Policing - in brief (21)
01 January 1991
Policing - in brief
artdoc June=1994
* Guildford 4 protest damages: The City of London police paid the
largest damages award in their history when they paid £40,000 to
six protesters in March. The six, who took part in a
demonstration in support of the Guildford Four in 1989, accused
the police of assault, wrongful arrest and false imprisonment
after being held for four hours at Bishopsgate police station.
They were then released without charge. Guardian 12.3.94.
* Holland: tagging: Later this year, the justice department will
start an experiments whereby prisoners will be restricted to
their own homes by electronic monitoring. If they move outside
a given perimeter or tamper with the matchbox-sized electronic
transmitter around their ankle, a alarm goes of at the police
station.
* Spanish Police on murder charges: Two policemen have been
charged with the murder of four people at Nigran, in north-west
Spain. The officers, part of the renamed and reformed Cuerpo
Nacional de Policia, were Manuel Lorenzo and Jesus Vela. Their
victims were a businessman, David Fernandez, his wife, child and
home help. All four had been shot dead after being held at
gunpoint and Mr Fernandez had been forced to hand over 20 million
pesetas (£100,000). Guardian 3.2.94.
* Germany: Amnesty criticises Hamburg police: Amnesty
International has published a 10 page report criticizing the
Hamburg authorities for failing to prosecute or discipline police
officers responsible for ill-treating detainees in their custody.
The officers - members of the E-Schicht, a special police unit
based at police station 16 in Hamburg - were the subject of 32
complaints of ill-treatment during the period 1989 to 1993. None
of these complaints has resulted in officers being charged or
disciplined, even though two of the victims, Lutz Priebe and
Frank Fennel, were subsequently awarded compensation by a Hamburg
court for the injuries they suffered at the hands of the
E-Schicht. In August 1989 Lutz Priebe suffered a broken nose when
an officer at station 16 deliberately struck his face against the
edge of a table. The Hamburg Regional Court concluded that he had
been the victim of deliberate ill-treatment. Frank Fennel was
badly beaten by officers from the same station in July 1991. His
injuries included concussion, multiple bruising and abrasions,
and a bruised kidney, as a result of which he was in hospital for
a week. The same court ruled that Fennel had been `badly and
systematically beaten' by officers who had `taken the law into
their own hands'. Amnesty International, March, 1994.
* Teledrug link: the UK has signed a `Memorandum of
Understanding' with Italy to enable it to join the Teledrug
computer network on illicit drug trafficking. The Teledrug system
comes out of a Ministerial meeting in Rome in 1990 on the change
of information about drugs along the `Balkan Route' (the UK was
not party to this). It came into operation in September 1992
linking terminals in Italy and Turkey to a mainframe computer in
Rome. The UK announced its intention to join the network at the
Ministerial Conference on Drug Trafficking Routes in Rome in May
1993. Greece signed a similar agreement with Italy last year. In
the UK Teledrug will be used by HM Customs and Excise and the
National Criminal Intelligence System. Home Office press release,
10.2.94.
Statewatch Vol 4 no 2, March-April 1994