The Fair Cop Report on the Capture of the Police is out

[gardenbird48]

www.faircop.org.uk/politicised-police-are-misrepresenting-the-law-new-report-reveals/

I haven’t read the whole thing yet but looking at the headings - yikes!

And I’m two glasses of wine in and trying to safely operate the mandolin so need to focus for now :-)

Thanks. I'll look at this tomorrow

Very funny but extremely scary .

Found an error. Brexit bus promised £350million per week, not £350k.

gardenbird it took me a few moments to realise you weren't trying to be play a particularly tricky pavan...

Very funny but extremely scary

I’m finding it difficult to read (currently on p16 out of 70).

I will persist, but I think jumping around from Alice, to 1984 to The Arabian Nights is (unfortunately) distracting. Important facts are buried in amongst flights of fancy and unclear metaphors.

Which is very sad, because as I started to read, I had hoped to find a clear (even if scathing) document that I could share.

I massively admire what Harry Miller and Fair Cop have achieved, and have no objections to using humour, but it’s essential that the message doesn’t get lost.

I should add that perhaps I’m being picky. I have been meaning to write to the president of my profession’s governing body and would love a crystal clear outline of exactly what’s going wrong in Stonewall. Alison Bailey’s statement is damning, but I hoped to find something that would make the wider legal situation and the institutional capture clear. This isn’t it.

More feedback, in case the author is reading.

I hadn’t realised previously that the Hate Crime/Hate Incident activity came directly from the College of Policing and is not based on any actual law. The fact that the College of Policing is effectively inventing and prosecuting the law as it wants it to be, and not as it is, is huge.

Back to my governing body, which has introduced a social media policy, based around this version: where transgender identity is highlighted as an area subjected to hate-crime laws. I had tried to work out where that came from and found it in the CPS guidance, so concluded it must be official and guided/backed up in law somewhere.

Possibly this is obvious to those closely involved with this situation. I know Fair Cop includes lawyers and former police officers, but I had missed this aspect. I realise that might be what the legal case is about, but that aspect was less clear than all the information about PC Gul’s dubious training.

If the College of Policing is making up the law, I think that needs to be spelled out with absolute clarity in words that everyone can follow. It should also, perhaps, be front and centre in any document explaining where things are going wrong.

@SonEtLumiere

I also think the report is poor and the 350k/350M error is unforgivable. It makes a mockery of the whole thing.

I don’t think it is a report so much as a pamphlet. It needs radical edit, and resetting

Exactly. There’s really important stuff in there, but it has been written and presented in a way that completely undermines the credibility of the content. It will allow people who disagree to dismiss it and will struggle to convince anyone currently on the fence or unaware.

Apart from anything else, most people will not read every word of something like this, so it needs to be produced in such a way that someone can easily find information and reads bits of it. You look at the contents page and it is completely impossible to do that. It’s just not clear.

Time for an overhaul of the CPS, what a shower.

Shame the report isn't top drawer.

Keir Starmer stepped down as head of CPS is 2013. I wonder if he had any responsibility for the overriding of women's rights regards to EA and the mess the CPS has gotten itself into. It had to start somewhere

That was a frustrating read. So much important information hidden away amidst a torrent of humour, sarcasm, irony and the rest. I can see that much effort has been put into this but if I (as a literate reader interested in the issue) gave up half way through in exasperation, others just won't bother. It's self indulgent.
They need a rewrite. Focus on the outrageous facts about the police's partial policing and cosying up to political lobby groups and drop all the hyperbole, wit and sarcasm.

Oh, it's very much a Pamphlet isn't it. One of those ones strange people used to hand out as I walked around London that I read with a confused look on my face....

Yes. Needs a re-write. Sticking to the point, get rid of all the 'humour'.

I had glanced at the contents page but it was rather opaque so had marked it to read when I had time, but these reviews are disappointing. This needs to be presented in a clear factual way with no distractions. Though it perhaps fits with their ‘Nah, nah, we know something you don’t know!’ approach to news releases.

Fair Cop are dealing with profoundly important issues and have put their money where there mouth is. They are awaiting an appeal which will matter to all of us. They have my huge respect for pursuing this and I don’t feel I need to agree with everyone’s approach. I also recognise it is very stressful for all involved and this can be relieved by humour. But I fear it undermines their credibility when talking to others who are new to the debate.

