Did you miss the part where a judge heard the appeal?
Should future employers be warned you were found not guilty in a rape trial??
- Thread starter Hades
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Did you miss the part where a judge heard the appeal?
Except that's the foundation of our justice system. There has to be a line. And that's the line.
Man of Honour
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The appeal was based on whether it was "reasonable and proportionate" to disclose the acquittal. The Supreme Court ruled that the criteria that the disclosing officer used fitted that definition. This ruling is not based on the facts of the rape case itself and therefore if someone else had a similar issue, they wouldn't have the same avenue to appeal.
My point is that people that find themselves in these situations before do not have a very rigorous process of appeal as it would be kept internal to the Police going forward. I don't think this is enough of a safeguard for the rather important consequences it has.
Man of Honour
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Except when it isn't...
Lol true.
I do worry what may come of it, as you've touched - the police are massively at risk due to how many false allegations are made against officers. If you don't mind answering, have you had any yet? I know there's been a massive drop since regular body-cam use.
Soldato
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that's an excellent way of putting it.
it's not that i don't have a moral compass, it's that my moral compass points me to not wanting a world where innocent people can be punished for nothing, and the price i'm prepared to accept for that is that guilty people who have successfully avoided leaving sufficient evidence of their crimes have to be let go, the same way guilty people who manage to keep their crimes hidden from even suspicion by the police, let alone as far as court, get to go free.
it's not an ideal scenario, but the law is there to protect the innocent, not abuse them. and until we have magic mind reading powers to truly determine a persons guilt with 100% certainty that's just how it's going to be. do i like the idea of potential criminals going free? no, but again it can't be truly stopped any more than a person with no previous crimes can be stopped from doing something they regret (every criminal was innocent until their first crime).
Completely agree, and sums up why even though I'm in favour of tough sentences for criminals I cannot support the death penalty.
Making the Police judge, jury and executioner whatever the outcome. I've had experience of the Police in the past, who were *fuming* when I 'got off' dangerous driving and made them look like idiots in the magistrates court because they were outright lying. I then managed to somehow get around 20 producers in the next couple of months because they would pull me over every time they saw me. The Police just cannot be trusted with this kind of responsibility, where they can ruin someone's career when either they are innocent, or the Police and CPS didn't do their job properly.
Man of Honour
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I've had some malicious complaints. One of which which was comically made up had me being served gross misconduct papers for false arrest/excessive force and an investigation that lasted 7 months. This was before BWV, which has massively helped reduce the number of Police complaints as you mentioned. There are people who make a cottage industry of malicious complaints that have lead to them getting a marker so officers must go double crewed with BWV from the start.
Man of Honour
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The Police generally, in my experience do get things right most of the time. But they also get things wrong, and when they do there needs to be independent oversight to make sure the right outcome is reached in the end.
You mean like a jury and judge? I agree totally.
Jesus, that hanging over you for 7 months must have been awful. The last one my step-dad had to deal with before he retired was an allegation of assault. He was actually injured in the arrest attempt when the guy they had on the floor kept smashing his own face off the ground, he put his hand under his head to stop it and received 2 broken bones for his trouble. Luckily it was all on CCTV.
Colleagues of his had allegations of rape, sexual assault etc. but again all were disproven. In one instance the guy was on holiday in Spain!
Man of Honour
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I was thinking more of an Ombudsmen type entity for disclosure issues, but for that to work, I think there needs to be a discussion about perhaps changing the law to make sure there is the right balance of safeguarding vulnerable people vs safeguarding innocent people.
Man of Honour
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The public will do the most bizarre of things. As for length of investigation, if the IOPC are involved, you can easily double that time frame.
I think it's important to remember that this is only showing up on the enhanced dbs checks. As I understand it, these effectively just add 'relevant information' held by local forces.
So if your enhanced check is for working in air traffic control (would guess they use enhanced, random example), then it's unlikely to show up, as a rape case has no relevance to air traffic control.
If you getting a job where you could be placed in a position of responsibility or power over vulnerable adults or children, then it's likely to show up. Even then though, this isn't the barred list so doesn't automatically mean no job, it's then a judgement for the employer involved. Admittedly most would probably avoid the risk.
On balance, I think I lean towards it being a safer approach and on a societal level, a relative handful of people maybe not getting a job as a teacher or carer is a reasonable trade off against protecting potentially vulnerable people. There are other lines of work they can do.
If I was on the receiving end of it as an innocent party and it ruined my teaching career I'd probably feel differently but if all our laws were based on these sort of 'what about' scenarios I think we'd be in a bigger mess in the long run.
So if your enhanced check is for working in air traffic control (would guess they use enhanced, random example), then it's unlikely to show up, as a rape case has no relevance to air traffic control.
If you getting a job where you could be placed in a position of responsibility or power over vulnerable adults or children, then it's likely to show up. Even then though, this isn't the barred list so doesn't automatically mean no job, it's then a judgement for the employer involved. Admittedly most would probably avoid the risk.
On balance, I think I lean towards it being a safer approach and on a societal level, a relative handful of people maybe not getting a job as a teacher or carer is a reasonable trade off against protecting potentially vulnerable people. There are other lines of work they can do.
If I was on the receiving end of it as an innocent party and it ruined my teaching career I'd probably feel differently but if all our laws were based on these sort of 'what about' scenarios I think we'd be in a bigger mess in the long run.
I have added an important word to your post. As is I have stated criminal culpability is one thing but we are dealing with matters of employment here.
The standard used to resolve employment matters is typically the 'civil' standard of evidence (balance of probabilities).
You want to take your former employee to court for wrongful dismisal?..... This is the standard used.
If a police officer faces a disciplinary hearing even if he or she was found not guilty at court on the same evidence this is the standard used.
The 'criminal' burden of proof is (I'm my view correctly) no used to adjudicate employment matters and it would be a totally unsuitable test for judging the suitability of a person to work with children or vulnerable adults.
Then test it in a civil court case because he hasn't been found at fault in one of those either.
He is being judged on a criminal conviction - which he has not received.
It has been tested in a court to the civil burden.
From the previously posted comments from the judge.
The judge hearing this man's appeal against the police disclosure considered the particular circumstances of the case and ruled that the particular circumstances would meet the civil standard of proof. Had the criminal case been one where the defendant was charged but the case collapsed because the complaint was found likely to be lying I suggest the judges comments would have reflected this and the ruling would likely have gone the other way.
I suggest that's it should be axiomatic that if the civil standard is the one used to determine whether someone should / or was correctly dismissed from their job (which it is) that the same standard should be applied to assess the suitability of an applicant especially in the particularly sensitive areas of working with children or vulnerable adults.
And as I pointed out - the CPS are a shower of ****. Want me to cite all the cases recently where they've been shown to be utterly inept?
And as I pointed out - the CPS are a shower of ****. Want me to cite all the cases recently where they've been shown to be utterly inept?