Attacked by security guard - police blaming me!

Attacked by security guard - police blaming me!

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Discussion

Butter Face

30,191 posts

159 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Anyone seen Vince Fox around?

funkyrobot

18,789 posts

227 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Personally, I see this as enforcement of my belief that you should do everything possible to avoid any sort of trouble and subsequent legal action. Even if you know you are in the right, it looks like it can be hard to prove this if things don't go to plan in court.

I see this as a bit like riding a bicycle. You know you have rights on the road, and there are plenty of times where a vehicle driver is wrong. However, do you stubbornly maintain your belief you are right and put yourself in danger, or do you bite your lip, back off and let the moron get on with it? I go with the latter.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I know Milkround accepts his actions. However, this whole mess could have been avoided if a little pride was swallowed. There are people on power trips in all walks of life. You just need to be clever and play the game.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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roadsmash said:
I haven’t posted on this for a while and can’t remember my original opinion, but it does sound that you’ve been utterly let down by the justice system.

Whether you should appeal, I’m not sure.
That seems too large a conclusion. The OP may have been guilty, but if he was not then much of what went wrong derives from the poor service level provided by what I assume is a High Street law firm. Add to this the OP not being assertive as to the service level he needed. Sadly, at the lower end of the legal services market the lawyers are often of low ability and badly organised.

Better representation might have made a difference. Perhaps or perhaps not.

As for the other poster who lost a civil case, there are several possibilities. One is that the Judge simply got the decision wrong. That happens, as Judges are humans and so are fallible. There are appeal courts to correct errors, although of course they are fallible also.

Another possibility is that the poster was badly represented and/or that he came across badly in Court by, for example, appearing snobbish towards the other party. The narrative hints at this.

Another possibility is based on there being two sides to every story.

If the Judge in that case was wrong, that does not establish that the entire civil justice system is broken.

The criminal justice system is broken. This is because of neglect by successive governments. See the Secret Barrister for details.

Fastpedeller

3,847 posts

145 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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funkyrobot said:
Personally, I see this as enforcement of my belief that you should do everything possible to avoid any sort of trouble and subsequent legal action. Even if you know you are in the right, it looks like it can be hard to prove this if things don't go to plan in court.

I see this as a bit like riding a bicycle. You know you have rights on the road, and there are plenty of times where a vehicle driver is wrong. However, do you stubbornly maintain your belief you are right and put yourself in danger, or do you bite your lip, back off and let the moron get on with it? I go with the latter.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I know Milkround accepts his actions. However, this whole mess could have been avoided if a little pride was swallowed. There are people on power trips in all walks of life. You just need to be clever and play the game.
Wise words ^^^^^^

Ed/L152

480 posts

236 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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It's generally tempting to stick to principles and stick what's right, and you don't have to be a freeman of the land to not want to engage with a jumped-up prick of security guard.

But, we're subject to a legal system, not a justice system and it's clear that it's worth doing whatever it takes to not get embroiled - be it civil or criminal proceedings, principles be damned.

Milkround, you should be applauded for your principles, although I'm sorry they got you got caught up like this, and thank you for keeping this thread updated.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Commenting further on service levels from downmarket lawyers, these are generally poor. The economics of high street law firms and knock about barristers Chambers are pretty grim. Few in those sectors make much money. The not very talented people who work in those sectors treat the job as a job and not as a profession. Their clients tend to be unsophisticated consumers.

Upmarket lawyers are of course far from uniform in excellence, but market competition and the pressure applied by more sophisticated clients help to promote higher standards. There is also the question of professional pride. Upmarket lawyers self identify as professionals and tend to place a premium on providing a better service.

Back down at the bottom of the market, you tend to get inept, badly paid, demoralised and disappointed staff who just fudge and flounder.


funkyrobot

18,789 posts

227 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Breadvan72 said:
Commenting further on service levels from downmarket lawyers, these are generally poor. The economics of high street law firms and knock about barristers Chambers are pretty grim. Few in those sectors make much money. The not very talented people who work in those sectors treat the job as a job and not as a profession. Their clients tend to be unsophisticated consumers.