The danger that must be avoided is in coming across as simply a conspiracy theorist.

Echoing others, that report is terrible. It does contain important information but it needs to be presented in a more professional way if they want it to be taken seriously. If they are reading this I strongly suggest they withdraw the report and re-edit - I'm sure they will know people who are used to producing professional reports. I fear this publication massively undermines them as an organisation, and the important message they are trying to pass on.

Yes I’m frustrated by it too. In my job I write a lot of reports with the aim of influencing public policy and was going for something I could send to my MP but I couldn’t send this

The tone is all wrong; reports like this are not the place for sarcasm or humour or superiority. I’m genuinely not sure who the intended audience is

The design is clearly good & expensive to boot but the editing needs a lot of work. There’s a ton of good stuff in here but it’s completely lost

@AsTreesWalking

gardenbird it took me a few moments to realise you weren't trying to be play a particularly tricky pavan...

My fingers survived intact - that thing scares the life out of me - but the super fresh gluten free fish and chips were worth it.

Disappointing to hear that the report is not as clear as it needs to be - it does undermine the work they have clearly put in. I’ll read in a bit and hope to glean its good points.

I've had a quick look and it seems they've gone for a sort of Sunday Times magazine reportage style, taking the facts and constructing them into a story with maximum dramatic effect.

I agree with pp that a report works best when it's just facts. Let journalists interpret it and lead the reader by adding in the Alice in Wonderland/Orwell references. A report should be an impartial record of facts and stats that speak for themselves.

Meant to add, I don't like to criticise and appreciate all the incredibly hard work FC have done/are doing at high personal cost. Thanks to them for continuing with this.

Yes - Fair Cop has achieved so much and at a huge cost. That’s why I want this report to properly reflect that & not give detractors easy opportunities to dismiss it

@HazzatheOwl

Flagging this thread up for you - useful constructive criticism. Don't take your eye off the prize. The end game has to be a report people take seriously, that's been properly fact-checked, not "aspiring to be Private Eye but missing the target" attempts at satire. I say that as someone who contributed to your funding because I believe in what you're trying to do.

@AbsintheFriends

Meant to add, I don't like to criticise and appreciate all the incredibly hard work FC have done/are doing at high personal cost. Thanks to them for continuing with this.

Absolutely this!

Agree with all the previous comments. You have to come to the report with a lot of existing knowledge to made head or tail of it.

@AnyOldPrion

I hadn’t realised previously that the Hate Crime/Hate Incident activity came directly from the College of Policing and is not based on any actual law. The fact that the College of Policing is effectively inventing and prosecuting the law as it wants it to be, and not as it is, is huge.

Hate crime legislation is law. Hate incident recording came from the Royal College of Policing after the inquiry following Stephen Lawrence's murder. But even before that the police have always kept details of allegations which may not result in charges, or which didn't meet the threshold for criminality and in very limited circumstances this information could be included in an enhanced DBS check. This is an important safeguarding measure - if someone has been accused of several sexual offences, or been reported for dubious sexual behavior which perhaps didn't quite meet the threshold for a criminal charge (or for which there wasn't enough evidence to charge) then that information I think probably should be passed on if someone applied for a job working with children or vulnerable adults. All the policing college guidelines introduced was that should allegations be made which relate to one of the protected strands then it would be recorded as a hate incident. But wall that really did was give it a name, this information would have still often have been recorded, possibly as an incident of suspected racist or transphobic harassment or something.

The reason for this was to allow the police to build a pattern of behaviour. So say for example someone from the far right decided to attack a person of colour, or someone transphobic beat up their transgender neighbour - it would not only be useful to both the police and prosecution had this person previously been reported for transphobic or racist incidents, even if never charged, and it would be seen as an absolute scandal if those accusations had been ignored and no record was kept of them.

For me, I think there's a strong argument that unless incidents were of a violent or sexual nature then perhaps all information held by police should be destroyed at the end of any investigation. But I think it would be a safeguarding risk if someone who had been reported for sexual offences but never charged was able to go and work in a school and the police were prevented from telling their potential employers about the information they hold. I find it very worrying that this is something Fair Cop seem to be trying to compromise, largely because of one man's fury about an admittedly over the top police response.