A few decades ago, when working as a Probation Officer in England, part of my role was to prosecute breaches of Community Service Orders and Probation Orders in the Magistrates Courts.
Here's how it goes: a chap (statistically, its usually chaps, not totties,) commits an offence. He would be very unlucky indeed to be caught. When someone is described as a "first offender" it is more accurate to say that this is the first time he has been caught. So he will go on to commit more offences, becoming increasingly more careless, or until someone dobs him in. Don't believe all that stuff in TV dramas about clever insightful police - that's entertainment, not real life. The police don't detect anything - they wait for someone to tell them who dun it, and now, I understand, they put up pages on social media requesting information about the offence. Anyway, when your man eventually arrives in Court, charged with an index offence and a string of other offences that he has asked to be "taken into consideration" (T.I.C.s - they assist the police clear-up rate), he pleads guilty in order to get the discount for an early guilty plea, the case goes off for reports, and your man then does his best to persuade the Probation Officer tasked with writing the Pre Sentence Report, as it was called, that he is the real victim here and that he made a mistake. He is never bad, wrong, cruel, greedy, vicious, or a scofflaw, but he did make a mistake and will never do it again if he is given a chance to redeem himself, he has a girlfriend/wife, several children, a flat, a job to go to and is in treatment for drugs/alcohol. The Magistrates, who have read this sort of thing more times than they care to remember,
are not legally qualified, and are advised by the Clerk to the Court, who is so qualified, on the law relating to the case and of the sentencing options available to them. The offender, now legally known as the defendant, would be really, really unlucky to receive a custodial sentence (as the prisons are full and the courts have strict guidance to limit the numbers sentenced to imprisonment), and will get an absolute or conditional discharge, or a fine, or Probation Order, with or without conditions - like live in a Probation hostel. If his offence is deemed imprisonable he may receive a Community Service Order as an alternative to that sentence of imprisonment. Or a Pick and Mix of Orders and fines. Then, job done, Magistrates, Clerk, Crown Prosecution Service and Police, hand the offender over to the Probation Officer.
Once, on Saturday morning Court duty, when there's only a skeleton staff, I had to transport the offender to a Probation hostel without an escort. He was pleasant enough, but as we drew up at traffic lights, he opened the car door and was away on his toes. Should the offender fail to comply with the terms of his Court Order, the Probation Officer's job is to summons him back to Court and ask the Magistrate to revoke the order and deal with him for the original offence as if that Order had never been made. All sorts of sentencing nonsense then ensues: maybe a fine and continue with the Order, maybe more hours of unpaid work, maybe a telling off. They never pull a prison sentence on a first breach. Maybe a third. If the offender really wants nothing to do with the probation service, he will not comply with the order and then not turn up at Court for the breach hearing. The prosecuting probation officer will then ask the magistrates for a warrant for the offender's arrest and production before the next available court. The magistrates sign the warrant which is then sent to the police. Who, almost invariably, ignore it. Even when they know where the chap lives and the chap is actually living there, as opposed to living with his girlfriend and claiming double benefits. The police have a hierarchy of importance and urgency which they apply to stuff arriving in their inbox. And warrants to bring offenders to court for breaching a Court Order are way down that hierarchy. Even if the Court Order was made for offences deemed so serious that the defendant stood in danger of imprisonment at his first hearing. Much more fun to race down the motorway at 120 miles per hour, deploy stingers, break doors down and plant drugs behind the telly and shout hey sarge, look what I've found!
So I was not at all surprised to learn that the arrest warrant issued for Valdo Calocane after he failed to attend Court in September 2022 had never been executed. They are just low priority. In June 2023 Valdo Calocane then fatally stabbed three people in the street, obeying the voices in his head that had instructed him to kill these strangers in order to avoid harm coming to his family. He then used the van belonging to one of his victims to escape. A police chase ensued until Mr. Calocane drove the van into three more people, causing injuries. Had the warrant issued nine months prior been executed, it is possible the tragedy could have been averted, as he might have received a sentence of imprisonment for the offence in respect of which the warrant was issued (an assault on a police officer as he was being conveyed to a mental health facility), or, as Nottinghamshire Police's Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin said: " an arrest might have triggered a route back into mental health services, but as we have seen from his previous encounters with those services, it seems unlikely that he would have engaged in this process." Well, that's alright, then, nothing to see here, move along now please.
An investigation by the police watchdog has concluded officers following Mr. Calocane in the van could not have foreseen he would drive at pedestrians. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said its three-month review had not identified any conduct or performance issues in relation to the incident. Once again, that's alright, nothing to see here, move along now please.
Mr. Calocane was given a hospital order after he admitted that he had committed manslaughter whilst suffering from diminished responsibility in consequence of his mental ill health. He will be detained at a high-security hospital, very probably for the rest of his life, as sentencing judge, Mr. Justice Turner stated. His sentencing remarks are readily available. He quoted from the psychiatric report prepared by Dr McSweeney:
“ He was under the false impression that his thoughts and actions were under the control of artificial intelligence and that his family may be in grave danger. By definition, a person experiencing acute psychosis is not able to accurately test reality or distinguish reality from an abnormal perception. It seems likely that Mr Calocane’s decision-making was largely governed by his psychotic experiences.
“Mr Calocane has an established diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. This is a chronic and enduring psychotic mental illness. His illness will never be "cured”, and he will require long term, very cautious management with antipsychotic medication and appropriate psychological and supportive interventions (almost certainly for the remainder of his life).”