Upmarket lawyers are of course far from uniform in excellence, but market competition and the pressure applied by more sophisticated clients help to promote higher standards. There is also the question of professional pride. Upmarket lawyers self identify as professionals and tend to place a premium on providing a better service.

Back down at the bottom of the market, you tend to get inept, badly paid, demoralised and disappointed staff who just fudge and flounder.
Sounds like most things. smile

A race to the bottom via undercutting value and service.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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I still subscribe to the importance of hearing both sides of a story. The Police did, the CPS did and the Court did.

When you're in the midst of the battle and it's your neck on the line, every little inconsistency and deviation in narrative sounds like a deal breaker ("he said I was stood there and actually I was stood here!").

Various people's memories of the same events can be very different, even a few moments afterwards. Add in the time it takes to come to trial and courts expect there to be variations in what witnesses say. They look for threads of truth and commonality.

Sometimes the courts have to rely on one word against another, in which case they have to choose why they prefer one over another. They rarely say they think someone is outright dishonest, but they might say one is unconvincing, and so on.

If the court did not get chance to see independent evidence the OP says is exculpatory, then by all means it may overcome the issue from his first trial. If the missing CCTV was the same as that provided by the CPS and shared in court, just with some slo mo kung foo effects, I doubt it'd have made the difference.

One thing you learn quickly in court, is that it's only interested in the offence and the elements that make it up. Anything peripheral has to be very much on point, otherwise it's irrelevant. All the back story and guff that is important to each side is often not that relevant to the court, which can feel harsh, but it's the way it is.

MB140

4,027 posts

102 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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pavarotti1980 said:
Forgetting about the OP for one second. What is this utter st at the top of the page suddenly (I know not everyone will get the same pop-up banner) saying to vote Conservative?
Crystal and Adblock don’t see a single advert on this site at all.

hutchst

3,696 posts

95 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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MB140 said:
Crystal and Adblock don’t see a single advert on this site at all.
Neither does a PiHole, which I recently discovered is absolutely nothing like a cakehole.

MB140

4,027 posts

102 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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hutchst said:
MB140 said:
Crystal and Adblock don’t see a single advert on this site at all.
Neither does a PiHole, which I recently discovered is absolutely nothing like a cakehole.
?????????????

Somebody help me out here.

Muzzer79

9,805 posts

186 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Having read a big chunk of this, I can't believe you're considering appealing.

You may be innocent and it may suck but the system has decreed that you are guilty.

Appealing only increases the chances of worsening your new criminal record and costing you a lot more money.

I appreciate that it's a kick in the nuts to your principles, but just move on.

You know you didn't do anything wrong, your partner knows and anyone who values you knows. That's what's important.

yellowjack

17,065 posts

165 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Breadvan72 said:
That seems too large a conclusion. The OP may have been guilty, but if he was not then much of what went wrong derives from the poor service level provided by what I assume is a High Street law firm. Add to this the OP not being assertive as to the service level he needed. Sadly, at the lower end of the legal services market the lawyers are often of low ability and badly organised.

Better representation might have made a difference. Perhaps or perhaps not.

As for the other poster who lost a civil case, there are several possibilities. One is that the Judge simply got the decision wrong. That happens, as Judges are humans and so are fallible. There are appeal courts to correct errors, although of course they are fallible also.

Another possibility is that the poster was badly represented and/or that he came across badly in Court by, for example, appearing snobbish towards the other party. The narrative hints at this.

Another possibility is based on there being two sides to every story.

If the Judge in that case was wrong, that does not establish that the entire civil justice system is broken.

