Bouncers get the right to issue on-the-spot fines
- Thread starter Fruitloop
- Start date
They have a huge raft of powers check it out:
http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police-reform/accpersonpowers
It even comes with it's own badge:
It's soooo wrong, to be honest I think we need a civil liberty camp as much as a climate camp now.
http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police-reform/accpersonpowers
It even comes with it's own badge:
It's soooo wrong, to be honest I think we need a civil liberty camp as much as a climate camp now.
http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police-reform/accpersonpowers
It even comes with it's own badge:
Opps sorry wrong link
CyberRose
أرفع الشفرات
Traffic wardens give out fines, no problem about that (not because I don't drive but just because that's what they do!). The article seems to categorise them in the same light as PCSOs which I also have no problem with issuing fines. Nor do I have a problem with park/city wardens issuing fines for by-laws, in fact I think that's a good idea. The common theme between all these is that they work for the council, a public and accountable organisation.
Giving bouncers the same powers as these is fucking crazy not to mention the fact so many bouncers are just criminal thugs!
Giving bouncers the same powers as these is fucking crazy not to mention the fact so many bouncers are just criminal thugs!
I know a few bouncers who are bnp. Bnp giving out fines
NO2ID have made noises about it, particulary the access to the PNC, but no one listened
Maybe they were too busy being freeman?We will just have to party outside from now on away from the fucking corporate spy clubs.
It would be if it were as described ... but, as usual, the facts are a bit different from the reports.
1. The power to issue "on the spot fines" is in fact a power to issue fixed penalty notices. They are not "on the spot fines" as if someone takes issue with them and wishes to plead not guilty they can simply fill in the relevant bit of the form and ask for a Court appearance.
2. "Bouncers" would, in fact, be (a) licensed by the SIA (which includes training and background checks before a licence is issued) and (b) accredited by a Chief Officer of Police who should both carry out appropriate checks as to (a) and (b) require additional training such as the "Community Safety for Accredited Persons" qualification specifically designed for those accredited with such powers.
3. There would be no direct access to the Police National Computer so far as I am aware from the reports I have read and I cannot see how any such access would be either necessary or permitted. Where the reports of that aspect came from I do not know.
Judging by the original Norwich local paper story they DON'T have PNC access (there was criticism that they may fine someone who should have been nicked because they had a long record they didn't know about) and it is suddenly stated, without explanation, in the midst of the Guardian "Why, Oh why?" piece.
There may be an arrangement in place where they can contact the police with the details of the person they are issuing the FPN to and the police will provide such details as are considered necessary (which usually will be nothing at all as there will either be no trace, there will be no reason why a FPN should not be issued or the police will decide to come and take over dealing with the matter is an FPN is not appropriate for some reason.
Maybe the reports came from an exaggeration of this.
I think there is probably a time and a place for some security staff in some situations to have these sorts of powers to effectively report minor offences without the need to tie up the police unnecessarily ... but I would not have thought it's a particularly useful idea in the context of pubs and pissed up, aggressive lunatics ... (which may well be the case as they have never used it!). Training, oversight and a proper complaints and accountability process are essential, obviously, and there may well be shortfalls there in some instances, but whether or not the principle is or is not useful should not be entirely based on whether it will be done properly.
There is a requirement to provide name and address. If you do not you commit an offence (Schedule 5, para.2 Police Reform Act 2002). In practice what is likely to happen is that they will abandon any attempt to deal with the matter without involving the police who will be called.
There is absolutely no suggestion of this whatsoever. Why not concentrate of the actual facts, which are certainly worthy of debate and criticism, instead of inventing some totally ridiculous scenario that is nothing like what is actually happening?With the scanning of ID its possible to automatically be put through the PNC everytime you want to go to in a club! even if your completely innocent!
Complain about them to the SIA then - there is a list of licensed door staff on the SIA website so you can check and give their licence numbers. If they are unlicensed report them to the SIA / the police / the local authority licensing dept. all of whom can institute proceedings against unlicensed door staff and / or the premises employing them.
1. How likely are Magistrates to find someone not guilty?
2.How much training do they get, compared to a police constable? Do you honestly think this is enough to make difficult decisions regarding the administration of lega punishements?
It's a stupid, stupid idea that undermines the Police and gives far to much power to a raft of petty authortarians.
@DB: I agree with a lot of the above, I don't get why the media confuses fixed penalty notices and 'on the spot fines'. I suspect that past political rhetoric is as much to blame as the media themselves.
I don't have much faith in SIA accreditation, they were properly sprung by panorama for allowing flagrant cheating in their exams, they granted thousands of licences to people who weren't even allowed to work legally in the UK, and SIA licensing from my personal experience is no guarantee that doorstaff etc won't engage in criminal activity. It also suffers from the same problem as the rest of these quangos, in that the people involved often have current or past conflicts of interest in that they are involved in the industries they are supposed to be regulating. The government seems to view this as being desirable in terms of them having 'relevant experience', but all too often it looks like they're putting the wolf in charge of the sheep.