“ He was under the false impression that his thoughts and actions were under the control of artificial intelligence and that his family may be in grave danger. By definition, a person experiencing acute psychosis is not able to accurately test reality or distinguish reality from an abnormal perception. It seems likely that Mr Calocane’s decision-making was largely governed by his psychotic experiences.
“Mr Calocane has an established diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. This is a chronic and enduring psychotic mental illness. His illness will never be "cured”, and he will require long term, very cautious management with antipsychotic medication and appropriate psychological and supportive interventions (almost certainly for the remainder of his life).”
This was not enough for the bereaved families, and once again we have been treated to *kymadeupnewsandfilth whipping up anti-Christian emotions. It is not enough that the perpetrator was seriously mentally unwell, nor that the police could have avoided this tragedy had they acted timeously on an arrest warrant, nor that they failed to stop the van before Mr Calocane drove into three pedestrians. Nope, the bereaved wanted a murder charge and they feel seriously let down. What would have been the outcome of a murder charge? An expensive trial as Mr. Calocane would have been advised to plead not guilty. He would not have been convicted as he was clearly too ill to have formed the requisite mens rea for murder. For goodness sake, the poor chap had even gone to M15 headquarters in London to ask them to stop messing with his mind and thought processes.
I seriously think that we should hear much less from the bereaved in these matters. It is ill informed and unhelpful.
It is not victim justice, but victim vengeance, orchestrated by *kymadeupnewsandfilth. And Mr.Calocane's case was just so telegenic - three white victims, two of them pretty young University students, killed by a black man of ferocious appearance - the optics were just so wonderful, darling.
Here's mr ishmael, writing on the 24th January 2011:
The target, in these quarters, of more invective than any other single subject is skymadeupnewsandfilth. Murdoch - and his repulsive stooges, from Larry Lamb and Kelvin McKenzie to Tony Blair - has, in my opinion, contributed more to Ruin than any other single individual or institution. Murdoch has coarsened the public discourse so severely that it may never recover, has cheapened traditional British values - far beyond the cessation of deference, this vulgar man has devalued human life, trivialised suffering and mocked fairness. Gotcha! he gloated, the cunt, as Argentinian conscripted teenagers drowned in the South Atlantic, no patriot, he, neither Aussie nor Brit, assuming US citizenship for business reasons, marrying a chink for same, what a fucking monster. And first through the back door of Number Ten, after the Coalition Coup, giving his Filth Agenda to the inbred, fishfaced mutant, Cameron.... Anybody come in here telling me that former unelected prime minister Snot is somehow deeper in villainy, more ruinous than Murdoch, well they can go and fuck themselves for Ruin's servants.
.............................................................................
More sardonic wit and biting cynicism from mr ishmael in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected by editor mr verge.
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.
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7 comments:
We have been through this before. If someone hurt one of mine I'd be after them with a two-by-four. Put them down and stamp their liver out. And that's why we shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a legal process involving our own as victims. We're sad, we're angry, we're confused and on the edge of violence ourselves. The law should be dished out by cold reason and weighed evidence.
I listened to the sentencing of this bloke - it was on R5 - and I thought the judge was just the right chap. He was a bit boring, tediously detailed, and careful to follow his frameworks. And a chap who is obviously tonto will go somewhere which will keep us safe from him and maybe medical science will come to his aid one day. And if it doesn't, he'll still do no more harm to anyone else.
NB Compare and contrast, as Mr White used to say, this with what happened in Alabama last week.
Its a tough call, Mr mongoose. Do you birch the bastard within and inch of his life to redeem him, or try to understand and resolve what led him to this deed. A thankless task as Mrs I recounts with the evidence of how the system kicks the can.
As I age, I'm leaning towards Marxism. Hard to compress into a few words or one sentence; but the balance between capital and labour is now seriously out of kilter. It probably always was so.
Not one for mass surveillance of the law abiding, however, since the police became the praetorian guard of the great and the good, rather than keeping the Peelian principals, to protect the public, this kinda shit will carry on. The police rely on public informants gathering evidence for them, rather than collecting the evidence themselves. Reports from the public, of suspects already on watch lists, are more often than not ignored. Time to remove the PCCs and Uni educated, Dyke Chief Constables, stop pandering to minority feelings, treat everyone equally and do some proper police work.
Bring an end to ‘care in the community’ and treat these unfortunates, the mentally ill, as we would anyone suffering illness, Mr Mike.
Yes the balance is gone, time to fuck off corporate lobbying of Parliament and bring in direct democracy, after mr mongoose has been Dictator for one year.
Well, that is it, mr mike. I wouldn't want redemption for somebody who hurt one of mine; I'd want Alabama justice. The whole idea of impact statements is a weasel's cop-out.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, mr inmate, but there isn't enough piano-wire in the world to get it done in just a year.
That Alabama business was some shit, and no mistake. The poor bastard took 22 minutes to die in agony in an untested execution method. They blamed him for holding his breath and thus resisting the nitrogen gas. He'd previously been the target of a botched judicial execution, when the executioners couldn't find a vein and kept jabbing the needle into his muscle. He declined to make a fist to assist in his own death. They are saying it was a great success and they are going to do it again. This is really no way for a civilised nation to behave, especially a nation that purports to be Christian. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ said: "You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ but I tell you, do not resist attacks from an evil person. If someone slaps you on the right check, turn to them the other cheek also."
At least Kenneth Eugene Smith's cruel death has livened the debate about whether it is ethical for a state to perform judicial murder.
Congratulations on your conversion, mr mike.
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