[regularfry]

> The unit will also be focused on influencing online behaviour by site owners, service providers and consumers through education, prevention and enforcement activity, and providing offenders where appropriate with opportunities to accept restorative justice.

Er... is that implying that a police unit is being given judicial powers?

[Blahah]

They already have them.. with fines and cautions. You can take those judgements to the judicial branch for appeal, but the initial power lies with the police.

[regularfry]

Yeah, this is true. I can't help but wonder what, exactly, this press release is referring to.

[harrytuttle]

Well we're fucked then. The police are not domain experts on the law. They are the halfwit broken outsourcing company.

[UVB-76]

If you disagree with a penalty issued by the police, you can appeal to the judicial branch.

Allowing the police to deal with certain minor infractions themselves is far more efficient than the alternative; ordering every offender to appear before a magistrates' court even for the most minor infraction, such as a speeding ticket.

[harrytuttle]

You'd think but the two penalties I've been issued by the police which were speeding and talking on a phone whilst driving were wrong. I wasn't doing either. The first one was trickery by the officer who persuaded me to admit to it as it's be easier. The second, i was actually scratching my head after chicken pox.

Both of those i had to appeal and won instantly when talking to the magistrate.

Allowing these morons to issue fines and penalties for more complicated issues such as in this case is a very bad idea.

[Silhouette]

If you disagree with a penalty issued by the police, you can appeal to the judicial branch.

This is a fine principle provided that someone innocent who defends themselves successfully in court will then be compensated so they don't lose out in any way. The reality appears to be that for things like minor traffic offences, you can wind up spending more time and far more money travelling to have your day in court than you would have lost if you just paid up under protest, and you might also be risking a higher penalty if the court does find you guilty of exactly what you were previously charged with.

With motoring offences there is also the points system to consider, so it might be worth going to court for that reason. However, generally someone prosecuted but found not guilty in the UK doesn't seem to get any sort of compensation for even actual financial losses they incur defending themselves, never mind the value of their lost time or anything to make up for the obvious distress for an extended period that going to court in these cases is likely to cause.

It's rather like the small claims track. In principle, it's a worthy public service. In practice, for a professional with a full time job and family commitments who is working without expert advice because the point is to avoid involving expensive lawyers in low-value cases, the time just to figure out how to file against someone without jeopardizing your case before it's even started is prohibitive.

[UVB-76]

Unfortunately, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Defending yourself against an accusation will always be costly.

I take comfort in the fact that the authorities very rarely make completely baseless accusations. There are certainly cases in which officers were mistaken, there are mitigating circumstances, or you can avoid punishment on a technicality, but I can't think of any instances in which authorities have been caught issuing vexatious fixed penalty notices.

[Silhouette]

Unfortunately, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Defending yourself against an accusation will always be costly.

Why must it always be costly? It is a perfectly rational alternative policy to bring a smaller number of prosecutions, and to compensate defendants for their costs, wasted time and distress, if a prosecution fails.

I take comfort in the fact that the authorities very rarely make completely baseless accusations.

You might like to look up some of the published data about the proportion of appeals that succeed against things like local-authority-issued parking tickets and ANPR-based congestion charges. It happens all the time, and erroneous charges aren't even close to the kind of isolated incidents you seem to believe they are.

As a matter of fact, there have been plenty of stories of deliberate policies to issue penalties aggressively (and sometimes outright unlawfully), but this doesn't really matter to the victims anyway. Whether it was malicious on the part of the authorities or their enforcement people just got duped as in the cloning case you mentioned makes no difference at all to an innocent third party who gets slapped with a penalty notice they didn't deserve.

[UVB-76]

> Why must it always be costly? It is a perfectly rational alternative policy to bring a smaller number of prosecutions, and to compensate defendants for their costs, wasted time and distress, if a prosecution fails.

I'm not well versed in the details, but I understand you can reclaim certain costs incurred in defending yourself in such cases.

It is, alas, completely impracticable to cover all costs, as many of the costs (compensation for the distress caused, time spent worrying about the case, etc.) are non-pecuniary.

Hence defending an accusation will always be costly. No one is ever going to come out of a court case, even when proven innocent, thinking the whole experience had a net positive impact on their life.

> You might like to look up some of the published data about the proportion of appeals that succeed against things like local-authority-issued parking tickets and ANPR-based congestion charges. It happens all the time, and erroneous charges aren't even close to the kind of isolated incidents you seem to believe they are.

That's what I was referring to in the subsequent qualification. People routinely get off the hook for such infractions on technicalities, but that doesn't render the initial accusation baseless.

Generally speaking, the person will have been at the location on the given date, doing something or other that gave the authority good reason to issue them with a fine.

If they were not, it is usually a reasonable misunderstanding (e.g. cloned plates, stolen car, taken without owner's consent, ANPR system mis-read a plate) and relatively straightforward to clear up.

> Whether it was malicious on the part of the authorities or their enforcement people just got duped as in the cloning case you mentioned makes no difference at all to an innocent third party who gets slapped with a penalty notice they didn't deserve.

What else are you going to do? Stop issuing penalties for motoring offences full-stop because a tiny percentage of vehicles on the road are stolen, or taken without the owners' consent, or have cloned plates, and thus issuing a penalty to the owner will stress them out?

[tristanj]

The City of London has a unique legal position that lets type of thing happen. If you look into this corporation's history it will make much more sense.