The question of access to the Police National Computer was raised in the magistrates protest to Jack Straw, reported here. They could be wrong but I would have expected that, being magistrates, they would have examined the law pretty carefully.
I don't have much faith in SIA accreditation, they were properly sprung by panorama for allowing flagrant cheating in their exams, they granted thousands of licences to people who weren't even allowed to work legally in the UK, and SIA licensing from my personal experience is no guarantee that doorstaff etc won't engage in criminal activity. It also suffers from the same problem as the rest of these quangos, in that the people involved often have current or past conflicts of interest in that they are involved in the industries they are supposed to be regulating. The government seems to view this as being desirable in terms of them having 'relevant experience', but all too often it looks like they're putting the wolf in charge of the sheep.
The question of access to the Police National Computer was raised in the magistrates protest to Jack Straw, reported here. They could be wrong but I would have expected that, being magistrates, they would have examined the law pretty carefully.
There is a requirement to provide name and address. If you do not you commit an offence (Schedule 5, para.2 Police Reform Act 2002). In practice what is likely to happen is that they will abandon any attempt to deal with the matter without involving the police who will be called.
There is absolutely no suggestion of this whatsoever. Why not concentrate of the actual facts, which are certainly worthy of debate and criticism, instead of inventing some totally ridiculous scenario that is nothing like what is actually happening?
Complain about them to the SIA then - there is a list of licensed door staff on the SIA website so you can check and give their licence numbers. If they are unlicensed report them to the SIA / the police / the local authority licensing dept. all of whom can institute proceedings against unlicensed door staff and / or the premises employing them.
Detective Boy, there are club scanning schemes that link to the PNC. One trialled in Devon for fingerprinting people I can think of from the top of my head.
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
I wonder how likely your typical bouncer will be to take the time to explain to a transgressor the precise nature of their legal rights when issuing a fixed penalty notice
Anyway, no matter what checks and balances are put in place this is a fundamentally terrible idea, just more authoritarian bullshit.
No more likely that they are if (a) the offence was brought before them by the cops arresting and charging someone; (b) the offence was brought before them by the cops summonsing someone or (c) the offence was brought before them by the cops issuing an FPN - the FACTS of the case remain exactly the same.
In fact, they are more likely to acquit as cops, more experienced in recording and giving evidence would be far more likely to provide convincing and complete evidence than accredited persons (it's why it's ALWAYS a good idea to challenge unfair parking tickets and demand personal hearings - parking attendants are absolutely shite at giving evidence and the councils usually throw their hand in rather than expose them to the ignobility of it all ...)
Limited (the door supervisor course is 4 days, the acceredited person course is four days) ... but when you look at how much of the cops training relates specifically to the single function involved, the difference is not that much.
And they are not administering legal punishments - they are making an allegation. It is for the Court to decide (a) has an offence been committed and (b) what the penalty should be unless the person issued the notice accepts guilt and pays the fixed penalty.
This is a legitimate argument. Don't undermine it by exaggerating what the scheme actually represents.
The most fundamental aspect is the public -v- private control of public space and enforcement of criminal law. If we decide that is our issue we must review a whole range of previous decisions - going back through "decriminalised" traffic offences (now including some moving traffic offences as well as parking), through PCSOs, to civilian employees of the police service. Should it only be constables? Or are non-constable employees of a police service OK? Or what about non-constable contractors to a police service?
rikwakefield
Born to be Mild
Bollocks. Bollocks. Bollocks.
There isn't a time and a place for fucking bouncers to be lauding it around like coppers.
It's the police's job to perform duties such as this.
Indeed. Politicians have raised the vision of people being "marched off to the cashpoint" ... but the media have taken that sort of thing and run with it - are they incapable of making the points we are making and pointing out that the politicians are talking bollocks and this is what the situation really is ...
They're not the best ... and like many regulatory authorities they are under resourced, overly bureaucratic and caught up in admin. instead of actually getting off their arses and checking things. To be fair though, maintenance of the exam standards has (quite properly) been delegated by them to the Awarding Bodies (Edexcel, C&G, EDI, NOCN, etc.) and they are not as good as they could be at doing visits either (I work as a consultant for one and we do do such visits (my last bike was fucking nicked doing one in Greenwich a year ago
) but not as many as I would like to see and the SIA never seem to press us to do more. Likewise, the licensing of people not allowed to work in this country was not their responsibility - they did not have the power to check employment status - that is the responsibility of the employer and the issue of an SIA licence was no more proof of right to work here than the issue of a DVLA driving licence to a mini-cab driver (and there was no "danger to the public" aspect as implied by the media - they did carry out the full CRB / foreign background checks - that is an entirely seperate issue. (Are you beginning to realise why ID cards and a single linked database may not be such a bad idea after all now ... 
