24 Hours in Police Custody: Ch4
Discussion
Dibble said:
I’m just about to watch the undercover one now. I’ll give some thoughts when I’ve seen it.
In the meantime, I’ve spent hundreds of hours grading/sifting indecent images of children. It’s not pleasant, believe me.
I don't envy you, must be stressful, certainly appears that way from the documentary. In the meantime, I’ve spent hundreds of hours grading/sifting indecent images of children. It’s not pleasant, believe me.
Gameface said:
The parents who gave their son a heads up so he could clear his phone and laptop to avoid the charge... No comebacks on them?
Did they know why the Police were looking for him? In fairness, if they didn't, we can't blame them for asking him why they had the Police at their door. That said, if they did know it would be perverting the course of justice I assume?Watched the CSI programme where the chap had killed his wife. It's shocking just how many women are killed by their partners. One of my clients was jailed a couple of weeks back, for domestic abuse, but the sentence was way too short in my opinion.
dWell, I’ve watched episodes 2 and 3 of the covert internet stuff and to be honest, I didn’t think anything said/described was that bad (in the context of the programme, I mean - any child sex offences are utterly abhorrent). All that says is I’m probably damaged/immune to it, which is probably not that great.
I’m fortunate that I’ve never been particularly upset by the grading/sifting of images. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen plenty that have made me angry and I’ve had to take time out for a few minutes, but I don’t have children myself (and have never wanted them), so maybe I’m less prone to being upset because I can’t project it onto my own children.
I’ve got colleagues who will flat out refuse to do the sifting/grading, which I personally have no issue with at all (some less enlightened supervisors see it as “weakness”, but they’re just tossers, frankly). I’ve dealt with people like the ones shown in the programme, from all strata of society. The most worrying one was the guy who was completely remorseless. He is going to need some very close management/supervision to reduce any risks he’ll undoubtedly continue to present. Realistically, I know our sex offender management team are carrying vacancies (the same as every specialist department) and are overwhelmed with work. There’s a very high burn out/attrition rate and their case load carries a lot of risk. If I get some thing wrong, someone might get burgled, if they get something wrong, children/vulnerable people end up getting abused.
The last images job I dealt with had about 30,000 (yes, thirty thousand images to sift. Luckily, there’s a lot of automation. Once the images have been extracted, they data gets run through a database of known images, which sorts/grades/extracts the known stuff into the appropriate categories. What’s left has to be manually reviewed, one by one, which can take ages, if there’s a lot left to look through. It’s basically a case of going to HQ to the hi-tech crime unit, opening a folder with the images and dragging and dropping them into appropriate sub folders.
The grading room is on CCTV and you’re not allowed to take your mobile in with you - work or personal. You don’t have access to the computer itself, it’s just screen/keyboard/mouse. I’ve had to deal with one police officer, one PCSO and one special constable for indecent images, as well as two or three police staff (not all employed by my own force). Without going into too much detail, the images tend to blur into one, but every so often, there will be one (or a series) that will mean you need a time out.
Once you’ve graded everything, you need to look at the metadata and pick about ten images for specimen charges, starting with the earliest and latest for each category of image/video, with a rough chronological spread for the others. You’d then describe the images, in detail. Again, that’s not something I’m going to give an example of, because from posters’ comments above, I think it’d upset people (that’s not a criticism), but it’s important to include ages. You have to make sure the specimen images are broadly representative of what is recovered, you can’t just pick the worst ones. Once you’ve described them, you’d add a line to say how many of each category image/video there were.
The staff in the hi-tech crime department have to have mandatory welfare counselling, as do the staff in the unit who deal exclusively with indecent images of children. There are posters in the grading room advising what to do/who to contact if you need any welfare support. As I said, not pleasant and it’s not a job every cop can or will do, but it is necessary to do it. Without evidence, people don’t get convicted.
I’m fortunate that I’ve never been particularly upset by the grading/sifting of images. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen plenty that have made me angry and I’ve had to take time out for a few minutes, but I don’t have children myself (and have never wanted them), so maybe I’m less prone to being upset because I can’t project it onto my own children.