The criminal justice system is broken. This is because of neglect by successive governments. See the Secret Barrister for details.
Your bit about being badly represented? Very much the case, I'm sad to say. But I allowed/was compelled by circumstances to accept the representation arranged by my insurance company. I had little to say during the hearing, but my representative, and the claimant's representative were high order clowns. Both were told, as we all were at the outset, that the court was rather less formal than a criminal court, and that "Sir" would do just fine when addressing the judge. Neither representative was a qualified solicitor either. Both initially tried to out-legalese one another in the manner of a fictional Old Bailey criminal trial. This annoyed the judge intensely, as he saw their posturing as wasteful of his time. He also had other cases listed, and it was clear from the outset that the judge expected to deliver a swift decision. I was, and I believe my insurance company/legal representative were, quite naive in believing that, since I hadn't been involved in this collision, the swift decision would naturally be made in our favour. Had we (any of us) realised/suspected that the outcome was in any doubt, then I certainly would have fought harder for more preparation prior to the hearing. As it was I didn't meet my representative until the morning of the hearing in a room at the court. The biggest error in our defence against the totally false accusation was my not finding the receipt for fuel until the week of the hearing. I felt that better legal advice might well have prompted me to look for something like that sooner, and to certainly get it put into evidence prior to the day of the hearing. And again, the bit about being snobbish? I knew nothing about the man who claimed against me until the day of the hearing, save for the facts entered into the claim against me. Any "snobbish" judgements I make about him in my narrative were as a result of his utterly dishonest (as I saw it at any rate) behaviour during the hearing, and his changing of his story to suit my evidence. There may have been a hint of arrogance in our representations to the court, but these were naturally a function of the fact that I KNEW I had not been involved in any collision, and the fact that my insurance company fully supported my assertion that I had no knowledge of said collision prior to my receipt of the police letter accusing me of being involved and failing to stop/report. The representative appointed to me was so cock-sure that he assured me there was no way we could lose the hearing right up to the point where the judge delivered his decision. My biggest mistake was to ASSUME that because I'd done nothing wrong the judge would find in my/our favour. Best advice to anyone in similar circumstances would be to ASSUME NOTHING. So the civil justice system may well not be broken, but my faith in it was then, and remains to this day, shattered.

yellowjack

17,065 posts

165 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
quotequote all
MB140 said:
hutchst said:
MB140 said:
Crystal and Adblock don’t see a single advert on this site at all.
Neither does a PiHole, which I recently discovered is absolutely nothing like a cakehole.
?????????????

Somebody help me out here.
PiHole must be some sort of software that blocks adverts when viewing the internet.

Piehole, in some areas, is a colloquialism for one's mouth. Usually with negative connotations, as in the phrase "shut your piehole". The same is true if you substitute piehole and replace it with cakehole.

amusingduck

9,396 posts

135 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
quotequote all
yellowjack said:
MB140 said:
hutchst said:
MB140 said:
Crystal and Adblock don’t see a single advert on this site at all.
Neither does a PiHole, which I recently discovered is absolutely nothing like a cakehole.
?????????????

Somebody help me out here.
PiHole must be some sort of software that blocks adverts when viewing the internet.

Piehole, in some areas, is a colloquialism for one's mouth. Usually with negative connotations, as in the phrase "shut your piehole". The same is true if you substitute piehole and replace it with cakehole.
PiHole is software for use on Raspberry Pi, which are credit card sized low-cost, low-power computers.

It's an adblocker, but it works for your whole network. Normally, your computer will ask your router for directions when you ask it for pistonheads.com. Instead, you change a few settings to make your devices ask the Pi-Hole for directions instead. Any requested directions to advertisers or other junk get ignored, leaving you with all of the content and none of the junk, on all of your devices.

Software adblockers are kinda like getting all of the directions, even the junk ones, and your computer has to cleanse them after the fact.

Trev27

5,691 posts

178 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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Breadvan72 said:
kestral said:
...