)It was the muppets association, not professional magistrates! Have you ever seen them at work? To be honest I think we could probably raise a far, far scarier spectre of poorly trained, amateur Magistrates dispensing Justice than anything the door staff and their fixed penalties could be built up into!
I have never heard of any and I cannot conceive of how they would be either necessary or justifiable (in law or practice). I cannot find any reference to any such scheme on the internet. Please link to the scheme you are talking about.
Are you sure you are not getting mixed up with schemes where some nightclubs have installed their own in-house membership schemes, with fingerprint recorded and scanning equipment but absolutely nothing to do with the police or the PNC?
No. It isn't. An "on-the-spot fine" is "You have committed an offence. Give me £80 NOW!". This is an "on-the-spot issue of a bit of paper", which you then have 7 or 14 days to consider and decide whether or not to (a) pay a fixed penalty of £80 (by cheque or card, through post / we / phone system) or (b) decide you are not guilty and request a Court hearing.
Why do you persist in using emotive and hysterical phraseology to scare people? You really don't help either your argument or society generally ...
(Unless you are a Sun or Mail headline writer, in which case it's obviously genetic and I apologise for mocking your affliction ...)
It will be on the Notice issued, the wording of which is tightly prescribed.I wonder how likely your typical bouncer will be to take the time to explain to a transgressor the precise nature of their legal rights when issuing a fixed penalty notice
Where did I say "fucking bouncers" were appropriate? I said "security staff" - I had in mind things like park patrols, shopping mall staff, hospital A&E staff; transport security staff ...
(and the word you're looking for is "lording" ...
)Since the SIA began licensing, all SIA licence holders HAVE been background checked by the SIA (through the CRB system as I understand it).
The principle problem is one of identity ... as we still refuse to have any form of biometric identification in this country pretty much anyone that puts their mind to it can get hold of sufficient documents in any name they like to convince the SIA (or anyone else). (If you want to be sure that licensed door staff don't have any criminal records I take it you support the idea of a robust identification scheme involving biometrics ...
)I was chatting to someone a month ago who'd got in his SIA in an afternoon.
Basically the 'training' firm, that you pay, gives you an answer sheet to take into the exam. He said it was quite cleverly done - the answers were intentionally imperfect.
I knew this went on, but it was interesting to hear it from the horses mouth.
It's better than the old free for all, but the training aspect is effectively optional.
Basically the 'training' firm, that you pay, gives you an answer sheet to take into the exam. He said it was quite cleverly done - the answers were intentionally imperfect.
I knew this went on, but it was interesting to hear it from the horses mouth.
It's better than the old free for all, but the training aspect is effectively optional.
rikwakefield
Born to be Mild
Where did I say "fucking bouncers" were appropriate? I said "security staff" - I had in mind things like park patrols, shopping mall staff, hospital A&E staff; transport security staff ...
(and the word you're looking for is "lording" ...
I apologise. It's been a rough day.
IIRC it was Yeovil in Somerset where there weree going to be compulsory and recorded ID checks to enter certain liscensed premises. I remember thinking at the time of the story that they had cynically chosen a smaller town that does have a little bit of a reputation as a pilot scheme as they were less likely to meet opposition than in a large city.
Personally I boycott pubs with bouncers as far as is possible.
Personally I boycott pubs with bouncers as far as is possible.
I'm well aware it happens ...
It always happened in the old days of SITO - the security industry training association - when it was simply an in-house thing and thier standards were dire. Unfortunately that mind set was never eliminated and has been allowed to creep back. There are several reasons for this.
One is poor quality standards enforcement by SIA or Awarding Bodies and by Awarding Bodies of training providers.
One is competent and professional training providers being undercut by colleges who have access to Learning and Skills Council funding to subsidise learners and who thus provide training at a cheaper price than the private sector can properly do so (lots of the better training providers, many of whom I worked with, have simply thrown the towel in as a result of this) and so the cowboys, wanting to hang on to their share of the market cut corners again and again.
And one (an important one) is that SITO was allowed to portray itself as an Awarding Body when the SIA first came in (it wasn't, thought it had a worryingly close and almost monopolistic association with NOCN) and has now been allowed to effectively simply change it's name and become "Skills for Security", the Security Sector Skills Council responsible for overseeing training qualifications, national occupational standards, etc. in the sector (same address, same people, etc.).
If ANYONE becomes aware of a training organisation acting in such a way they should report the fact to the police / SIA as it is in all our interests to make sure that training standards are maintained.
New Deal Scanda
New Member
Interesting... I ran a article on my blog around 2 weeks ago with concerns about Jobcentre Plus security and the police being misused. I said it wont be long until there being an Unemployment Police. I presume these fines will extend to Jobcentre security? There is one "assault" per a day at the Jobcentre.
Security staff have to have an SIA license, however, it is a sad set of affairs when they have been given this power. Do police have to be sworn in? I say this is a DPA98 and Human Rights violation - what gives them the right to do searches on you? and to fine you? THIS IS OPEN TO A LOT OF ABUSE!
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