You are in:
I Am The Law
In the same week that one of the country's leading police chiefs claimed that government policy was damaging public confidence in the justice system comes one of the first investigations into Britain's new "accredited persons" - council appointed individuals who can act as judge, jury and executioner for a growing range of minor offences.
Ross Clark lists a series of horror stories in the Spectator: The mother threatened with a £75 fine when her four year old dropped a sausage roll on the pavement; the woman who dropped a cigarette, and was not only fined 75 quid but had her portrait plastered on the local newspaper as a warning to others; the eleven year old boy fined when an envelope bearing his name and address was discovered near a waste heap.
Clark also writes of his own brush with these quasi-policemen characters, whose powers to demand personal details and punish citizens with fines were once restricted to police forces. In this case, the only functioning staff on a Tyneside metro turned out to be a bunch of bull-necked thugs whose job it was was to extract fines from passengers prevented from buying tickets by understaffing elsewhere.
These tales of Labour "punishment freakery" are surreal and disturbing: Doubtless many EURSOC readers have had their own experience at the hands of Labour-backed wheel clampers, litter wardens and rubbish weighers. But Clark notes that many of these so-called accredited persons are employed not by the state but by private companies, who are in turn paid by councils according to how many fines they hand out. So it's in these companies' interest to find "offenders" to shake down, which might explain why litter bins and parking spaces have become so scarce in the towns where the new sheriffs rule.
Once again, Labour is displaying its perverted marriage of extremist capitalism and control freak Marxism.
Councils are handing over policing of the streets to the worst sort of robber baron rip-off merchants, who concentrate their talent for extortion on the weak, rather than focus on the real problem of anti-social behaviour that blights British towns. Many of the men employed by these organisations are no better than mobsters.
Doubtless the numerous CDs and files carrying personal details that have "gone missing" from government offices have ended up in the hands of companies like this, who can use the information to target the vulnerable. One favoured tactic we've heard of is an old trick used by the corrupt forces of Third World nations: Demanding a smaller "on the spot" fine from the frightened victim, warning that if he doesn't cough up the £50 there and then, he could face a costly court appearance.
Many of us, we hope, would challenge these bullies - but like conmen everywhere, they rely on the fears of those with weaker wills.
Law and order in Britain is crumbling. The relationship of police officers to citizens and to the law has been evolved over decades, even centuries. In most cases, we knew where we stood with the law and if we didn't, we were aware that our rights entitled us to a fair hearing and legal assistance. Now the powers of the police are being blurred with those of a growing army of "citizen enforcers", whose duties and legal force expand daily.
New "crimes" are being invented weekly; shady new operatives, paid by the scalp like bounty hunters, are being introduced to police them.
How can the government expect people to respect law and order as it oversees this meltdown?
