and compassion suggests she has overcome innate Conservative suspicion.
At one point, Casey was seen as a potential Labour peer speaking on Home Office issues in the Lords, so the Conservative decision to embrace her is remarkable.
However, support for her work on the left is patchy. Gordon Brown downgraded her work partly because Brownites thought her approach was too reminiscent of the broken Britain rhetoric of Cameron and misrepresented the state of Britain's youth.
In her first guise in Whitehall, working in the Home Office, she developed the concept of antisocial behaviour orders, a form of civil punishment derided by many as being a badge of honour for young people.
She was then moved to Downing Street to work as a "respect tsar" – a broadening of the antisocial agenda to assess issues such as parenting and problem families.
In the final years of the Labour government, she worked to persuade the Ministry of Justice on the extent to which community punishment was not seen by the public as a credible alternative to prison. She proposed a range of measures to make it more credible, and those measures are now being implemented.
One of her trademarks is her determination to cut through multi-agency bureaucracies so Whitehall and local government work effectively to deliver services and send out the right messages to society.
Local government will have to deliver much of the post-riot agenda assembled by the Conservatives, including on issues such as housing, antisocial behaviour and parenting.
See also
21 Jan 2010 Asbos for gangs don't work. This talking cure just might
13 Feb 2007 'Respect tsar' is No 10's favourite to take over youth justice board
Victims Commissioner Louise Casey has resigned in order to head the Government's broad response to the riots, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced.
Ms Casey quit after 18 months as Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses to head a new troubled families team in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
In her resignation letter to Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, she said she had seen "a glimpse of some of the worst acts of human nature" and also "the very best of human behaviour".
Ms Casey will now "drive forward the Prime Minister's commitment to turn around the lives of 120,000 most troubled families", the Ministry of Justice said.
In her resignation letter, she said it had been an "enormous honour" to be the first Victims Commissioner, which was "one of the most challenging jobs that I have undertaken in terms of the very great suffering that I found, and the unmet need that is alongside it".
She said: "My team and I over the last 18 months have, however briefly, been shown a glimpse of some of the worst acts of human nature, the plight of those who have had loved ones taken from them and a response from the 'system' that, however well-meant, has often fallen short.
"I have also witnessed the very best of human behaviour - in those people who, after tragedy has hit them and their family, devote their lives to campaigning to make things better and supporting other people who are going through the same terrible experience.
"I have also seen first-hand how many victims act with courage and dignity despite awful personal circumstances, coupled with dealing with a system that does not always treat them as it should."
Ms Casey added that there was still much work to be done following her review into the needs of families bereaved by homicide.
Further consideration should also be given "to my calls for a 'victims' law' whereby, for the first time, there would be some statutory safeguard put in place for victims and witnesses", she said.
Group: J7 Forum Team
Posts: 6,051
Member No.: 235
Joined: 6-November 06
QUOTE
October 13, 2011 10:57 am Riot burglars face stiffer sentences
By Helen Warrell
Burglars who break into shops or homes during any repeat of this summer’s riots will face tougher sentences, according to new guidelines for judges published on Thursday.
The Sentencing Council – which promotes consistency in judicial decisions across England and Wales – said burglaries aggravated by disorder should command sentences which start at a higher level and extend further up the possible range increase than those committed in normal circumstances.
The guidelines, for crown and magistrates courts, take effect from mid-January and will be applicable to cases involving a weapon as well as domestic and non-domestic burglary. The council came to its decision after a three-month consultation with victims, the wider public and criminal justice experts.
While the consultation began before the August riots, the council said it had taken the recent disorder into consideration.
“The council recognises the damage caused and consequences of such events, especially for small businesses and shop owners living above or near premises,” the statement said. “[We have] therefore included the context of general public disorder as a factor indicating greater harm caused in any burglary offence.”
According to the suggested terms, offenders convicted of aggravated burglary with a firearm during a riot would face up to nine years in jail, as opposed to up to four years in normal circumstances.
Those guilty of domestic burglaries would attract a guideline sentence of up to two years during a riot, in contrast to 26 weeks in jail at other times. The highest sentence for non-domestic burglaries would increase from 18 to 51 weeks in jail.
Sir Colman Treacy, a member of the Sentencing Council, said on Thursday the riots had played a significant part in the decisions.
He told the BBC: “After the riots took place in August, the sentencing council met and decided how it should respond in the context of a burglary and we are indicating to judges who will be sentencing that a burglary committed in a riot is a factor that will indicate that it should be regarded at the top end of the range.”
The council’s guidelines come as Theresa May, home secretary, holds a conference with international experts on how to deal with gangs in the wake of the riots. Experts from the US, Jamaica and Europe have been invited to speak.
James Brokenshire, crime and security minister, told Sky news: “It’s part of our strategy to ensure that we’re following through and making sure that we’re learning from lessons [and] giving the police, perhaps, additional powers.”
The Home Office separately on Thursday launched a consultation on whether police should be given powers to remove face coverings and impose curfews.
Group: Admin
Posts: 9,866
Member No.: 1
Joined: 25-November 05
^^ I digress slightly from the topic...
