Lancashire Police are to take no further action against an officer who was unmasked as an award winning blogger who made controversial statemens about government policy on the law.
DC Richard Horton wrote anonymously for two years as "Night Jack" in a blog that decried failings in the police force and Government policy.
The 45-year-old detective constable's identity was exposed after the High Court refused him a temporary injunction to prevent The Times newspaper from naming him.
A spokeswoman for Lancashire Constabulary said that DC Horton, who is an officer with the force's Eastern and Pennine divisions, had been spoken to and received a written warning but would not be disciplined further "unless anything else was to come out".
She added:"We have conducted a full internal investigation and the officer accepts that parts of his public commentary have fallen short of the standards of professional behaviour we expect of our police officers."
Refusing to grant Det Con Horton anonymity at the High Court on Tuesday, Justice Eady said that "blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity".
Justice Eady also ruled that any right of privacy on the part of the blogger would be likely to be outweighed by a countervailing public interest in revealing that a particular police officer had been making such contributions.
The blogger expressed strong opinions on political issues and had criticised a number of ministers.
The Night Jack blog has been taken down. The site's homepage read: "The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available" although some pages were still available through Google "cached" files.
*18th June 2009 Update: Most if not all the the cached Night Jack blogs have now been down.
Here - for the benefit of those who never saw the - are some examples of Night Jack:
An English DetectiveHome Tracks Trolls .Cold Stone
2008 June 72 Comments
by nightjack
We were in some trouble with our partners in the local council. They weren’t feeling very partner agency at all. We were heading for the meeting at council chambers with a couple of very indignant local Councilors (elected), some highly critical local community representatives (self appointed) and a social worker (employed) who was clutching his dossier of damning evidence to his chest with both hands and absolutely pumped up with malignant glee at the prospect of sticking us with it.
I won’t bore you with the details but at the time the council were operating three types of estates. There was all white, all Asian and mixed. It would be fair to say that few people wanted mixed and those Asians who were allocated mixed complained long, loud and frequently. Yes there was racist grafitti, yes there were eggs thrown at windows, yes the family in question complained to the Council, no of course our partners never passed it on to us. No by the time we were aware of it, the Asian family had gone vigilante and now the local white families were complaining to the Police that their kids had been chased by Asian men with iron bars and cricket bats. Soon after that it all became our fault for letting it happen and for locking up the cricket bat wielding victims of racist harassment for affray. It was an elephant trap and we walked into it. There were party politics afoot and word was that the council were preparing to brand us with an R for Racist.
It was against this background that my self and my Sergeant paraded our Caucasian selves on at Town Hall with a protective telephone directory a piece wedged in place. As we walked into the Town Hall, a stone built monument to days of Empire, and up the sweeping red carpeted main stairs, my eyes fell on a white marble statue displayed, pride of place on the mezzanine where the stairs swept past upwards and around it left and right. My eyes discerned at once that it was well carved, female, naked from the waist up, wearing manacles……wearing leg irons…..had the word QUADROON carved in the pedestal. It was a statue that had stood there since the place was built. It’s meaning had long since been lost and for years, I would imagine, nobody had really looked at it or what it meant.
I caught up with chief politician and the social worker after the beat up and blame session as we were all on our way out. I was feeling just a tad malicious.
NJ “That statue on the stairs, how long has it been there?”
Big Council Cheese “Years and years, why, brightens the place up dont you think?”
NJ “Not really no. Given your undoubted and forcefully expressed cultural sensitivity, I am astounded and appalled that you see fit to own and publicly display a statue of what is clearly a female, mixed race, sex slave half naked and in chains.”
It didn’t win us a war, a battle or even a skirmish. The statue was gone within a month. I don’t know if there’s even much of a point in the story except to say that maybe in this area, most of us that throw stones, from all sides of the race politics discussion, not only live in glass houses but tread barefoot upon eggshells and hot coals at the disintegrating edge of oblivion.
I may have overstretched that metaphor.
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A different statue with no chains from → My back pages
How Far Behind The Front Line?
