Poll: Released from custody without charge

[Haggisman]

That what all uninsured drivers think till they have a major crash with a very expensive car or cause injurys to someone and get sued for many thousands of pounds for the rest of there life..

It's at that point they declare themselves bankrupt and get away virtually scot free...

Say they were arrested at 19:00 on day 1. It takes a while to get them to custody and then booked in. Custody clock starts at 20:00.

Police still need to get a statement from the aggrieved before interview. For whatever reason they can't get hold of the aggrieved until the morning. So 07:00 comes around and they've been in custody for 11 hours already. They get the statement which takes say 3 hours including allocation of officers, travel, writing the statement and adding it to the system. We're now at 14 hours on the PACE clock. It takes a couple of hours for the solicitor to turn up and the interview takes and hour. We're at 17 hours. Another 2.5 hours is taken up by calling CPS Direct for advice where they say they won't authorise any charges and 30 mins to process the release. There we have it: 20 hours in custody.

I take it that if it turns out you're completely innocent you can bill the police for those 20 hours...

 

[Sankari]

I'm 22 and getting quoted for £2,500 still.

That's insane. Might as well buy different car every year and leave it uninsured!

 

[Will]

I take it that if it turns out you're completely innocent you can bill the police for those 20 hours...

Nope, its just hard luck I'm afraid, way the law of the land works. The 24 hour limit to detention (unless an extension is authorised) has plenty of safeguards if you go and read PACE. The court is where guilt or innocence is established by the way, the police just put together evidence to try and prove the former.

Say they were arrested at 19:00 on day 1. It takes a while to get them to custody and then booked in. Custody clock starts at 20:00.

Police still need to get a statement from the aggrieved before interview. For whatever reason they can't get hold of the aggrieved until the morning. So 07:00 comes around and they've been in custody for 11 hours already. They get the statement which takes say 3 hours including allocation of officers, travel, writing the statement and adding it to the system. We're now at 14 hours on the PACE clock. It takes a couple of hours for the solicitor to turn up and the interview takes and hour. We're at 17 hours. Another 2.5 hours is taken up by calling CPS Direct for advice where they say they won't authorise any charges and 30 mins to process the release. There we have it: 20 hours in custody.

You've missed several other possible stages...

The telephone call to CPS Direct 'may' drop out for no obvious reason, after being 'on hold' for at least 1 hour. It never drops out within the first 5 minutes, but the likelihood of it dropping out increases exponentially with every half hour waiting.

The CPS lawyer 'may' say the PCD documents haven't been received even when they've been sent through the electronic interface several times and are showing as 'Sent'.

The prisoner 'may' fake chest pains and get taken to hospital thinking it'll delay things and we'll let him go without charge, not realising that the PACE clock stops whilst he's there, and he's coming straight back to custody afterwards once the Doctors say there's nothing wrong with him. Two frontline officers will guard him at the hospital continuously.

The PACE Inspector 'may' throw a wobbly and ring to say he's considering bailing the suspect at 3am on a Saturday morning, as he can't understand why the response can't get the lengthy secondary enquiries and interview done themselves then and there. Cue argument between supervision about the legitimacy of bedding someone down until morning. The PACE Inspector will be down the custody block drinking coffee and planning his next golfing trip in between calls, whilst the grizzled response Inspector will be at a major incident getting soaked and grumping at everyone over the radio.

The prisoner 'may' need to see a nurse or Doctor for a minor welfare issue and one will be summonsed from a private contractor, who will take 4 hours to send one despite what the contract says about one being on site within the hour, and then the prisoner will be 12th in the queue to see the nurse at the centralised custody facility holding upwards of 35 prisoners. Nothing can happen until after then. He'll eventually be given two paracetomol for a headache and declared fit to be interviewed and detained after a 3 hour delay to proceedings.

There 'may' be vital CCTV to assist the investigation but the person who owns the camera system (bought from Argos in 1998 and reliant upon VCR tapes, and with the image quality of a broken kaleidoscope if footage is viewed from anything other than the monitor attached to the original recorder) won't know how to operate it, and will tell the police that their Uncle Billy is coming back from Prestatyn on Thursday next week and might be able to do it then, if we can just hang on a bit. Otherwise, what footage there is will not play on the computer systems available to police despite being of clear evidential value.

An Investigation Team DS 'may' call the response Officers who arrested the suspect several times, not to offer assistance or guidance on how to deal with the job at hand, but to establish ways in which this particular job lies outside of the remit of his own particular department, and should in fact by dealt with by the domestic abuse or violent offences team rather than his own team with a separate 'Vehicle Crime' section.

The prisoner 'may' have a mangy dog that needs to be fed and watered by someone, so some officers will have to take time out from gathering evidence in order to tend to this.

Not that such things happen often of course

 

[h4rm0ny]

Is it the Met or some other Force? If it's the Met it takes them a little while to create the evidence.