QUOTE
David Cameron appoints Louise Casey to lead government response to riots Prime minister announces that Tony Blair's former 'respect tsar' will lead unit to oversee issues raised by summer riots
Tony Blair's former "respect tsar" Louise Casey, one of Britain's least conventional civil servants, has been appointed to head the government's broad response to the riots, David Cameron has announced.
Below is a picture of Louise Casey:
Meanwhile, leading by example, as ever:
QUOTE
Jamie Oliver brands Andrew Lansley obesity plan as 'patronising rubbish' Health secretary sets out 'national ambition' to cut 5bn calories a day from Britons' daily diet
The Metropolitan police are considering buying water cannons, here being used in Belfast. The force is also training more officers in the use of baton rounds. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The Metropolitan police is considering the purchase of three water cannon at a cost of nearly £4m to cover London and the south east as part of a new approach to public order policing in the aftermath of the summer riots.
If the Met decides to go ahead it will be the first time that water cannon will be a routine option for police outside of Northern Ireland. The development comes as the Met also reveals that more officers are being trained to support its baton round teams, so that plastic bullets can be deployed more "spontaneously" when necessary in fast moving public order situations.
In what appears to be a toughening up of its tactics in the aftermath of the August riots, the force is examining whether further legislation is required to give officers more powers when dealing with large scale disorder as well.
Last week the Met commissioner was challenged over an apparent hardening of the approach when he appeared before the Metropolitan Police Authority. Bernard Hogan-Howe denied that there had been any policy change in relation to baton rounds or water cannon. But the interim report into the riots from the assistant commissioner Lynne Owens, which was published on Wednesday, identifies these two areas as ones where consideration is being given to a new approach following criticism over the summer that the Met had lost control of the streets.
Owens said the Met has explored "in detail" using water cannon as a policing tactic in London – even down to identifying how many are needed and how much they would cost. Having taken evidence from the situation in Northern Ireland the Met believes it would need three water cannons, at a cost of £1.3m each. Scotland Yard is exploring an option with the Association of Chief Police Officers to purchase the equipment as a regional asset for London and the south east and announce a decision next month.
During the riots, serious consideration was given to deploying baton rounds, but these were not used because of what the report said was the "agility" of the disorder and the availability of other tactics. Owens's report shows that the Met has already taken steps to make sure that in future baton rounds could be used in such fast-moving public order situations.
Additional officers are now being trained to work alongside those firearms units who are trained to fire plastic bullets, known as Kestral teams, and making them available to borough commanders.
Owens said: "This increase in capacity will enable the MPS to make more agile use of this tactic in the future. Further expansion has also been explored in answer to the review's findings that a more localised availability of this resource might have enabled commanders to deploy baton rounds as an effective tactic.
"The MPS is also considering the establishment of this tactic as a spontaneous response, thereby making it more readily available across London at short notice."
Owens added that the Met was "fully aware" that active community engagement and consultation would be required before the introduction of any new tactics.
Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty questioned the approach. "It's easy to talk tough in an attempt to send signals about future riots but in practice would water cannon really help?
"It's an indiscriminate tool capable of hurting innocent bystanders and just disperses troublemakers from one area to another."
The Met said it was liaising with HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, before implementing any significant change. One of the greatest challenges the force has identified is intelligence gathering during public order situations, when those involved are using social media to organise and move from place to place.
"Intelligence gathering systems could not cope with the scale and speed and the spread of disorder," said Owens. "The sheer scale of the information flows, communication requirements and co-ordination of resources posed immense challenges." In response the Met is developing a specialist team of officers who will focus on gathering intelligence and running any investigations which emerge out of large public order events.
The use of social media by police will be "professionalised", the report said.
The Owens report confirms what senior officers have already said about their approach to the rioting – not enough officers were on the scene quickly enough. "The numbers were not enough and they did not arrive quickly enough to deal with the speed with which the violence escalated and its spread," she concluded.
Group: Members
Posts: 5
Member No.: 2,925
Joined: 24-November 11
QUOTE
If the Met decides to go ahead it will be the first time that water cannon will be a routine option for police outside of Northern Ireland.
I wish I still had it but I used to have a press article from the late 1980s which mentioned water cannons owned by the met and housed at hendon, never used and IIRC left to rust before being sold for scrap
Group: Admin
Posts: 9,866
Member No.: 1
Joined: 25-November 05
Watch out China, Egypt, Tunisia Britain, here comes much of "the use of mounted police and dogs, distraction techniques, shields, batons, water cannons, screening smoke, CS Spray, police vehicles, tasers, AEPs and live firearms" from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary: The Rules of Engagement: A review of the August 2011 disorders [PDF]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 License.
Comments on this forum do not necessarily represent the views of the July 7th Truth Campaign, the July 7th People's Independent Inquiry Forum, or even the position of their author. J7, the July Seventh Truth Campaign, the July 7th People's Independent Inquiry Forum, nor its administrators or contributors are liable for any of the forum content. Any and all information is reproduced on a 'fair use' basis which allows reproduction of material for research and study purposes, criticism and news reporting.
Riots 2011
Help
Search
Members
Calendar
