‘I shot burglars to protect my lovely wife. Then police came... ’

The Sun ^ | 9-9-12 | Andrew Parker

[Winniesboy]

when this story broke several days ago that there were folks posting from the UK saying "this is perfectly normal procedure, nothing to worry about, these people are in good hands, etc." Now we find out, as many of us suspected from the start, that they were being subjected to a merciless grilling that lasted for days and only escaped being charged with murder by the skin of their teeth.

I don't see those posters on this thread. Funny that.

Well, here's one of them...and only too ready to acknowledge I was wrong. Now these further details have emerged, it's had to imagine that there's anybody over here who would argue that the police actions were not, to put it mildly, excessive. As far as I know we've yet to hear any reasoned explanation from the police themselves, and it's unlikely we will until the prosecutions of the intruders are complete - but given that the main offender has pleaded guilty, that's unlikely to take long.

It's difficult to imagine they'll be able to come up with anything which will prevent a successful action before the Police Complaints Commission, and/or a suit for wrongful arrest. (And in defence of the British system, it ought to be said that such actions are very often successful - the police are far from immune when they get things wrong.)

It would, however, be a mistake to see this case as typical of the way police behave in such situations. As usual, it's the untypical which makes the headlines. For what it's worth, here again are summaries of the rigorously timetabled procedure which provides plenty of checks and balances from the moment somebody is arrested or detained. Assuming these procedures were followed (and the police will be given a hard time if they weren't), it will be interesting to see what grounds they offer to justify the continuing detention. My guess is they will make great play of the fact (as appears to be the case) that the couple chose not to contact the police themselves, so that all they had to go on was whatever story the wounded intruder spun them....

http://www.yourrights.org.uk/yourrights/the-rights-of-suspects/police-powers-of-arrest/treatment-of-suspects-on-arrest.html

http://www.yourrights.org.uk/yourrights/the-rights-of-suspects/police-powers-of-arrest/police-detention.html

[jboot]

Thank you. I wonder if the police overreacted in this case merely because there was a firearm involved. We've seen stories where very violent acts involving non-firearm weapons-such as glassing-are handled lightly. If the fellow had fought the invaders with a shovel or a rake, would there have been such a vigorous reaction?

(The perception in the US is that Britons have an irrational fear of guns. Case in point: I live very near to a gun shop where the primary stock-in-trade is former "club" guns from the UK. The shop owner bought them en masse when the gun clubs were shuttered. The guns in question are nearly all single-shot target .22s. Many are collector's items of great value. That even in a controlled club setting these guns were regarded as dangerous weapons that needed to be banned is almost incomprehensible.)

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Another point worth mentioning is that it might not have happened as the paper reported. My family has personal experience of a tabloid newspaper making stuff up out of thin air about a story to ‘sex up’ an otherwise comparably boring story. And considering this story is from ‘the Sun’, a newspaper for cretins whose intellectual curiosity doesn’t extend much further than a crude appreciation of a jailbait girl’s pert bewbies displayed on page 3, this kind of yarn spinning is exactly the sort of thing they would do to increase their readership and get them going.