"You got to know when to hold 'em..."

"..know when to fold 'em..."

Northamptonshire Police withdrew an order to have the dog destroyed ahead of a hearing at Wellingborough Magistrates' Court.

The court ruled that Muppet, a lurcher-whippet crossed with a Staffordshire bull terrier, should be muzzled at all times while in public.

Yes, I knew it'd be worth keeping an eye on this case.

Police had initially proposed to have the dog put down and had twice asked Mr Penfold to sign a voluntary destruction order. When he refused, the case was sent to court.

However, before the hearing on Thursday, Mr Penfold and the force reached an agreement that such an order would not be made as it was "completely out of character for Muppet".

Magistrates also ordered that the dog must be secured to prevent escape and controlled while in public by someone over 16. They also ordered Mr Penfold maintain third party insurance for the dog.

Seems poker's not your game, cops. You blinked.

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Penfold said it had made his Christmas to be reunited with "placid" Muppet in December after not seeing him since he was seized last February.

Ah, well, it's only taxpayers' money, after all.

Low-Hanging Fruit...

A mum has pledged to take police to court after officers took away her seven-year-old autistic daughter's dog believing it be a banned breed.

Jenny Armer claims Lancashire Police have mistakenly taken little Maddison Armer's pet Darla because she measures up to a pitbull-type dog

The 29-year-old mum, from Lancaster, maintains Darla is a docile cross between a Shar-Pei and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

How did this come to their attention?

Local dog wardens reported the three-year-old family pet and police arrived at Maddison's mum Jenny Armer's home with a warrant to take her away.

Ah. This was really the only pitbull-alike in Leicestershire? You're sure?

Jenny, 29, is adamant Darla is not a banned breed and that she plays a vital role in looking after Maddison, who suffers from autism and ADHD.

Hmmm...

...on Thursday, Maddison Armer was finally reunited with her best friend. And a family was made whole again.

Well, all's well that ends well.

And any comment from the 'authorities' on why they are targeting a single mother with an obvious non-pitbull rather than any of the hundreds of urban yoof with 'Staffies' slavering at the ends of chain leashes?

...the Lancashire Constabulary did not return requests for comment...

Didn't think so. But then, they have form for coming down like a ton of bricks on soft targets while ignoring politically-sensitive issues, don't they?

Here It Comes....

Police are being 'swamped' by a massive increase in online crime and require new legislation to tackle the problem, a top chief constable has warned.

Stephen Kavanagh, Chief Constable of Essex Police is also the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on Digital Intelligence and Investigation. He has warned the current legislation is hampering the investigation of online crime.

Cyber crime, which can include online bullying, child grooming, revenge porn and phishing is covered by legislation which pre-dates social media and the internet, including the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act which dates from the time of Queen Victoria.

So do the laws against murder. So what? It's either an offence or it isn't.

Much of the legislation, such as laws dealing with malicious communication were designed to cope with the threat of 'silent' or 'menacing' phone calls.

Kavanagh told The Guardian: 'There are crimes now taking place – the malicious use of intimate photographs for example – which we never would have imagined as an offence when I was a PC in the 80s. It’s not just the nature of it, it is the sheer volume.

 Well, if you 'never would have imagined it would be an offence', maybe it isn't?

'The levels of abuse that now take place within the internet are on a level we never really expected. If we did try to deal with all of it we would clearly be swamped.'

 So you're selective in which reports you tackle, are you? How very interesting!

He said urgent action was required to simplify the laws concerning online crime to assist in prosecuting offenders while providing help to victims.

 You mean to assist the 'modern' police officer in ensuring that politically correct identity groups are satisfied?

He said: 'Often victims don’t know how to articulate what happened to them, they aren’t clear what the offence is if there is one. When they then get an ambiguous response from the police, it undermines their confidence about what has happened. It is not just about officers and staff being confident, it is about victims being confident that what has taken place is a crime. So the law needs to be pulled together and the powers consolidated into a single place.'

Look, if victims AND police aren't clear that what happened was a crime, perhaps it wasn't. And perhaps the police should have more important things to be doing than trying to 'convince victims' that what upset them was indeed a crime.

Because not everything that hurts our feels is indeed a crime, nor should be treated as such.

But, if that is the path we're being driven down by an increasingly incompetent police force, I want to be able to report the next grocer's apostrophe. That should be a crime, damn it!

And So It Begins…

The children’s commissioner for England has suggested lowering the burden of proof in cases of child sex abuse, arguing that the current system is “not fit for purpose”.

It’s good enough for murder and terrorism and kidnap and arson. Why isn’t it good enough for this?

Longfield told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “What this case really sharply illustrates is the difficulty there is in giving evidence in the case of child sex abuse, especially within the family.

“We know that the vast majority of cases aren’t reported in the first place, but even those that are reported, the vast majority don’t go to court because the evidence just isn’t there. And when looking at the burden of beyond reasonable doubt, it’s very sharply in contrast to the kind of ruling we saw from the judge last week, which is about balance of probability.”

