Fair Cop Court of Appeal 8-10 March

[Spero]

Please save the date! This is such an important hearing for freedom of speech, particularly around the issues of sex and gender.

The hearing will be for 1 1/2 days some time between 8-10 March, we don't have an exact listing yet.

Hopefully there will be some live tweeting.

Do support if you can.

twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1361820204649639951?s=20

Can anyone tell me the name of the 'Lady Judge'? Just for interest.

@Manderleyagain

nauticant and ereshkigalangcleg that's exactly it. There was an awful lot of 'they went to court to get them to take out two words lmao' but it doesn't matter because it's one step. It's actually quite difficult to describe sometimes, but a judge agreed that sometimes male has to mean male, and in some contexts the fact a person is male is more important than how they perceive themself. Well the judge agreed the interim change to the guidence and granted the full hearing at least.

This being recognised in court bit by bit will be how the whole thing is picked apart. Not in the pages of academic journals, not on twitter, but in court. It's ridiculous it got that far and will cost so much money and time but so be it.

This, and the more cases we win, the greater likelihood of authorities deciding to avoid the trouble and expense and just stick to the actual law in the first place.

Did anyone catch that?

Yeah, that was where the "unreal" came in. Treating this situation of people complaining about the general writing of someone who doesn't even know the complainer as the same as targetted harassment.

Can anyone tell me the name of the 'Lady Judge'? Just for interest.

Lady Justice Simler, according to the stream.

thanks

@nauticant

I suspect Manderleyagain that that's in the nature of an appeal court. The punch-up happened in the lower tier court, and now the appeal court judges' job is to dig deep into what was decided and whether it can be upheld.

Ah that's interesting thanks.

Ahh I see!

So X writes something on twitter. X does not know Y.

Y complains [that they feel harrassed/personally attacked]

Judge says - is Y to be treated as seriously as someone who is in frot of X at the time X says the thing and is so potentially more seriously affected.

Is that it?

Is that it?

Yes, it seemed "unreal" that such a situation was in danger of escalating to an actual crime, which was the justification for keeping the records.

...and ... we're back in the room.

They're back - Twitter thread starts twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1369649852477562892?s=19

To me it seems (from reading the tweets rather than watching) that the CoP are trying to use the “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to fear” argument as a defence here. Which, as Professor Slocombe said has a wider cone t within justice/policing policy.

And yes, the attempts by the same poster to once again tie anyone who disagrees with their ideology to the alt right, 4chan etc is really tiresome.

I'd summarise the CoP case as being "we collect this data, nothing is done with it, and therefore there can be no adverse effects, but if there were, it was because of the big boy who did it and ran away".

@Thenagainmaybetheydont

Ahh I see!

So X writes something on twitter. X does not know Y.

Y complains [that they feel harrassed/personally attacked]

Judge says - is Y to be treated as seriously as someone who is in frot of X at the time X says the thing and is so potentially more seriously affected.

Is that it?

I seem to remember someone posting on a thread a while back wrt to something similar to this.

Iirc, I think they had experienced DA and were saying that the police had recorded a series of incidents against them that didn't result in the police being able to take action against the abusive partner after the individual incidents, but were able to be used at a later date to show a pattern of abuse.

That to me seems to be a more proportionate and sensible use of this non-crime recording, not for hurty feelz on social media.

If the police are contacting/going to people's place of work, then it has huge repercussions. Also if 'it' (not a crime) comes up on a police check when applying for a job.

@RozWatching

I am somewhat surprised that the QC defending the College of Policing is the same QC that defended FPFW in the Census case and he does seem to be tying himself in knots on this one.

I think garbage in, garbage out applies here.

The Bar operates on a cab rank rule - if you are free and competent to do that kind of case then you are supposed to take it.

They can still cherry pick in chambers though, can't they? Perhaps JC wants the experience???? He's a very prominent QC

JC: First is principle of relativity, identified by CoA in Bridges. The more intrusive the act complained of, the more precise and specific must be the law to justify it.

Wouldn't that be a Fair Cop argument? that the act was intrusive and the law was not specific?

High powered legal professionals are usually happy to take cases they're unlikely to win. Where they get annoyed is if it's a hopeless case and they have to stand up in court (or elsewhere) and put forward arguments they know are laughable and they know that everyone else looking on knows are laughable.

I'd have thought investigating and arguing both sides of an argument would be pretty interesting for a barrister. Also you need to understand the other side to argue back, so taking both cases would mean less work than it being done by 2 separate people.

The comments made this morning by the judge and counsel about perception based recording versus stigmatisation are very interesting.

I have seen this in the wild and how it directly affects the language used in police records. Of course there are times when perception based recording is right and valuable but I saw it in circumstances when it was completely inappropriate and actually counter-productive. I did some volunteering which involved liaising with the police and being trained on a new case management system which both the volunteers and police had access to. The very purpose of bringing in the voluntary group and the work for which the system was set up was to resolve issues between individuals which the police had found intractable ie resolutions without blame, judgment or criminal outcomes for anyone. Yet the CMS did not use neutral labels like Party A or Party B . From the outset one person was entered into the system as 'Victim', where they remained and their details were recorded in a box with that title. Not even 'Complainant'.

Categorisation does lead to stigmatisation even if the 'offender' is not labelled as such.

John Stuart Mill: He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion

Fairly limp argument - "this can't have a chilling effect, because it's merely a police record kept purely for intelligence purposes".

Except it clearly isn't kept purely for intelligence purposes - it's not confidential, and it can be revealed to others.

And remember the previous judge - "we've never had a Stasi", etc. I'm sure all their files were "purely for intelligence purposes" and didn't have a chilling effect.

I think the QC is really missing a trick in not pointing out how all kinds of non-crime information can be recorded about people and potentially revealed in a DBS check. Some political activists have files inches thick and have never been convicted of anything. I think there's strong grounds for looking at how and why police retain information across the board, but this isn't where I would start.

Yes, I agree. Is this info actually shown in a DBS check, though? Is it not held in a sort of special 'intelligence' file?

They can be disclosed under an enhanced DBS check.

@nauticant

John Stuart Mill: He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion

If we are citing JSM:

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant..."