2008 June 64 Comments
by nightjack
Back when I still wore the blue suit of truth (yes it is one of those stories) I would be wheeled out every now and then for various public meetings as a cop with a polished turn of phrase who could think on his feet (sometimes). I could also operate the lap-top with the PowerPoint. There was one Chief Inspector in particular, now sadly departed this vale of tears, who seemed to regard me as his personal good luck charm at such events. He always dragged me along. It was on one such evening at Smallmarket Town Hall, that I faced a question on what I shall refer to as the Blair Conundrum.
We had fielded the usual questions about dog poo, vandalism, parking and why nobody had seen a cop on foot for some weeks. Things were winding down nicely towards the “Thankyou and Goodnight” moment when somebody called out “Why don’t you lock that waster from East 17 up for drugs? It’s a bad example for the kids you know.” There was a grumbling mumble of assent in the hall. The Chief Inspector made one of those throat clearing harrumphing noises and then fixing me with his steely gaze and the faintest hint of a smile uttered the words “Why don’t you explain that one PC Night, you know more about drugs these days than I do.” Cue polite laughter from the crowd, cue mental panic as my brain goes to 7,500 rpm in first gear.
Those of you longer in the tooth may remember the heyday of the popular Walthamstow beat combo “East 17″ and their colourful singer / rapper Brian Harvey. Apparently young Brian had been on the wireless radio spouting on about the wonders of drugs and how he had taken a dozen E’s one night and it did him no harm at all. He had gone on to say that “drugs are cool” and “drugs don’t harm you” (see picture below). My metaphorical tyres squealed on the metaphorical road of coming up with an answer for a few seconds and then I saw it clear.
I went pompous on them.
“Now we all believe in innocent until proven guilty I hope. All we have is someone saying on the radio that they have taken drugs. Now some police officer somewhere might choose to arrest him but I can guarantee you that without some drugs to wave at the court, we have no chance”
“BUT HE ADMITTED IT” said the point maker “ON THE RADIO AND EVERYTHING”
“No, actually he said a silly thing on the radio that he can deny later as a publicity stunt. All we get by arresting him is no prosecution, a waste of time and money and errm more publicity for him. Who remembers Mick Jagger and all that breaking a butterfly on the iron wheel mallarkey?”
General muttering, reluctant nod from point maker and that’s that. Common sense prevails and we get a question about untaxed cars.
The crowd got it. No evidence, no proof, its just a pop star with a record to sell shooting off his mouth.
For what it’s worth I still think that arresting a “celebrity” for drugs offences on the basis of some camera phone footage is also an utter waste of time. Use it as intelligence to stop and search them or raid the house with a warrant and do them for simple possession if that’s what flicks your switch. Personally there are better things for us to spend our time on. I can’t think there are many young people who look at Amy Winehouse or Peter Dougherty and think “Wow, heroin and crack are so good for your health.” To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any “pop stars” actively dealing on the estates in my part of the world either. Whichever way you look at it, busting the current “teen singing sensation” won’t do much to help stop little Dwayne and Amber from getting inducted into the world of smack, crack and meth from their older mates.
I could see that fairly clearly nearly 20 years ago. Nothing has changed.
Some days it really is a bit Lions led by Donkeys.
Mmmmm drugs from → My back pages
The Reform Bunnies (Part 2)
2008 June 51 Comment
by nightjack
Welcome to the Home Office Bulletin on Police Reform for May. Another 4 pages of pdf wonderment. For those of you who never get sad enough to read this stuff, here’s the executive summary
Pensions
There’s a new gender neutral commutation figure coming. I know its gender neutral, problem is that the actuarial stats aren’t still, mustn’t grumble.
Police InjuryAwards
Life long survivor pensions and lump sum to the survivor (discretionary) if the pension is withdrawn).
Minutes of a National Anti Social Behaviour Conference
Jacqui Smith says that she is giving us £225,000 for a national action squad to co-ordinate the drive against the hard core of hard nut cases.
