Last week on a particular day I had two appointments in my diary. Each appointment was to attend at a Police Station where a Client was to be interviewed about a matter.
The first interview was rather heavy going. The Police had raided an address and found ten 9 oz bars of cannabis and over 3,000 ecstasy tablets. My Client was not a frequent visitor to the address but had been present when the raid had taken place. I dealt with his interview and ultimately a decision was made to charge him with various counts of possession with intent to supply drugs. This is a serious matter and if convicted the Client can expect to go to prison for a number of years.
My second appointment of the day took me to a Police Station that I can only describe as 'quaint'. The Police Station backs directly on to the community library, and according to the reports that I have been given the Police Station is only open on a part time basis. My Client had been accused of attempted theft and attended at the Police Station by appointment. It was fortunate that the arrest was by appointment because a Custody Sergeant had been drafted in for this particular arrest to open up the custody suite of the 'quaint' Police Station to allow my Client to be interviewed. The allegation of attempted theft was nearly six months old, and to be honest I have no idea why the Police even bothered to investigate the matter. The allegation was that my Client had been in a shop, he had been seen to walk up to a bottle of vodka, pick it up and look as if he was going to put it in to bag he was holding, a member of staff then shouted out, "Oi!", and my Client put the bottle back on the shelf. After giving his account in interview of a complete denial by Client was released without charge.
I get to deal with all sorts of crime from attempted thefts like the one mentioned above to murder. I never really know what I will be doing by the end of a day when I start. This particular day is just one example of how I can be called on to deal with the most simple of matters, and then in the same day deal with a very grave matter.
1 comment:
Don't blame us for the 'shoplifting' example above. It's all due to the National Crime Recording Standards and if the assistant thought that what your client did was an attempted theft, then we have to crime it and investigate it as such (I know, it's incredible). We've got paper shufflers in offices sending us memos, asking what's happening and hassling us to arrest the suspect. I suspect that the O.I.C. in that case had sat on it, hoping they'd move to a different department or offload the 'crime' some other way and therefore not have to face the embarrassment of questioning someone about it!
The lunatics have taken over, be afraid..........
I advise you solicitors, when dealing with examples such as this, to ask the O.I.C. if any crime has actually occurred or if they've just had to comply with N.C.R.S.
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