The Defence Brief

Notts police encourage women to report non-crimes for investigation You may recall that a couple of months ago the new Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police announced that she would be encouragingwomen to report acts of misogyny to the police for investigation , regardless of whether the actions being reported were actual crimes or not. The force, which is dealing with a £54M budget cut, has axed its city division and is expected to cut 400 police officers from its ranks over the next three-years, has trained some police officers to deal with investigations into allegations of misogyny. I’m not a detective but I’m unclear exactly how you investigate a misogynistic assault differently from a regular assault – maybe you can enlighten me on the differences in evidence likely to be found in the two situations? This successful policy has seen twenty investigations launched, which resulted in two arrests – both for offences that would have been investigated (or should ...

Acquittals don't necessarily mean the shadow of a rape allegation disappears The Court of Appeal, led by the Master of the Rolls, published its judgment in the case of Regina (R) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police & Another a few days ago. While the title of the case may have non-lawyers reaching for the back button to escape a boring legal discussion, I beg you to hold fire just a moment because this is one of those cases that just might impact on your life one day. In Greater Manchester Police (sorry I’m not typing the whole case name out every time – maybe I should call it Peter’s case, since that’s the name of the Chief in question… on second thoughts that’s probably too silly even for me), the court considered an appeal from the High Court against the dismissal of R’s claim for judicial review. The Greater Manchester Police case began when R was accused of rape – he was put on trial and acquitted. For the moment, we know no more about him o...

Dominic Littlewood, a presenter on Fake Britain I'm taking a break from my usual diet of drink driving law to talk about search warrants and the presence of TV cameras when they are executed. Last night I watched Fake Britain, a TV show on the BBC that follows trading standards officers as they investigate various fake products – all sorts of things seem to be caught up in this definition from “fake” houses (where the house is supposed to have a Passivhaus rating but doesn’t) to substandard fairy lights, knock-off DVDs and fake designer jewellery. On this episode the film crew attended a family home looking for a woman who they suspected was selling fake Pandora jewellery. The trading standards officer had a warrant to search and was accompanied by police officers. Nobody was home but a window had been left open so the police officers entered through the window then unlocked the front door allowing the trading standards officers and, it seemed the camera ...