Policing - in brief (10)
01 September 1996
Belgium-Netherlands deal: Belgian and Dutch police forces along the border will increasingly cooperate on a variety of cross-border crimes. A covenant between the Mid-Brabant police and the Antwerp province police was signed on 5 September. The intention of the agreement is that police investigators of both countries will be free to get in touch and exchange information as they see fit.
UK: police charge press for information: The NUJ has referred the emerging practice of local police forces charging journalists for local crime information to the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS). The NUJ was "outraged" at the plans by Warwickshire police to charge the media 49p a minute for listening to a telephone voicebank. General Secretary John Foster commented: "The union is concerned that this is public information, gathered at public expense, and that it is in the public interest that it should be made available". Warwickshire police have now backed down but other forces continue to charge premium rates. The Journalist, August/September 1996.
UK: New ACPO head calls for DNA samples to be taken from the prison population: The president-elect of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), Mr Ray White the Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys, has called on the Home Secretary for DNA samples to be taken from the entire prison population. Mr White is unhappy with the present law which allows the police to take a DNA sample from those now convicted of offences. But "this does not include those charged before the commencement of the new provisions. I am particularly concerned with the 55,000 or so offenders currently serving terms of imprisonment" he said. Policing Today, September 1996.
UK: International drugs coordinator: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has appoint Mr Derek Plumbly as its first International Drugs Coordinator. He will be in charge of the newly created Drugs and International Crime Department at the FCO and coordinate the work of the Home Office, the Overseas Development Administration and the FCO with overseas governments and international and regional organisation. FCO press release, 1.7.96.
Italy: Held seven years later: "Fair Trials Abroad" are concerned about the case of Afolabi Osu, a black UK national, who is in prison in Italy. Osu was acquitted of drugs charges in 1988 and then moved to Germany with his wife and child in order to escape racist persecution by the Italian police. Unknown to him an appeal was lodged by the state against his acquittal and he was sentenced to 8 years in prison in absentia. The court never notified him of the appeal hearing. Last summer he passed through Italy on return from a holiday. He was held and jailed. An application to the European Court of Human Rights is being prepared.