An unnamed West Yorkshire police officer has managed to attempt to pervert the course of justice by getting himself summonsed for driving an untaxed vehicle, when he accidentally put his own details on a form instead of those of the alleged miscreant, reports the Daily Mail.
Members of West Yorkshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit (RPU) took to Twitter to mock another member of their team who appears to have put his own name on a form rather than the real offender.
I’m pretty sure that a humourless American prosecutor would seize on this as obstruction of justice by wrongly reporting yourself as the ‘perp’, and to be fair, it does seem to have all the necessary elements of causing wasteful employment of police time in UK law.
Our wonderful mini plea-bargain system of fixed penalty notices in the UK allows you to buy off a prosecution, or go to Court and challenge the basis of the ticket and risk conviction.
Whilst the UK may seem more and more like East Germany as time goes by, witness recent police action on free speech, it is heartening that the police are managing to boost their summons rates in a way that cuts out the unfortunate middleman, like the Armenian Orthodox Priest in Soviet Russia who, having a conspiracy beaten out of him by Stalin’s NKVD, managed to name as his co-conspirators every member of his congregation that he had buried in the past 3 years, thus enabling his tormentors to fill their quota with ‘real’ people. At least for now, this is a laughing matter. Should Comrade Yezhov‘s admirers take power, it might not be so nice.
Is this really the week to be criticizing American prosecutors for imaginary misdeeds?
Of course not.
There are far too many real misdeeds of American prosecutors to be concerned with.
But point taken. Kettle/pot etc.
There was a moment recently when the worst driver in Ireland, with literally hundreds of violations on record, was [Polish for driver’s license].
Sometimes incompetence is not a bad thing.
Better the incompetent British “justice” machine – than the efficient Federal American “Justice” Department with its 90+ conviction rate (often for imagery “crimes”) and savage punishments (endless years in an American prison) – the Founding Fathers would be horrified.
Or, vastly WORSE, the Soviet system.
One defense of this: You speak of a 90%+ conviction rate as if the number alone condemns the process. When I was practicing criminal defense, that’s approximately the same percentage of my clients who were clearly and without question guilty of committing the crimes of which they were accused. Most criminal cases are obvious and simple and boring, and the police are generally very competent at documenting evidence. I never had a client convicted who protested his innocence to the end. (Not counting the DWI’s who always said “I wasn’t that drunk!”)
Your point about imaginary crimes remains valid, however. The drug arrests alone made up close to 35% of my client list.
Almost but not quite on-topic:
Saw The Death of Stalin tonight. Quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen in a decade. Can’t recommend it enough.