Taser…………………Knife Crime Initiatives
………………Sorry can’t type any more. I am loosing the will to live. There’s a bit on the last page about some ritual abasement type meetings called Regional Efficiency and Productivity Workshops. The unwilling were summoned for some more steered and facilitated work in London, Manchester, Wakefield, Gloucester and Ryton. Delegates were invited to consider how they could further support the delivery of efficiency and productivity gains. The discussion was described as challenging which I read as “It kicked off a bit” I hope it means that the “facilitators” were told some truths along the lines of
“You call it efficiency, we know you mean cost cuts. Look, this, now is about as cheap as you can get it and still call it a Police Force.”
“Efficiency and Productivity are not conjoined. Too much Productivity can really hit you in the Efficiency and it is doing. Not only do you rascals have us recording everything but you cause us to need a bloated back office to deal with all the recording, reporting and compliance stuff that you demand. “
“Listen, you have squeezed us so hard, the pips are squeeking. Stop demanding more.”
There will be a short report in due course. That’ll be a right riveting read.
--
from My back pages
Fletch 08
2008 June 315 Comments
by nightjack
Spoke to an ex-prisoner today, a man who found god in the prison chapel and does appear to have turned his life around insofar as has been drug free for over a decade and he earns an honest living, supporting his family.
He said (and I nodded throughout) “Prison never bothered me. It was easy. I had all my mates there, did my rattle off the hard stuff and then just smoked. Went to the gym, built myself up so when I got out I was harder to catch.” He confirmed that Prison was for him and all his friends, a crime college and that for some offenders, like those involved in drug / gang crimes, prison didn’t even put them out of business whilst they were inside. All but one time when he came out, he went straight back on the heroin and into crime within days. The prospect of Prison was entirely devoid of any deterrent power for him. He offered anecdotal and unsupported opinion that 95% of people in prison were there at least partly because of an involvement with drugs.
“What would deter you?” I asked and his reply surprised me “Brutal community service. Really hard, really tough community service. You would also be undoing some of the harm you have done to your community.”
“What, chain gangs?” said I
“Why not, anything really as long as it is hard and not fun”
From the occasional snippets I get about life in Prison, as long as you are part of whichever clique has the landing “locked down” life is pretty easy. Playstation, X-Box, TV, CD Player, lots of like minded friends to reinforce your world view. Most prisoners quickly develop a detailed knowledge of which buttons they need to press with the staff to get what they want most of the time.There is a thriving black market in drugs, mobile phones, chargers and SIM cards everywhere. Favours are done on the outside for favours inside and visa versa. Prison is clearly not being run to provide any deterrent and if we are to continue to enforce individual human rights, I don’t think prisons can ever be run as a real deterrent. The days of bread and water, hard labour and the suit with arrows are long, long gone.
In 2008, Fletch knows all his rights and entitlements, will sue if he is made to withdraw from heroin and is ringing the rest of the gang every day from his cell on the mobile. He can’t be arsed with playing chess because he has a PS2 in his pad. McKay has been medically retired after he was cornered and beaten to a pulp and Barrowclough is seconded to the Her Majesty’s Prison Inspectorate doing thematic research into the quality of vegetarian meal options.
I am coming round to the view that all prison is good for is containing the dangerous and for giving the rest of us a break from persistent offenders but it is eye wateringly expensive. We should not expect anybody to come out of there a reformed character. That’s not what a modern prison is for but, in the absence of anything else to deter or reform the offender, it may be the only response we have left ourselves.
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As Real as Dixon of Dock Green
from → My back pages
From A Buick 6
2008 June 29
Bo Didley, Police, Policing by nightjack
Well the jury is still out on the Gang of Four rebellion and I strongly suspect that at least one commentator at the Torygraph has been reading my posts. Drop me an e-mail if it’s true. Anyway, enough of that. Gazza is sectioned again, another child dead in London, there’s a bank that needs more cash in case it goes bust, another defendant is running a defence that makes me snort with derision (not a martyrdom video?) oh and the Government are keen to tell us how much our kids should be drinking. Everything is getting a bit Groundhog Day.
In the mean time, I’m going to sit here and ponder the light breeze of change that might be blowing through senior policing at the moment.
A Buick 6
.from → My back pages
What Does The King Say?