Yes, that’s because that’s a civil court, not a criminal one. Are you going to suggest that those found guilty under such rulings would be subject only to a fine?

If not, shut up. This is not your remit. And you traduce the post you hold every time you open your mouth.

Which is not to say your predecessors didn't as well, but you're in a class of your own already...

Asked whether Worthington’s case was more about the police’s failure to collect evidence, she said officers should and could have done better. But, she added, the level of evidence needed in cases of familial child sex abuse was not usually available because they were not reported until a long time after the event. This meant forensic evidence was unavailable and/or the accounts of alleged victims could be muddled.

“We need to understand that if we are serious about tackling child sexual abuse, we need to better decide what does constitute good evidence and that’s something not for me, for the police; it’s for social services, it’s for the judiciary,” she said.

The two bodies that have failed Poppi Worthington (and Poppi Worthington’s family) so utterly? No, I don’t think we’ll let them decide anything.

Further discussion can be found at Anna Raccoon.

You Can’t Blame The Police And CPS, Phoebe…

…they’ve got historic sex abuse cases to pursue!

It was late and, yes, I’d had quite a few cocktails. I was fumbling for my keys on the street outside my flat when a man stepped out of the darkness and punched me three times in the face – twice in the jaw, once in the mouth – and stole my bag. Two of my front teeth broke in half and the damage to my jaw meant I had to eat mush through a straw for the next month.

So, actual evidence of a crime (if we exclude the possibility that she was drunk enough to fall on her face, of course). That makes a nice change!

My neighbour called the police who were sympathetic. They said the assault was GBH and sent an artist round to produce a sketch of my attacker. Ten months later, I picked the police’s suspect out of a lineup and was called to give evidence against him in court. But shortly before the trial date, I received a brief email from the police saying I had been “de-warned”. I had no idea what that meant.

Well, it seems to mean that the police officer handling your case is illiterate:

“Phobe [sic], De warning means the case is not going a head [sic]. No witnesses are required for trial. Case has been dropped,” my designated witness care officer wrote.

No doubt said ‘witness care officer’ is well-versed in politically-correct garbage, but not in coherent English or actual ‘customer service’…

I turned to the officer in charge of my case for a fuller explanation. He said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) didn’t think the artist’s sketch and the suspect looked alike. Moreover, “they have grave concerns about the fact that you had been drinking on the night”. The case had been dropped, he said, due to lack of evidence.

Which rather makes you wonder how it is all those other cases, the historical ones, can go ahead, doesn’t it?

Siobhan Blake, deputy chief crown prosecutor, admits the CPS could improve their witness briefing. “The CPS is running pilots looking at the way we discuss, with victims and witnesses, the court process. We’re intending to roll out next year an enhanced system of explanation to victims and witnesses. We’ve identified that as a key area. It’s not meant to be a memory test. Or in any way a situation designed to trick people or trip them up.” Yet several criminal lawyers I spoke to were amazed that I didn’t anticipate my case stumbling on the grounds that I’d been drinking. Only an “idiot witness”, one told me, wouldn’t work out for themselves that their alcohol intake would be an issue. In cases dependent on witness testimony, our adversarial legal system pits one person’s word against another.

Yes. Of course it does. How can you not have realised this?

In cases of sexual assault where proving or disproving consent is the critical issue, cross-examination can be particularly traumatic. But the system sees its purpose to convict the guilty and acquit the innocent, regardless of the vulnerability of a witness.

What about the vulnerability of the falsely accused?

Sarah Vine, a criminal barrister who specialises in sex cases, explains that her approach to questioning a witness “is not about you being discredited, regarded as a liar. It’s about the forensic, almost objective, reliability of your evidence.” The low conviction rate of sexual assaults in Britain, Vine suggests, is not a failure but rather evidence of a robust, effective criminal justice system. The stigma that comes with a conviction for sexual assault or domestic violence is so great – a “mark of Cain”- that Vine is adamant it must be proven to the highest possible criminal standard. The worst outcome is the conviction of an innocent. “You can’t have a system where you can just walk in and go, I demand this happens because I said so,” she says. Another senior barrister explains: “When we come to assess a witness, all of us take into account certain parts of their behaviour. If they are a 50-year-old charity worker who has led an unblemished life, we are more inclined to believe them than a 23-year-old with 50 drug convictions. I wouldn’t want to go through it,” she adds. “It’s not a pleasant process. It’s uncomfortable even when there’s not much at stake. But what’s the alternative?”

Well, quite. What is the alternative, other than to accept the SJWs demands and go along with the loony feminist brigade’s insistence that women never lie, despite the evidence to the contrary?

I’ve no doubt Phoebe feels hard done by, but the law can never take account of someone’s feelings when deciding if there’s a case to answer.

A system that did this would not be justice.

But then, it seems that’s just what we are indeed heading for, with the appalling case of Poppi Worthington.

A case where the state’s agents fail so spectacularly that they spend three years attempting to cover it up, then simply declare a man guilty of a vile crime without benefit of a trial, and watch as the lynch mob promptly turn their fire on him, and not on Cumbria Police and social services…