Is this correct police action?

[FastingFaster]

I've had to support a colleague who's messed up this week. He's a big (enormous) teddybear of a man, who utterly heartbroken following a break up, sent too many messages over a 2 week period and twice sat in his car out side her house while sending the messages.

He has accepted a "simple caution" for "Stalking without fear/harm/distress between x and y dates". This is all factual, I have seen the paperwork, which sets out the timeline of events.

There is no suggestion at all that there was any threat or violence and the victim doesn't claim to have been scared of him, but obviously he was a damn nuisance and the behaviour was just not OK.

He accepted the caution without any legal advice (although offered) because he just wanted it over with. Unfortunately, as he works with children, this will impact him forever, no doubt some will say rightly so. It shouldn't prevent him working with children but it will come up and need to be declared/discussed/risk assessed evey time he has a dbs check for a new job.

I wonder if he did the right thing accepting the caution? Police told him he would have been charged and prosecuted if he hadn't, but I wonder? Would it have been considered in the public interest to bring this prosecution? He's guilty of sending some messages and twice sitting outside, but would a court have defined that as stalking when it was over such a short period?

It's good that quick and decisive action was taken, after so long when women were complaining of long term and nasty stalking were ignored, but I do wonder if it's the correct priority when they cant atrend burglaries and street robberies! I'm also a bit shocked at the pressure put on a young man in distress to accept a caution, but no doubt that's my naivety.

Obviously male toxicity against women can't be dismissed and I've got myself into trouble three times this week on just this issue. Once calling out "banter" at work, again objecting to offensive chanting against a female physio at football and by trying to explain that "good" dad's teaching their DDs to be princesses is less helpful than teaching them everything they need to know to never be dependent on a man! So usually, I'd be very much on favour of this behaviour being called out and it's right that he was "spoken to" and it stopped, but is this sensible policing? Would the charge have been made and prosecuted?

He's just ready to learn from it and move on, I'm interested in it as a bit of social commentary on (rightly) changing times.

Yes and whilst this is the wrong case to make that stand, doesn't it worry anyone that the police are putting pressure on people to accept cautions where there's no realistic expectation of a successful prosecution?

Don't we want a system where there's due legal process?

I don't see the issue with him having a caution for this.

57 messages is a LOT. Sitting outside her house TWICE is awful.

The law is the law.

Due process was followed. He was offered advice and declined. He accepted a caution instead of risking court 🤷‍♀️.

I think what's bothered me is the pressure to accept a caution, leading him to believe he would be prosecuted when I suspect they knew that wasn't the case.

Maybe the ends justify the means here, but what if he's a young black woman stopped for suspected shoplifting or similar? Is it OK then?

It just doesn't feel right to me. Not because of this case, but the process.

If you are really his employer then the level of detail you’ve given is massively inappropriate and unprofessional of you.

If you’ve changed enough details for that to not be the case then it’s really not possible for anyone to meaningfully comment.

I guess maybe if he has no history I’d think an initial informal police warning chat, then a caution if it didn’t stop might have been what I would expect, but the police are usually criticised for not doing enough to stop stalkers, so maybe they actually did do the right thing here?

The police literally followed the process they are expected to in these situations. Not sure why you think an adult male stalker should be treated with kid gloves. He's not vulnerable or a child. He was offered legal advice and declined. He was offered a caution and accepted.

This is my question. I don't know if the courts would have considered what he did a crime. Maybe they should, but I'm not sure they would.

No one can tell you what the outcome of a trial would have been.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/40

Of course it's a crime! A caution is a way of disposing of a criminal offence! You can't give cautions for non crimes.

www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/stalking-and-harassment Here's the criteria. He meets the threshold for a guilty verdict if his actions curtailed his exes life. So on balance he'd probably have been found guilty but no one can tell you for sure as we don't have her evidence

Oh behave!! He bloody did it! Stop with the whatabouterty and shoehorning institutional racism and saying its the same thing as police look into his appalling admitted behaviour!

I'm sorry you don't know what goes on behind closed doors - you don't know how she feels.

Ermm - no, but maybe some people did. But he didn't send "a few ill advised messages". In your words he sent "too many messages" (not a few) and on at least two occasions he did so whilst sitting outside her house. That is stalking. That is harassment. And you said that his ex wasn't disturbed by it but she was disturbed enough to report it to his employer and the police.

