| Police lied to persuade CCTV staff to monitor drink-drive suspects Singer Antigua Joe cleared of drink-driving after CCTV operators given false informationPolice were criticised today for inventing intelligence to persuade civilian CCTV operators to snoop on suspected drink-drivers outside pubs.Officers in Devon were said to have regularly asked operators to watch for people who might be over the drink-drive limit by making up false information about them.Campaign group Liberty said the disclosure was a reminder that there was scope for CCTV cameras to be abused. Adrian Sanders, the Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, said the practice was unacceptable. "There are strict guidelines between the sharing of intelligence between police and other agencies and similar controls with what happens as a result of sharing that intelligence," he said.The practice was revealed by the case of John Joseph, 54, of Torbay, after he parked his car outside a pub in 2007. A police officer asked CCTV operators to watch Joseph, also known as calypso, reggae and soca singer and performance poet Antigua Joe, who was later arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and put in handcuffs and leg restraints. A breath test proved negative.Joseph was awarded £17,500 compensation after complaining about his arrest. A police standards investigation rejected Joseph's allegation that he was targeted because of his race. But a report into the case flagged up an admission by one officer involved that he invented intelligence about Joseph to get the CCTV operators to watch him."To get the council CCTV control room personnel to watch the vehicle he [the police officer] would have to give them a good reason for doing so. In order to do this he had told them he knew the occupant very well and knew he would be drinking," the report said."[The officer] admitted this was invented by him and a lie. He went on to say that he and his colleagues targeted vehicles outside public houses and regularly persuaded CCTV operators to watch vehicles by inventing intelligence."Joseph was charged with resisting arrest and a public order offence but cleared on both counts. He was held for nine hours after his arrest in 2007. The report said Joseph's detention was unlawful.A complaint against the officer of "falsehood and prevarication by making a false report to CCTV operators" was upheld.A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police's professional standards department said: "Mr Joseph did make a complaint against police following his arrest. Elements of his complaints were found to be proven and a number of officers received a range of sanctions as a result."The force refused to comment on the use of CCTV.PoliceSteven Morrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Rapper who shot at crowd jailed A rapper on YouTube who acted out his violent lyrics when he fired at random at a crowd in north London is jailed for 11 years. bbc.co.uk |
Saudi prince guilty of murdering servant in London hotel Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud, faces a life sentence for beating and strangling his servant in a London hotel. telegraph.co.uk |
Ed Miliband's New Labour economics | Eamonn Butler In his speech to the CBI Ed Miliband has said Labour's business strategy will be different, but it looks a lot like Gordon Brown'sHaving told Andrew Marr that "the era of New Labour has passed", Ed Miliband was surprisingly kind to the project when he addressed business leaders today. New Labour recognised the importance of economic efficiency as well as social justice, of wealth creation as well as the distribution of wealth, he told the CBI."Enterprise and job creation are fundamental to the good economy and good society, and I will lead a party that understands that at its core," he said. It would be pro-business (the CBI loved that, naturally) – but "in a different way".I wonder if it will. Of course, when you talk to the employers' trade union you have to be nice about business and employers. But is there a real change under the skin of Labour? Is there even a real change under the skin of Ed Miliband?His solutions sounded – well, distinctly Brownian. A bit of subsidy here, a little tax rebate there, a support somewhere else, and firmer regulation all over.And, of course, a Miliband administration would seek to "create jobs in the industries of the future". Whatever they are. If you or I could predict what the industries of the future were, we'd be billionaires. I'm not quite sure how Miliband proposes to identify them.Indeed, it all took me back to the Wilson government's attempts at "picking winners". That economic "strategy" was based on the absurd idea that a few distant government politicians and officials knew what we should be investing in better than the millions of specialists, entrepreneurs and financiers whose careers and livelihoods depended on betting correctly on the future.All the more surprising that Miliband thinks he can identify "the industries of the future" when he believes his predecessors got it wrong. They engineered, he told the CBI, an over-reliance on the financial services sector, which left us painfully exposed when the whole thing fell in ruins. Manufacturing, he argued, deserved more emphasis, and "government needs to step in". And Britain should be going for the high-skill jobs, not the grunt work. (I thought that pitching us more towards high-end skills and away from metal-bashing was what Blair and Brown had in mind when they boosted the financial sector. This version sounds rather like "the white heat of the technological revolution" all over again.)So a Miliband government would "step in" to force the banks to lend to small businesses, and so on and so on. There's no obvious end to it.But if I ran a manufacturing business and government offered to "step in", I'd run a mile. I'd remember the scores of little schemes and incentives and tax allowances that Gordon Brown extended to business, hoping to push it where he thought it should go, and all the distortion and confusion and form-filling that they produced. But here is Miliband promising more of the same – new schemes for job training, encouraging employers to raise the skills base, and so on. Re-skilling Britain may be a worthy objective, but it's more likely to be achieved by officials and politicians butting out, cutting the burden of regulation and taxation, and letting business people get on with the wealth-creation job that they know far better than any government ever will.Ed MilibandEconomic policyLabourConfederation of British Industry (CBI)EconomicsEamonn Butlerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
David Cameron promises 'new economic dynamism' in a speech to the CBI, the Prime Minister appeals to business leaders to create the jobs Britain needs to recover from the recession. telegraph.co.uk |