https://www.youtube.com/v/8jaq3gv5YoQ?fs=1&hl=en_GB
Action to deal with Bike theft in the City…
Good little Operation, with the exception of parking a van with camera’s right next to the target! 
As for the officers with their faces on camera, the can cancel any aspirations of covert surveilance from now onwards! 
I only say this in such a jovial manner because the officers in this program are “City of London Police”, and therefor cover an area of literally one square mile! This makes it a lot easier for them to run operations like this one as they have the manpower and resources to do so, and a much smaller area to cover than your average Met Borough.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to play down what they do! They are very good at their job! I just thought that it may be a bit misleading to the average person, who may now think that these operations are easily put together and controlled.
Basically, the average London Police borough can’t run operations like this due to the fact that there are barely enough officers running around responding to 999 calls, let alone sitting in a van in builders clothes. Then, when you look at how big an area they cover, it’s just pot luck that you catch the buggers in the act. After that, and about 4 or 5 hours of doing the case files and interviews (if you’re lucky) the CPS will normally come up with some excuse to say that there is an element of doubt (usually something so far flung it wouldn’t look out of place in a fairytale!), and the case won’t even get to court! The exception to this is when they are literally caught on the bike, with the articles used for the offence etc… 
Basically, lock up your bikes whenever you are not sat next to them, or they’ll have it and the chances/odds of them getting caught/convicted are massively slim!
Sorry for painting a bleak picture, but I’ve had a couple of bottles of wine and have entered “honesty mode”…
All good stuff to know that C o L police are on the bike theft case, but " CS gas…"?
They’d got the alleyway sealed off. They outnumbered the scum bags 5 to 1 and used CS gas straight away.
So the guide lines on the use of this stuff mean jack to the C o L police.
I hate the Howard League for Penal Reform because they say that Prison doesn’t work. Kenneth Clarke is saying the same thing now too. Lies. Prison does work. A criminal that is in prison has a 100% chance of not committing a crime against their local community. How is that not working?
What annoys me about Kenneth Clarke and the Howard League is their use of re-offending to justify the claim that prison doesn’t work. It is absolutely fallacious to do so, and no that doesn’t involve oral sex.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
So we have people who grow up in a particular place, with particular pressures and particular problems and some of these people turn to crime. They get caught, we send them to prison and then upon their release, we send them straight back to the same place, with the same pressures and the same problems…yet we expect a different result.
Is that not the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?
We should stop trying to “rehabilitate” offenders, which is a rather huge waste of resources and try instead to fix the problems that drives some people to crime.
I look at it like this, if some people in a particular area were being poisoned by their water supply, we wouldn’t want to waste resources just healing those people and waiting for the next lot of sick people to walk through the door. We would want to fix the water supply and thus diminish the number of sick people.
You wouldn’t say, well not everyone is getting sick, so lets leave the water supply polluted and just heal people as they get sick.
Yet that is the response to crime, well not everyone turns to crime so lets not bother fixing any of the societal problems that caused some of the people to turn to crime, since it doesn’t affect everyone in the same way, we can just leave it as it is.
In a sense, some people just have a better immune system then others, or a better moral compass, that doesn’t justify doing nothing about the root causes.
I just realised that my post may seem to be a bit off topic and out on a tangent and a bit of a rant.
I would like to explain that by saying, I wrote a reply to Roadrunner mainly agreeing about the CPS and the lack of any real response in sentencing, then deleted that as my thought process moved along and then re-wrote another post more along the lines of bemoaning sentencing and then finally deleted that and wrote the post above…that now seems completely off topic and nothing to do with anything.
What guide lines are you talking about ?
I didn’t see any being broken ?
Don’t the ACPO guidelines on CS Gas use specifically state:
“Action must be proportionate to the competing rights of individuals and any force used should be no more than absolutely necessary in the circumstances”
Given the circumstances were two young men, heavily outnumbered who, at the time the CS Gas was deployed had personally shown no tendency for violence and no indication that they were going to be violent.
I think Oldguy has a point. Personally I don’t care that the officers used the gas on bike thieves, but then again, I am biased.
[quote]
Kaos (14/08/2010)
I hate the Howard League for Penal Reform because they say that Prison doesn’t work. Kenneth Clarke is saying the same thing now too. Lies. Prison does work. A criminal that is in prison has a 100% chance of not committing a crime against their local community. How is that not working?quote]
I’ve just read your last post also, explaining the “tangent” etc… I thoroughly agree with certain aspects.
HOWEVER, Prison doesn’t work 100% of the time! I know this, and can prove it!
Just in the last week I have arrested numerous amounts of people for various offences, and can honestly say that the majority had previous records for related crimes! The term “Career Criminal” is no coincidence!