2008 June 15 Comments
by nightjack
I have a friend who goes shooting on his own land and takes his son shooting with him. Early on in the process of teaching the little lad the realities of the food chain and estate management, they were out with the air rifle potting some grey squirrels. My friend shot one, it fell from the tree dead as a door nail. His son approached the ex-squirrel, studied it a few seconds and looking up at his Dad with a grin said “Shoot it again Daddy, make it deader.”
Sometimes, it feels like the Government have the same idea regarding the overkill approach. Such is their profligacy with new criminal legislation that it can be confusing just to work out which power, which offences, which process we should be following. You holiday for more than two weeks at the peril of coming back and finding everything changed. It is like every time a crime or disorder problem hits the press, the Home Office despatch a law writer at once to write some new law with specific instructions not to waste time reading anything already in existence. Cue re-invention of wheel excercises that are producing a lot of not very round wheels.
We are clearly short of innovative Policing solutions to the problems caused by drunken youths because this government are keen to give us some new powers in this area.
Hmm lets see, down at the bottom of the bag of tricks with the forgotten tissues and lost Lypsyls, what’s that familiar shape, its
Drunk and Disorderly s91 Criminal Justice Act 1967, disorderly behaviour in a public place when drunk.
Need a bit more for that extra wasted youth, lets see, ahh yes, there with the old boiled sweet stuck to the side its
Drunk and Incapable Section 12 Licensing Act 1872 (?)
Gets very gobby and physical with the reasonable officers telling them to quieten down and move on we have Threatening Behaviour, Disorderly Conduct. Damages something errrm Criminal Damage. That’s the wonderful thing about law, its been around so long that there is already quite a good one for nearly every eventuality.
Arrest youth, transport youth to station, call parents or appropriate adult and here is where you get the first clue. Most parents are mortified, some are totally not arsed and some are the Local Authority and are not paid enough to care. At that point you have a pretty good idea how seriously the youth’s encounter with the bottle will be taken by the responsible adults.
So you are stuck with a youth who keeps getting drunk and Mum / Dad/ Uncle Bob / The Folks at The Care Home aren’t getting Junior back on the straight and sober
Here you go, have an ASBO.
Keep getting convicted again and again and again
Have a CRASBO
I am just scratching the surface here. Tactically I haven’t broken a sweat. There are so many ways to skin this particular cat. I haven’t even started on the ways you can prosecute those selling the booze to the kids.
You can therefore imagine my surprise to read that the Home Office has yet another proposal for tweaking the parenting order powers to allow for fining and or jailing the parents of children who are persistently found drunk. Watch out Tony Blair I say. Just what we need. One thing I will absolutely 100% guarantee is that if this legislation ever hits the statute books, there will be an exemption several miles wide for anyone responsible for children in social care. I will also 100% guarantee that defining and proving “persistently drunk” will be a total paperwork nightmare. I am also pretty sure that the feckless parents will not be improved and the unfortunate parents with children who just don’t care what happens to Ma / Pa will get clobbered.
Oh we also get yet another power to disperse groups of kids and a shiny new offence to arrest for called “persistently possessing alcohol in a public place” or some such.
Outlawing something will not of itself stop it from happening. It is however easy to pass a new law and look like you are doing something. If we are serious about tackling youth alcohol problems, we have the tools already, we have had them for years and years. What we haven’t done is weighed down on the problem. Between Cops, Trading Standards, Courts, Schools and parents we could have put this genie back in the box well before now but it costs money, it takes time and it is thankless work.
In the words of The King “A little less conversation…….”
Apparently Not Illegal Enough Yet from → My back pages
Hail To The Chiefs
2008 May 3118 Comments
by nightjack
Thank you very very much to Temporary Chief Constable Mark Rowley (Surrey) Chief Constable Matt Baggott at Leicestershire, Chief Constable Sir Paul Scott-Lee QPM at West Mids and Chief Constable Christopher Simms at Staffordshire.
I have always been pretty swift to get the boot in where I see hypocrisy and / or cowardice, it behoves me therefore to be as quick at pointing out the good stuff when I see it.
