Tuesday, December 02, 2008

I will note that (fG)Britain has a fair share of worthless

excuses for lawmen:
A judge has condemned an apparent police assault on a soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall, 24, was thrown to the ground by three uniformed officers after a night out with friends and punched eight times.

The violent arrest - caught on CCTV - shocked a crown court judge, who called it appalling
.
What makes this crap even worse than that sounds?
Eventually, Mr Aspinall was bundled into a police van in handcuffs, with injuries to his face and neck. He was taken to Wigan police station and kept in custody for 20 hours.

He was charged with two counts of police assault and a public order offence.

On September 22, at Wigan magistrates' court, the officers read statements claiming Mr Aspinall had been behaving violently.

Despite viewing the footage, magistrates found him guilty of the assaults, sentenced him to community service and gave him a suspended-prison sentence. They also ordered him to pay £250 compensation
.
So add 'miserable excuse for a jurist' to the plagues.

He lodged an appeal against the conviction and on November 13 at Liverpool Crown Court, Judge Phipps saw the footage and asked: 'Where is this man of violence? I am shocked and appalled at the level of police violence shown here.'

The judge said he had 'great concerns' about the CCTV footage and questioned the truthfulness of the officers' statements.

'I would go as far as to say the statements contain untruths,' he added
.
Gee, you think maybe?

Sounds like the police(there and here both, I'll add) need a refresher in Mr. Peel's Nine Principles.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am thinking that a bronze plaque with the nine principles of modern policing ought to be donated to every PD in America and bolted to the wall next to the front entrance.
How can we a) finance this, and b) pitch it to the cops so that it doesn't look like we're saying, "look you idiots, this is the way you should be doing your job", even though that is what we'd be doing.

Firehand said...

Sounds like a fine idea to me. "We present this plaque to this department as a commemoration of the fine principles modern law enforcement was founded upon." Be interesting to see how someone would object to that.

Anonymous said...

I think you should all watch the video on youtube but make sure you turn the volume of first.. Its not as bad as people are making out.

Firehand said...

So far, my more-glacial-than-usual connection hasn't allowed, I'll keep trying.

Assuming my memory doesn't give out. Again.