It may seem to the general public that the police can be either over the top, or not severe enough, depending on the circumstances, but the fact is that as soon as you criminalise somebody for the first time you reduce their chances of becoming/remaining a decent member of society with half decent job prospects. Case in point; Who here would employ somebody with a criminal record?
My personal feeling is that every time somebody is charged with a criminal offence, they are pushed that little bit closer to being a serial offender. This is, in my eyes, one of the main problems with the youth of today. They have been criminalised at a young age, and therefor will struggle to get decent jobs and become a worthwhile member of society. Eventually they will become the sort of person who has a total lack of respect for the decency of normal living and actually thrive on the fact that they are looked at as being some form of underacheiver.
It almost has a status all of itself, with the dumbing down of the language to fit in with the other kids who consider themselves to be of that class. I see very clever, intellectual teenagers talking like they don’t have any basic english skills, and yet they can read and write perfectly when they want/need to.
I even have work colleagues who are university educated who still say things like “Bruv” and “Innit”. :blink:
Anyway, the simple fact is we have gotten to a point in history that will be noted for the way that the young people (13-30 years old) will be remembered as a generation of “wannabe gansters” and general trouble makers.
I sincerely hope that we manage to break this chain through education and good parenting, but the fact remains that we have a long hard struggle ahead!
In short, it’s about time the British Public re-established a grip on the upbringing of our youth! Regardless of percieved differences in culture, colour or creed!
The smallest of acts can change a persons outlook on life. Lets start trying to go back to old values of talking to the local kids with an air of authority, and letting them know that they may be growing up in the area, but they are not the “Grown Ups” in the area!
Lets take back the streets! they don’t belong to the drug dealers and gangs! They belong to the community!
Lets have some pride and stand up for the sort of country we want to live in, and stop looking to the past governments for blame!
If you have an issue with local youths, start talking to your local Safer Neighbourhoods Team! That’s what they are there for and it is all confidential. No details of witnesses are ever shown to suspects or even the defence lawyers! Make use of these assets, as they are paid for out of your taxes!
That’s all I can say right now, although I could honestly type all night!
Hope this paints a clearer picture of what can be achieved… 
RR
I think he’s talking about the fact that the officers went in here with there CS in there hands (which itself has to be justified, which they may have their reasons for), but also the use of CS spray, which I would say was unwarrented in the situation as the suspected bike thieves were not only surrounded, but also outnumbered.
On top of that the suspects were wearing motorbike helmets, and so were fairly easy to man handle. (I can vouch for this with years of experience of teaching/using various fighting techniques (Krav Maga etc…). i.e… You grab someone by the helmet and wherever their head goes the body follows Basic principles… Personally, I think I would have been trying to explain that situation over a good few many sheets of A4! ;)On top of this, I also acknowledge and appreciate that Baz has a lot more oporational experience than me, and I mean no offence or argument in my response. Merely that it did seem a little over the top for a couple of bike thieves. ;)
Personally none of us were there and can’t comment on their justification as we don’t know what the reaction of the scumbags were on being approached !
The numbers of suspects to the number of Officers isn’t as big a factor in the use of force as some may think. You will learn this one day grasshopper
Fair play mate!
Also, see my edit above!
Only teasing … stop biting !
:P:P:P:P BASTARD! Stop picking on the probie! :w00t:
As far as I’m concerned, the Police are very welcome to use CS gas on these people. And truncheons. And size 10 boots. And knuckledusters. Etc, etc.
Guidelines, pfft :hehe:
Great work by the cops! Nice to know there’s a team looking out for us in the square mile at least…
The days when the City Police had unlimited resources are long gone… It is fair to say that there is less volume crime of certain types and they do have fewer ‘Immediate’ calls than your average MET borough.
That said the MET screens out huge amounts of crimes on somewhat tenuous grounds, motorcycle theft included. Even the most basic or cursory of investigations don’t get done.
The CPS do present a challenge (but that is their role), that said id be willing to bet that most cases fail because of poor file build. Look at what the MET has done with MG5’s (for the uninitiated this is a slimmed down file when you think they will plead guilty) it’s been a disaster area…
A heady mix of laziness and poor supervision leading to many, many hours of wasted court time.
There are a couple of comments in this post (no names, work it out yourselves) that could be classified as ‘discreditable conduct’ under Police Dicipline Regs 2004 (amended 2008)
Just be aware that complaints departments read a lot of popular forums.
You’d like to think that comment based on fact couldn’t amount to ‘discreditable conduct’
I recommend that you pm the individuals concerned, stipulating what these comments are that you are referring to here.
One thing that could be done to stop this sort of theft is to make lumps of concrete with a hole to put a lock through and leave them in the bays. At home I have an old block that used to be used to put your bicycle wheel in that I have looped my lock through. There is no way anyone could lift it with a bike and a very cheap solution.