Policing - new material (81)
01 July 2007
Softening the blow, Gary Mason. Police Review December 2006/January 2007, pp. 14-17. December 2006/January 2007, pp. 14-17. Mason's article on baton rounds notes "the fourteenth death of a person due to his having been shot by an impact round designed to deliver non-lethal use of force" in the United States before moving on to discuss how "police management across the Atlantic are keen to research the experience of other countries to try and reduce the toll of deaths and serious injuries." In the course of his survey he observes that "the record for impact rounds is 135 projectiles on one suspect" before reassuring his reader that "Forces in the US now agree that is unacceptable."
Police station law and practice update, Ed Cape. Legal Action February 2007, pp9-13. Cape considers police station practice, with sections on policy and legislation, Legal Aid and contracting and case law.
Prävention und ihre Abgründe [The abysmal depths of preventative policing]. Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP, 86 (1/2007), ISSN 0932-5409, pp 112, euro 7.50. This issue of the civil German liberty journal CILIP outlines the logic and civil liberties implications of preventative policing. Articles analyse, with examples of legal developments and changing police practices, how the logic of prevention necessarily leads to indiscriminate data collection and control and surveillance in everyday life. Foreigners are targeted as security authorities are ascribing characteristics to certain people and groups on the grounds of their "risk" potential, and anti-terrorist measures are leading to deportations without having established the criminal involvement of those who are accused. The public relations aspect of this shift in policing strategies is also highlighted, and community policing programmes have shown that despite promises for community consultation, a direct participation of affected groups in such councils does not exist. A closer look at the military aspect of preventative policing shows that military and policing tasks are being conflated and the German army is being transformed to engage in "anti-terrorist" and "humanistic" intervention world-wide, and for the deployment of armed forces internally - not only to deal with catastrophic incidents but also to take over policing tasks. Non-thematic articles criticise the German practice of extradition to Turkey, where people are facing possible torture, and informs us of the first and so far only terrorism case brought to trial by the Swiss public prosecution, which ended mainly in acquittals - nothing remained of the allegations of supporting al-Qaeda and forming a criminal organisation. Available from: info@cilip.de, English summaries: http://www.cilip.de/ausgabe/86/summar86.htm
Police misconduct and the law, Stephen Cragg, Tony Murphy & Heather Williams. Legal Action February 2007, pp13-18. This article reviews developments in police misconduct law.
Suicide after arrest, Graeme McLagan. Police Review 30.3.07, pp. 24-25. This article starts from an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) statistic recording the deaths of 200 people by suicide shortly after they are released from prison. It also notes the 28 deaths in custody recorded by the IPCC for 2005-2006 and observes that "although the number of those committing suicide after police questioning are probably much higher, these cases receive practically no publicity."