You can and should lead at some point a witness you are cross-examining.
Please state your advocacy credentials and let us know how many cross examinations you have conducted. Me: Over 30 years as a professional advocate. Witnesses cross examined - into the hundreds. Over to you.
Have I missed it, or have we had any confirmation of Kestral's legal background, he seems to be providing lots of legal advice on this forum?

Red 4

10,744 posts

186 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
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hutchst said:
The threshold for reasonable grounds is exceptionally low, to the extent that I can't see how any normal person, at the time of the event, could make an assessment of whether such reasonable grounds existed or not. The law is very clear that a detective/guard can be mistaken without negativing the grounds.

.
This is utter garbage.
Reasonable grounds for arrest are both objective and subjective - but they must be based on the facts.
You cannot just say "That's what I thought but I was wrong" and the arrest is lawful.
There must be evidence to support reasonable grounds for suspicion. The clue is in the reasonable bit - what a reasonable person would think.

As for the rest of your post why are you quoting chapter and verse on the relevant legislation ?
Are you trying to give your posts some credibility by googling statute and attempting to appear that you have some idea what you are talking about ?
I have provided evidence that you don't.
The thread is littered with misinformation you have provided.
May I suggest you give it a rest.



Edited by Red 4 on Thursday 12th December 12:30

berlintaxi

8,535 posts

172 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
quotequote all
Trev27 said:
Breadvan72 said:
kestral said:
...

You can and should lead at some point a witness you are cross-examining.
Please state your advocacy credentials and let us know how many cross examinations you have conducted. Me: Over 30 years as a professional advocate. Witnesses cross examined - into the hundreds. Over to you.
Have I missed it, or have we had any confirmation of Kestral's legal background, he seems to be providing lots of legal advice on this forum?
I would put money on the only bar he has ever been called to served drinks.

Graveworm

8,476 posts

70 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
quotequote all
Red 4 said:
This is utter garbage.
Reasonable grounds for arrest are both objective and subjective - but they must be based on the facts.
You cannot just say "That's what I thought but I was wrong" and the arrest is lawful.
There must be evidence to support reasonable grounds for suspicion. The clue is in the reasonable bit - what a reasonable person would think.
They need to be based on the facts the person knew and what a reasonable person would think, if they were in the same position.
They certainly don't need to be evidence. e.g.
"They appeared" from my viewpoint, to be walking from the wrong direction carrying goods that might usually be in a bag"; could be factual but does not rely on them actually coming from the wrong direction nor there being any requirement to use a bag. "I didn't see them at the till area", is factual, but isn't irrelevant, even if they were there.
"I asked for a receipt, to see if I could be mistaken, and their behaviour, was as I usually experience with a thief", could be factual. Similarly "I found it suspicious that, they made off, when invited to come with me to sort it out" - could also be factual.
As above the OP could still be found guilty of assault despite the arrest not being lawful.

We do have a situation here, where numerous, independent qualified, people have reviewed all the evidence prior to this trial. They all concluded, that there was a strong chance that the evidence would prove them guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. This proved to be the case at the trial and the court were sure they were guilty. Even the OP's solicitor's assessment, was that here was only a 50-50 chance they could raise a reasonable doubt (Legal insurance wouldn't have funded that). Based on that high bar, it's unfortunately likely the OP acted unlawfully but there are always exceptions.

anonymous-user

53 months

Thursday 12th December 2019
quotequote all
berlintaxi said:
Trev27 said:
Breadvan72 said:
kestral said:
...

You can and should lead at some point a witness you are cross-examining.
Please state your advocacy credentials and let us know how many cross examinations you have conducted. Me: Over 30 years as a professional advocate. Witnesses cross examined - into the hundreds. Over to you.
Have I missed it, or have we had any confirmation of Kestral's legal background, he seems to be providing lots of legal advice on this forum?
I would put money on the only bar he has ever been called to served drinks.
Advocaat, perchance?smile