British Burglar Calls Police After The Victim Shoots Him With An Air Rifle

I meant “The Stephen Lawrence case was so obviously mishandled...” but lost my own train of thought. I was about to go onto Bichard.

Technology advances are a darned good reason why the police should not dismiss charges without a prima facae examination of the background of the people involved.

Humberside Police didn’t advise Cambridgeshire of Ian Huntley’s prior investigations for three counts of rape, four counts of under-age sex, and burglary. If they had, it’s very unlikely that he’d have got the job of caretaker and it’s even less likely that Cambridgeshire Police would’ve given him the benefit of the doubt when they discovered he was the last person to see two little girls alive.

Thing is those two Forces were ENTIRELY capable of sharing that information, but thanks to bad assumptions at both ends they didn’t and two girls got murdered.

There’s no dark art for even a private citizen to find someone anymore thanks to the internet, in fact sometimes you can do it yourself in less time than it takes to meet up with a private investigator to ask him to do it for you!

It’s even easier if you’re trying to trace somebody you already know.

So, homeowners should get a free pass if they blow a burglar away only once the police are satisfied it really is as simple as that. And it’s not a case of, the homeowner in question has a record as long as his arm for shooting at *anyone* who dares darken his doorstep, or the “intruder” actually did have a right to be there, and so on.

In the electronic age answering this question brings up all manner of issues about jurisdiction and privacy, but to be frank I’ve got over 1500 friends on Facebook, most of them in America, who STILL publish their home address and cell numbers to the entire planet even after I’ve told them several times that broadcasting their personal details is a monumentally bad idea - and I’ll punk any one of them who starts ranting about privacy given they don’t practise what they preach.

Well, I suppose it is for them to give up their personal information to every man and his dog, not for the state. If I become a victim of stupid decisions, I would rather those stupid decisions were my responsibility rather than someone elses.

Nobody is saying the police can't investigate people, or ask them questions, but the police should have really reasonable grounds for suspision before subjecting them to the ordeal of an arrest and time spent in a police cell. A family man with no prior criminal record is not likely to do a runner to a third world country with no extradition treaty, so it is unlikely they will go anywhere they cannot be found if the line of enquiry does turn against them. Even if they are considered a flight risk, confiscating their passport should be more than sufficient in preventing them from dissappearing were they cannot be found. Basically, if the police are to arrest someone, it should either be because they are refusing to answer questions, or the police should have enough evidence to charge them...

A family man with no prior criminal record is not likely to do a runner to a third world country with no extradition treaty, so it is unlikely they will go anywhere they cannot be found if the line of enquiry does turn against them.

Which goes back to what I said about making sure that cross-border cooperation and jurisdiction should not be impeded by excessive interpretations of privacy.

In the Soham case in the UK, the investigating force thought it had the right to look at Huntley's background but Humberside didn't think it had the right to pass pertinent information on. Ultimately the girls died because Humberside tried too hard to comply with Data Protection legislation. I don't know how a situation would be dealt with in the States today, but certainly in the past Americans and Britons were able to cross juisdictional boundaries and build whole new identities for themselves just by changing their names.

IMO it's the job of the police to investigate similar cases IMPARTIALLY and in the exact same manner. In the UK the CPS decides if the case presented by the police is in the public interest.

That way you don't get coppers deciding that (to use an extreme example) a homeowner who blows away a home intruder gets a cursory background check by virtue of him being rich / famous / middle class / WASP / has friends in high places, while another homeowner in the same position gets his background fully investigated simply by virtue of him being an unknown quantity, or falling into a completely different demographic (e.g. being poor and black).

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