These are the four brave men who have decided to take a hit in the Home Office targets in order to get back to common sense policing. You can read in my blog and many of the others about the desperate situation brought about by NCRS (National Crime Reporting Standards) which has seen us sallying forth to criminalise playground fights, snowball throwing and placcard carrying. Many of you will have formed a belief that we are now Policing by Judge Dredd style crime sweeps looking for crime, any crime, to lock up and arrest for. We are not of course, it just feels like that because if someone, somewhere (usually not a front line officer, often not any sort of officer) can perceive a hint of crime somewhere in the circumstances, there is a requirement to go the full nine yards in investigating it, detecting it and bringing the “offender” to justice.
I wait to see how far reaching this dose of common sense and realism will be in the field but it sounds good and I am hopeful. Surrey won’t stop being a high performing force just because HMIC and the Home Office find it has missed targets and kicked NCRS into the long grass.
It is a long way back. “It’s a long road, it’s a good cause.” With good luck and a following wind, somebody somewhere will soon decide to trial large Inspector led, Sergeant supervised teams supported by operational specialists (Dog / ARV / Traffic / CID). Have a bonfire of the bitty specialist departments and lets see how big we can really make those front line teams. I have a few ideas about those that would not be missed and I may just post about them one of these days. As a starter for 10 if you find you have time to go shopping at lunch, you probably don’t really need that warrant card.
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from → My back pages
I Know It’s Over
2008 May 3019 Comments
by nightjack
Well here we go again with a Civitas Report picked up by the Telegraph into how we are picking on the Middle Classes and failing in our duty to the public by doing what we are told to do by their elected representatives.
Long ago when I walked the beat in Smallmarket, it was enough to come back on a night and find there had been no or little reported crime over the preceding night. We measured our success not in terms of sanctioned detections or arrests, but in terms of low numbers of offences and incidents of disorder. Our job, back then you see, was to prevent crime and keep order.
It really wasn’t rocket science.We ran uniform and plain clothed foot patrol of crime hot spots in the wee small hours. We deployed high visibility style at pub and club chucking out times. We went to the homes of suspected drug dealers and we put the door in. It was simple and honest work keeping Smallmarket reasonably well ordered and tolerably crime free. Seeing crime in single figures per month was a matter of great pride. Having an empty paperwork tray was a realistic ambition. Nobody ever came telling PC Nightjack (or anyone else) that the sanctioned detections were down for the month or that we needed a few more arrests this week. My Sergeant had a team and he knew who we were and what we did. That was part of the skill of being a good Sergeant. We knew that he knew us and he knew our strengths and weaknesses. We worked as a team, socialised as a team and knew each other.
I recall being “paraded on” day one at Smallmarket by my station Inspector. “Now then PC Night” he said (and I listened because back then Inspectors were a thing of real and present terror) “these fixed penalty tickets, the good people of Smallmarket do not like them. I know you young officers like them but I expect you to keep yours in your pocket for the next two years. Are you clear on that?” It was a clear and lawful order and rather than slap and run, I would take the time to find the owner of an offending vehicle and speak to them. Sometimes, most times really, I would be able to give words of advice and sometimes I would report for summons, issue a producer or issue a Vehicle Defect Rectification Notice.
That was the way of the world and I think it was better.
Now lets talk about your MOT
from → My back pages
The Curse of The Green Biro
2008 May 297 Comments
by nightjack
Reading back over my last few posts, well everything since the “Federation Conference Live” blog really, it has been brought to my attention that I have gone a bit “green biro” of late. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, there are a certain number of letters received by public bodies each year that are written in green biro. When you see that green biro writing, it is almost certain that the communication will be a pointless rant of epic proportions and usually anonymous.
If I start getting a bit green biro, let me know. I am trying for elegaic, sepia tinted recollections of a long in the tooth career detective but every now and then, I find myself Fisking. Lord knows Fisking is fun and it’s ridiculously easy to do but I didn’t set out to do that.
I am minded of the words used by Jack Point the Fool in the Gilbert & Sullivan “Yeoman of The Guard”
When they’re offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will -
For he who’d make his fellow-creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill!
