cops using anti-social behaviour laws against ticket touts

[Pickman's model]

I'm not sure that is the case. In the cases you mention, I do not think that there is any evidence that the police deliberately and knowingly acted in excess of their powers, knowing that they would lose any later civil action. What there have been (and will continue to be) are cases where the police seek to establish the boundaries of a particular law - that can only be done by bringing cases and taking actions that could be covered by the law and seeing what the Courts make of them. Once the Courts have set the boundaries, the police would be on very dangerous ground if they deliberately act beyond them in future cases as not only would there be scope for civil damages (which officers try to avoid anyway as such losses have a detrimental affect on their careers and professional reputations) but there may even be individual prosecution or civil suit for malfeasance in public office, a very old common law offence which is making a comeback over the last few years and which is a very powerful "backstop" against out and out improper police activity.

(Boundaries are usually set by the police pushing them out by the way, as there are very few situations in which anyone would have sufficient interest, motivation or legal standing to take a case arguing that police are interpreting their powers too narrowly!! So the fact that in these cases the police are always pushing the boundaries should not necessarily be taken as demonstrating overly robust policing, it's just that we never hear of cases in which they have been too weak as they simply don't exist, something which we should always remember when we hear case after case from the bad guys, going on about how badly they have been treated and we forget that there would very, very rarely be any case by a victim going on about how badly they have been treated!!)

in the mexican embassy case, the compensation and apology were for unlawful arrest. you'd hope that officers were able to tell the difference between properly arresting someone and doing it wrong. equally, the ability of officers to comply with section 2 of pace during the course of stop and search is something which has exercised the courts: yet i can't recall a search in which the proper legal procedures were followed until i pointed them out. and this is after there was a report in the npia digest last year about this precise issue. as for cases in which victims talk about how badly they were treated, i'd remind you of the awful case in canning town where that young lad was murdered.

 

[detective-boy]

for example, making people sign on every day at a police station, setting curfews, preventing people from going to certain areas. while these may not formally be punishments they certainly act as such.

They can only be applied by the police without any Court involvement as bail conditions and as you say they are not legally punishments as such. They should always strike a balance between what is necessary to prevent the problem that is anticipated if they are not imposed and any actual "punishment" to the suspect in terms of actual damage to their interests (such as preventing them going to work, as opposed to simply inconveniencing them). Any bail conditions imposed by police can be appealed to a Magistrates Court (even pre-charge).

There are lots of cases (the vast, vast majority) in which the imposition of conditions represents an entirely appropriate half-way house between no conditions at all and detaining in custody, so to take away the power would have a massive detrimental effect on the working of our criminal justice system.

On a related subject, people (and the media particularly) often view arrest and bail as being tantamount to proof that someone has done something wrong. That leads to all sorts of problems in society and the ability of the police to properly investigate alleged offences: we must move away from this position and realise that there is absolutely no requirement for you to have done anything wrong at all to be quite lawfully arrested and released on police bail pending further investigation - it is simply that the only way the facts can be established is by investigation, that investigation inevitably involves speaking to suspects, searching houses, etc. and all that takes time and, in order to ensure that evidence is not lost, may well involve arrests and bail conditions. (The same can also be said of being charged too, though by that stage the CPS evidential test is such that the numbers of entirely innocent people charged is a lot lower than it used to be on the old prima facie case test.) Being arrested, bailed, or even charged should NOT be taken as evidence that you have done anything wrong at all.

 

[detective-boy]

in the mexican embassy case, the compensation and apology were for unlawful arrest.

There are lots of cases for unlawful arrest, many of which are founded on technical issues. There are very, very few which relate to situations in which officers have arrested someone knowing that they have no power to do so - that would lead to criminal liability for various offences as well as civil liability and the police force would not be standing behind any officer doing that.

I agree that there are lots of problems with individual officers making mistakes in how they exercise their powers (some of which is a function of the level of technical knowledge now required of them, some of which is related to poor continuation training and some of which is simply the result of them having so many different things to remember all about and no time at all to research / consult about the details before having to make a decision in many cases). There are also some (I am sure we would disagree about how many) who knowingly more or less routinely fail to properly exercise their powers. That is simply a matter of poor discipline and supervision and it is something which needs to be addressed. One of main arguments though, is that if we are to get anywhere with this demand we must make sure our critcism is proportionate and justified - one very good reason for not immediately extrapolating a couple of for instances into a national trend).

as for cases in which victims talk about how badly they were treated, i'd remind you of the awful case in canning town where that young lad was murdered.

That is one of the more serious failings I had in mind ... but we must bear in mind that we have to somehow square the circle. Every time we better protect a victim, more suspects get arrested and investigated more thoroughly, and perhaps held in custody or on more stringent bail conditions whilst that happens. Every time we more leniently approach the suspect, believing their initial denials, not arresting them until we have loads and loads of incontrovertible evidence, allowing them to remain on bail with few or no conditions (or even listening to their mitigation and sentencing leniently in cases where they are convicted), we create more opportunities for more offences to be committed, more victims to be victimised or for previous victims to be further harassed and attacked.

The single, simple problem with criminal law (everyone's, not just ours) is that it is an imperfect human system which is trying to swiftly establish the absolute truth. That is just impossible. We may as well wish for the moon on a stick. We must learn to live with the fact that sometimes (almost always!) our best attempts will fail to pitch things right, especially at the outset of an investigation. I'm sorry, but that just is life!