Why are you continuing to minimise his behaviour when you are prepared to call out "good dad's teaching their DDs to be princesses"? I totally agree about not teaching girls to be princesses (and mothers are as guilty of this as dads are) but you think that is wrong and are prepaed to call it out, but constantly minimise the behaviour of a man who is harassing a woman. In the great scheme of things, I think actually harassing a woman, sending her constant messages you know she doesn't want and intimidating her by sitting outside her house is far worse than buying your daughter a Disney princess dress. There's a pretty good chance that the princess dress won't counteract all the other influences on a young girl growing up, but harassment is an action designed to control and causes fear.

So you aren't "getting it", honestly you aren't.

The reality is that if f he hadn't accepted a caution it would have gone to CPS who would have tried to get rid of it.

Even if they did prosecute it would have taken months and months to get to court and then the witness would have probably given up.

Advise on DV cases is always to hold out until the day of trial to see if the woman actually turns up to see it through. A lot don't bother.

This reads dangerously like if he’d not accepted it would he have got away with it and it’s justifiable as he was oh so hurt.

I suggest you think hard op about how you’re coming across. Just another justifier of man’s abuse.

57 messages in 3 days - that’s not just one last message asking for a second chance is it?! That’s totally bombarding, intrusive and intimidating. I don’t even get that many messages total in a week! Coupled with the parking outside, that’s completely sinister. We don’t know what the messages contained either, you seem to have taken his word for it that it was all regret etc but it would have taken only one message to say that.

So yes that’s a crime. The police may have felt that it was one of those cases where they could do either a caution or ask the CPS to charge in preparation to prosecute. They may have felt that the caution would address the issue promptly and effectively hence pushing for it as they wanted to deal with it for the purpose of preventing further escalation.

But I would say that if he hadn’t accepted that they should have gone through the process of charging and prosecuting, yes, because the story is not of a sad breakup message saying sorry please give me a chance, it’s a man intimidating a woman multiple times through two methods, including physical presence near her home. They may have used the risk assessment tools and so on which help them understand how dangerous the situation is.

I don’t think you should be questioning what the police did or could have done here. You should be questioning whether you really should be employing someone who behaved like that.

Suspected shop lifting is the complete opposite from actual stalking. I think you really are minimising his behaviour because you think you know him. This is not just "a few texts" from a "heartbroken" man. It's dozens over two weeks , plus physical stalking. That would have absolutely freaked me out. He sounds like he only stopped when someone intervened.

He's still got his job and hopefully he's learned a valuable lesson. Sounds proportionate.

Is the young black woman shoplifting? If not, it's nothing like the same.

He's not being accused of this because of a stereotype. He did it.

So he was sending at least 4 messages a day. Can you imagine having 4 messages a day where someone is begging for a second chance, and these messages are sent every day over two weeks, then having him turn up outside your house!! This is not great behaviour at all. Hopefully he will learn something from this, God knows what he could to do other women in the future. He was stalking and harassing his ex. I think he's lucky getting off with a caution to be honest. I hope the woman is okay.

How many is a few?

I do think that the police often sell a caution as a benign outcome when a conviction is unlikely, without detailing the breath of consequences for that acceptance.

This isn't a mechanism that has been reserved for your friend. It's fairly standard. If you want to start a conversation about the ethics around that or how people should be made more aware of the legal ramifications then I think it would be less complicated to do that without a running apology for your creepy enormous boundary crossing mate.

If you are his employer and he works with children, I hope you have referred to the LADO due to him being subject to a police investigation.

You said he was offered legal representation but declined it.

I spend a lot of time in the mags and crown court. I obviously don’t know the specifics of the case but IME this probably would have been dropped from a stalking charge to a harassment charge and on the face of it, there’s not much doubt he would have been found guilty because he obviously did it.

And for those saying that charges get dropped because of the delays in the court system, this is simply not true. There may be a small number of cases where it’s decided that a prosecution may not be successful because witnesses drop out but in this case they’ll have all the evidence from the mobile phone so they’re unlikely to need live witnesses aside from the officer involved in the case.

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