Polycule falls apart

I have no idea who Peter Stears is, but I'm not sure accessing the dodgy material was especially wise, and it probably would have been sensible to cut ties after he'd reported it rather than leaving it a few days to do that. IIRC Pete Townsend still got done for accessing CSA images for "research".

They didn't charge Pete Townsend, I think in part because he'd been in touch with Scotland Yard before accessing the site to tell them what he planned to do and they didn't bother to get back to him about it in a timely manner, as far as I recall. They did put him on the Sex Offenders register even though there had been no charge or trial, which made me fairly cross at the time: punishment without the proof having been shown has always seemed to me to be dodgy. Like accepting a caution goes on your record, when what it really means is "we don't have a good enough case/enough evidence to take you to court."

He later said that because of the arrest, his bowel cancer was discovered, but I never really managed to work out the connection between the two things.

So this Pete fella has put up a post saying he has reported to the Met today about Hayden and that Hayden should now not talk to Pete either directly or indirectly due to this.

Then also today this gets posted.

So fuck knows whether this is another vexatious complaint / follow up by police from a report either for this issue, that issue, Lyndsay Watson or something completely unrelated

But hey that's a lot activity going on around a very small bunch of people who are all connected in a very short period of time.

https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-plague/

'Lynsay Watson is allowed to explicitly incite murder and violence for political reasons over and over again, and to lodge endless harassment complaints against people he himself has been arrested for harassing, while he’s still on bail for harassing other people, after he was sacked by the police for harassment.
And if his victims (or as he calls them, “key propagandists” and “Nazis”) talk about it, the police will go out to arrest them.'

I genuinely dont know whether to laugh or cry at this point.

I did however view a gorgeous house and we are putting an offer in so probably got mixed emotions right now.

Good luck @Shedmistress 🤞

Yes, seconded.

Thriced!

I wonder what the Antipodean Farmers are saying about all this? I think they had FT nailed for what he is a long time ago.

Am I the only one who has an almost uncontrollable urge to wash my hands and disinfect my phone every time I open this thread?

No.

Busy few hours for Wings
”Got a call from Police Scotland tonight regarding Euan “Sophie Molly” Weddell’s dodgy fundraiser. Told them what I could.”
8.26pm

No 🧽🫧🧼

Even Tabby told him to get proper legal advice. On BlueHair.

Makes you wonder what was said in person.

You get the sense that eventually these people will become known by every single police authority in the country.

At which point, they are screwed.

Busy week though. Have all the regular plods gone on holiday leaving the juniors who are desperate to get a case in and get one over on their superiors?

Policing in GB doesn’t appear to be very joined up in that, by now, multiple forces have fallen for these TRA harassment tactics - doesn’t anyone in the various forces pool info or check databases?

Also, I think that, for as long as policing by consent has been replaced by IDPol-influenced policing, these chaps will continue to be able to use the State against their perceived enemies.

There’s a complete absence of common sense by the police in all of the stories of people harassed by means of complaints to police.

I mean, even Prof Ardray got a police officer to warn a journalist off investigating him and the police officer saw no connection between his behaviour and the reduction of free speech rights in the UK 🤯

"Warning off a journalist" could mean reminding them of the laws about libel and harassment. That is not some sort of restriction on free speech. If the journalist was doing nothing wrong they carry on.

Libel is a civil matter so not something the police should be concerned with at all.

@RoyalCorgi - I've asking myself just those questions for a good while now.

Not much makes sense at the moment and when I said to DH that my weirder dreams make more sense than waking life he agreed.

are the police simply inept, ... because they are too stupid/lazy/ignorant

Yes.

I'm going with deliberate intent in the higher ranks compounded by ineptitude in the lower ranks.

You have it right.

Different police forces seem to respond in widely different ways. Wings Across Scotland makes the point that LW has made hundreds of complaints to the police and the vast majority of them have gone nowhere. The Bath/Keynsham police were apparently unaware of the fact that they were responding to a complainant that just cost the Met £25k in compensation to Glinner, so they got suckered. You would think LW would have some sort of “vexatious complainant” tag across police forces by now, but limited co-ordination is not surprising. Our public institutions have some distance to perfecting information sharing.

Some forces seem more captured than others. I wonder if it is a less scary job than arresting shoplifters, or simply something that can be done in “non-urgent” times. I don’t know enough about the organisation of the police to know, but it seems unlikely to be the whole story.

In any case, it seems to be about more than just women - as seen in the reports that the Met investigated a Times Ed journo for four months because Carter Ruck / Jason Arday suggested they should. Investigating journos over potential reputational damage is the stuff of authoritarian nightmares and I would love to hear the rationale for it. In fairness the Met noticed this one seemed unconnected with any criminal behaviour but another bizarre use of police resources on what is on its face non-criminal.

I am no sort of expert on the police but what I would have hoped was happening was that the people selected to train as police officers were rigorously evaluated to make sure they have good physical health, at least average intelligence, good judgement, plenty of common sense and the emotional stability and resilience to cope with an extremely difficult job. Then I'd want them to be well trained before they're let loose on the public. That should include learning what is and isn't covered by criminal law, and being very clear on the limits of their authority. Then I'd want them to be closely supervised by experienced officers who've been promoted after proving themselves to be good at the job.

What seems to be happening here is that either junior officers are not being supervised and are choosing to pursue these pointless cases on their own initiative, with nobody higher up knowing until it's too late, or they are being directed to do this by higher ups. I don't know which is more worrying. As so many people have pointed out, it's very difficult now to get the police to take an interest in burglary, car theft and other crimes that really matter to the victims, even when the victim can give them a lot of information about who the perpetrator was. And yet nonsense like this is being acted on! Why?