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Bobbies on the Beat can help stop – and solve – crimes
INEVITABLY, the killing of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella has attracted a high profile treatment in the media.
Equally inevitably, the police – under pressure – are undoubtedly conducting an intensive search for witnesses with clear memories that can stand the test of cross examination in court.
An investigation of this kind is naturally complex.
The detective in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Vic Rae, complicated matters on Monday when he injected what some might regard as high politics in a radio interview, saying the recent Lords ruling that witnesses should not be allowed to give evidence anonymously might have made people more reluctant to give information in this case.
Later, another officer appeared to retract this point of view, possibly under pressure from more media savvy senior officers at Scotland Yard.
Justice Minister Jack Straw is now manoeuvring a new law through the Commons that will sanction the anonymity of witnesses.
It is likely to end up as a rushed piece of legislation with unintended consequences harmful to the due process of law, as several senior barristers are warning.
It is not so much the principle of anonymity that can be easily faulted – although Scottish courts do not permit it – but its application, as police and prosecutors attempt to speed up the passage of cases through the courts. In recent years, the number of anonymous witnesses appearing in cases has risen.
The brutal killing of young Ben Kinsella, as well as that of the 17-year-old Somalian, Sharma’arke Hassan in Camden Town a month ago highlights the difficulty of reaching out to witnesses.
Since the 1990s at least three murders have occurred in Camden where a failure to obtain sound witness evidence has handicapped the police.
By accident, the police may have contributed to this by failing to successfully round up witnesses when they were available at the Scala club in King’s Cross – involving the murders of Wajahat Sheikh six years ago and Daniel Ross in 2006.
Similarly, hundreds of clubbers at a bar in Camden Town in the 1990s, where Ronald Hinkson was stabbed to death, were allowed to go home before being questioned.
The case of the fatal stabbing this week underscores another lack – the old fashioned Bobby on the Beat.
If police began to pound the streets again, they would know their areas and the people who live in them.
A Bobby on the Beat in this case, for instance, could well come up with the sort of names that help to solve a case.
This sort of old-fashioned policing cannot be beaten.
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