Thursday, February 01, 2007

*Sigh*

A chip-shop owner thought he was doing his public duty when he carried out a citizen’s arrest on a 12-year-old delinquent who spat at his customers and smashed a window.

But overzealous police officers turned the tables on Nicholas Tyers, 46, and his son Lee, 20, treating them as criminals and taking their fingerprints after the boy complained.

Mr Tyers and his Royal Marine son were charged with kidnap for holding the boy for up to six minutes and told the maximum sentence was life in prison. During the six months that followed, Mr Tyers was forced to sell his shop and lost his faith in justice.


OK, so the Judge John Dowse (pbuh) chucked the case out. But what sort of signal does the arrest and investigation send ?

What was it Peter Hitchens said ? The criminal justice system now enforces 'the letter of a bureaucratic law rather then the spirit of an agreed and respected moral code'.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think its more like what you have mentioned before, the police attempting to balance their figures.
This stuff always seems to happen to one type of people.

Anonymous said...

Actually he was challenging the Police Monopoly just as Dr Otto Chan did in London by advertising to regain his possessions.

The Police behave like any bureaucracy - remain inert - but respond with alacrity to any threat to usurp authority

The State works on the simple principle of keeping the masses down. so long as the majority of the population has something to lose it can be controlled.

The threat is if The State loses control of the mass it cannot retain power, so it must periodically make an example of the law-abiding to discourage acts of independence which challenge authority

It is simply a question of Power Relationships

Anonymous said...

Is a citizen's arrest legal in Britain? I don't believe it is, and it's a dangerous myth, as this man and his son found out.

It is legal in some states in the US and people often think that what applies in the US applies in Britain as well.

Anonymous said...

http://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q508.htm

It's a complicated process.....worth printing out the above link & checking all the points before grabbing hold of the little innocents!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 9:55 - ... or the little guilties.

Anonymous said...

"Is a citizen's arrest legal in Britain?"

Yes. Many US state laws derive directly from English common law, where it has existed since Saxon times. Rather than a right it is a duty, and still, (I believe) a crime not to assist a policeman in the course of his duty. In fact police powers of arrest without warrant were merely an extension of citizen's arrest at the beginning.

That was before they became political stormtroopers in the late 20th century. Sir Robert Peel's police were intended to be citizens in uniform, impartial and trustworthy instead of the militia and dragoons that had been used to control public order before. Now the wheel has turned full circle and they are a militia themselves - only better armed and equipped.

Anonymous said...

Is a citizen's arrest legal in Britain?

YES !

Anonymous said...

http://www.aba.org.uk/bulletin/citizensarrest.htm

http://www.wikicrimeline.co.uk/index.php?title=Power_of_arrest

If you did not have Citizen's Arrest you could not have store detectives

The new section 24A of PACE sets out the power of arrest for persons other than constables. The exercise of the citizen's power of arrest will be limited to indictable offences.


http://www.rjerrard.co.uk/law/articles/civilianpowersofarrest.html

Anonymous said...

Technically speaking, no part of the Magna Carta is invalid unless explicitly repealed. As such, we still retain the right to perform a citizen's arrest, aswell as to rise up against the government - with the permission of the Catholic Pope, of course - should said right be denied. Anyone up for penning that missive? Ratzinger sounds like a fine man, unbeholden to trendy sanctimony, who might well be interested in excommunicating Blair, the minute that omni-traitorous swine chooses to swap the faith of his ancestors and of his people for that of Rome.

Anonymous said...

Yet another example of the police not only failing to prevent crime, but actually abetting the commission of crime.

What good, really, is derived from the existence of the police force? They have assumed a monopoly over the right to fight crime, so that those private citizens who do resist the criminals frequently find themselves being subject to harassment by the police, while the real villain gets off scot free. At the same time, the police make no effort to solve most ordinary crimes, as Dr Chan (mentioned by Voyager) found out. The consequence is that criminals can carry out thefts, muggings, break-ins, minor assaults, and all manner of similar behaviour with virtual impunity.

As I've said here before, we would be better off abolishing the police force (except for the detective branch, special branch, etc), forming armed citizens' militias, and sending the army into sink estates.

Anonymous said...

As an addendum to my previous post, I note that Home Office minister Tony McNulty has apparently said in a BBC interview that, when citizens witness a crime, they should call the police, and then "distract" the criminal. He was being questioned on a planned government advertising campaign, encouraging people to fight crime, under the slogan "Don't moan, take action, it's your street too". Apparently, since we must never ever fight back, such "action" could include jumping up and down.

The interview transcript is on the BBC and makes hilarious reading: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6241815.stm

Anonymous said...

20 years ago I met a young gent from a 3rd world country, who explained that in his country citizens were afraid to go to the police to report a crime, because the police were more likely to arrest the victim than the culprit - and back then we laughed in amazement.

Anonymous said...

This was a political prosecution. The Left's goal of atomising our society gets ever closer.

Anonymous said...

Fulham Reactionary - well, I don't know. You could make funny faces. Do a stand-up comedy routine. Mention a couple of amusing anecdotes from your recent past. Tell them you know Britney Spears personally and tell them what she is really like.

Seriously, though, if a citizen's arrest is not just legal, but an ancient right, can't this citizen sue the police?

Anonymous said...

verity, It *is* an ancient right, and it *is* technically legal, but, much like the Ynak constitution, it's a dead letter.