A Mark IV Ranting Biro
from → My back pages
Anglican Jihad
2008 May 2918 Comments
by nightjack
So once more unto the breach for the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Nasir-Ali. Who said that the age of the polemic churchman was dead? As you might expect, his piece “Breaking Faith With Britain” has been a bit got at and sensationalised by the sensationalist press.
I thought I should give it a quick read. First thing is, he doesn’t mention the Police at all. Not once. Not even an oblique reference.
His basic thesis is that Christianity was increasingly treated as irrelevant by government (and nearly everyone else) since the 1960’s. The womenfolk started not going to church and the kids went Marxist at University. This sudden catastrophic end of any meaningful role for Christianity was a bad thing. There was no other system of values for society to fall back on except “I’m all right Jack” and “I want it all and I want it now.” He sees the following as destructive to society and stemming from the abandonment of Christianity as a thriving majority religion.
Family units that are not Mum & Dad
Loss of the role of father figure
Abuse of substances
Loss of respect for the human person
Loss of communication between generations and social classes
Without Christianity, he says, you loose the underpinning for dignity of the human person, equality between people, liberty, welfare even hospitality.
He has a point. When society largely started to publicly disbelieve about the man in the sky and that donkeys could fly, there really wasn’t much left in the philosophy of life box except “All property is theft,” Omm, the Maharishi Yogi and various shades of Political and Social Science.
Me, I think the Bishop may have missed a point though. Why did we abandon Christianity? It’s because it was no fun and we could afford a ruinous alternative. In the immortal words of Ian Gillan in “Let Me Out of Heaven” “Up here we look solemn, pray and read extracts from the Bible, every hour on the hour…I said what? Let me out.”
The ruinous alternative was of course adopting the culture and lifestyle of my old friends “The Evil Poor.” They have been with us since time immemorial. Ask the Roman mob, hands out for bread shouting “Civis Romanus sunt.” Ask the residents of Hogarth’s Gin Lane. Ask the Bills, Nancys and Fagins of Dickensian London. There has always been a decent size chunk of society that has wanted nothing to do with Bishop Nasir-Ali, his religion or his morality. They have hung in there despite our best attempts to reform, incarcerate, transport or otherwise convert them. All that was wanted for their belief system to go mainstream was a proper, near unconditional welfare state. We got one and boy oh boy their day has now come and we can all live in their world, by their rules.
Don’t want to lift a hand to be housed? Either be born into money or join the evil poor. You’ll get somewhere to live, not too nice but nice enough and when (not if) you trash it and anything nice within 100 yards of it, we’ll fix it all for you. Don’t want to work a lick? Then be born into money or join the evil poor and we will give you money for nothing. Not a lot of money, but enough to add to the pot from whatever you are doing in the black economy. Nobody is going to come after you for income tax or national insurance. We have built benign conditions for anti-social behaviour and lifestyles to really, really prosper in the hope, (never more than a hope) that nobody would take advantage and that everybody wanted a “nice” home, a “nice” family and a “nice” job. Turns out that given a choice, quite a few people are entirely happy not to make those choices and we have made it possible for them to opt out and throw a big V sign at the rest of us.
The problem is not that we have abandoned Christianity but rather that more and more people are able to get by by adopting the ways of the “evil poor” maybe not wholesale, but bit at a time, a creeping coarsening passed generation unto generation. It is a morality that allows for more sex, more partners, more kids, fewer responsibilities, more lies, fewer consequences, more stuff, more free stuff, more replacement free stuff, not having to care, not having to contribute, being forgiven almost any bad behaviour, having politicians venal enough to allow you to vote for more free stuff forever….I could go on.
I believe it is grounded in a personal conviction in the primacy of the self over everything and everyone. A sort of Me Me Uber Alles. It is un-enlightened self interest and it’s day has come.
The bishop worries about Islam becoming “radical Islam” but he should see that this is just an Islamic response to the same problem his religion is facing.
ends
Kate Breezer, Troll land UK around 2 years, 2 months ago