How Did Police Get It Wrong?

[youngmafbog]

The answer is simple, it's Dorset Police who have to be one of the most incompetent forces, sorry services,in the UK. And I speak from experience.

When will heads roll over this bunch f incompetents? All they seem capable of is trapping motorists for speeding and even then under dubious circumstances. What a useless shower.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5115381/How-police-Gaia-Pope-investigation-wrong.html#comments

[melv16]

Why did the police name the 3 members of the family?
If I were them I'd sue the backside off them.

[Mamyalynne]

It's difficult to imagine how they got it so wrong.

[nailit]

How did police get it so wrong??
I wonder??
Call me a sceptic!

[chrissa1]

God. What a mess!!!

[Buenchico]

I'm no great defender of the police but I have to admit that, IN THE FIRST INSTANCE, the police got it RIGHT.

As an analogy, if the parents of a very young child reported them missing, the police MUST immediately consider the possibility that the child had come to harm at the hands of one, or both, parents. (That's simply because it's happened in the past). So, while of course carrying out other enquiries, they MUST question the parents as possible crime suspects. It would be madness not to do so.

Therefore, when Gaia Pope went missing, the police were OBLIGED to consider anyone who'd been with her shortly before her disappearance as possible crime suspects.

However it's at that stage that things seemed to go wrong. If a police officer knows the identity and address of a possible suspect of a crime then he is NOT allowed to arrest them unless he's satisfied that they won't attend a police station voluntarily. [s24(4), Serious Crime and Security Act 2005].

So, unless the family members had refused requests to attend a police station to be interviewed, their arrests were UNLAWFUL.

It's not entirely clear though as to how their names came into the public domain. I've not seen any statement from the police which actually named them, so perhaps the press got their names from social media (or even through those family members making public statements to protest their innocence). In which case the police couldn't be held to blame for them being named in the media.

[Gromit]

On the other thread I called this put as sheer incompetence.

// police had searched the house again, disconnecting the plumbing beneath her sinks and unwrapping a Christmas pudding she'd recently made. //

Meanwhile Gaia’s body was a few yards from where her clothes had been found on the cliff top. Bumbling is an under statement.

[ToraToraTora]

It's sad YMB, I too have first hand experience of the uselessness of Dorset plod. Thy irony is that I know a few old coppers from when they were a police force and they too cringe with embarrassment at what they have become. Too busy sitting in the back of a van or nicking shopkeepers for un PC displays etc to do any actual crime fighting.

[mikey4444]

In my experience, the Police are hardly ever found to be guilty, or even a bit wanting. There will be a hullabaloo for a day or so, and then it will all be forgotten about, in the usual way.

Remember Jean Charles de Menezes ?

[davegosling]

"All they seem capable of is trapping motorists for speeding"

They are by no means unique in that, though, the South Yorkshire constabulary being a prime example on the M1.

[youngmafbog]

Nothing wrong in stopping speeding motorists but not to the exclusivity of everything else!

I suspect you are right Mickey, they will just hold out until it blows over and then just continue as normal.