BTW, I think you are confusing the Damilola Taylor case with the Stephen Lawrence one. I hope you get all your other facts right when you are doing all your consultancy work with the police...
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.