I’ve got colleagues who will flat out refuse to do the sifting/grading, which I personally have no issue with at all (some less enlightened supervisors see it as “weakness”, but they’re just tossers, frankly). I’ve dealt with people like the ones shown in the programme, from all strata of society. The most worrying one was the guy who was completely remorseless. He is going to need some very close management/supervision to reduce any risks he’ll undoubtedly continue to present. Realistically, I know our sex offender management team are carrying vacancies (the same as every specialist department) and are overwhelmed with work. There’s a very high burn out/attrition rate and their case load carries a lot of risk. If I get some thing wrong, someone might get burgled, if they get something wrong, children/vulnerable people end up getting abused.
The last images job I dealt with had about 30,000 (yes, thirty thousand images to sift. Luckily, there’s a lot of automation. Once the images have been extracted, they data gets run through a database of known images, which sorts/grades/extracts the known stuff into the appropriate categories. What’s left has to be manually reviewed, one by one, which can take ages, if there’s a lot left to look through. It’s basically a case of going to HQ to the hi-tech crime unit, opening a folder with the images and dragging and dropping them into appropriate sub folders.
The grading room is on CCTV and you’re not allowed to take your mobile in with you - work or personal. You don’t have access to the computer itself, it’s just screen/keyboard/mouse. I’ve had to deal with one police officer, one PCSO and one special constable for indecent images, as well as two or three police staff (not all employed by my own force). Without going into too much detail, the images tend to blur into one, but every so often, there will be one (or a series) that will mean you need a time out.
Once you’ve graded everything, you need to look at the metadata and pick about ten images for specimen charges, starting with the earliest and latest for each category of image/video, with a rough chronological spread for the others. You’d then describe the images, in detail. Again, that’s not something I’m going to give an example of, because from posters’ comments above, I think it’d upset people (that’s not a criticism), but it’s important to include ages. You have to make sure the specimen images are broadly representative of what is recovered, you can’t just pick the worst ones. Once you’ve described them, you’d add a line to say how many of each category image/video there were.
The staff in the hi-tech crime department have to have mandatory welfare counselling, as do the staff in the unit who deal exclusively with indecent images of children. There are posters in the grading room advising what to do/who to contact if you need any welfare support. As I said, not pleasant and it’s not a job every cop can or will do, but it is necessary to do it. Without evidence, people don’t get convicted.
Gameface said:
What are you thoughts on some of the sentencing in the programme?
Personally, I think it’s too low (especially for the guy showing zero remorse, I can practically guarantee he has offended before and will continue to offend on release). Call me cynical, but the guy collapsing was putting all that on (IMHO).All that said, just locking people up doesn’t solve anything long term. We (society) need to try and prevent this stuff happening to start with and there needs to be much more emphasis on education/rehabilitation (for all crimes). Scandinavia spends a lot more on their justice system, including prisons and consequently, has much lower recidivism rates across the board than the UK. That initial capital cost obviously makes savings down the line. To be a prison officer in Norway, you need a degree to even start training. I think it’s the same in Denmark/Sweden/Finland as well.
Of course, there will be people who can never be rehabilitated or who will remain a danger for the rest of their lives, but they are in a minority, so keeping them out of circulation really is the only viable option. For people who can change/be changed, we need to do a much better job. No, they’re not offending while they’re in prison, but if they don’t get help, all that does is temporarily pause the offending, it doesn’t stop it.
Driver101 said:
I'm not sure how much faith I'd put in a channel 5 documentary giving one side of the story and private investigators wanting exposure.
I don't recall there was much doubt he was guilty at the time. He's had numerous appeals fail on top of that.
I've got to say I'm very skeptical about this program, convenient the best suspect died last year isn't it!I don't recall there was much doubt he was guilty at the time. He's had numerous appeals fail on top of that.
2fast748 said:
Driver101 said:
I'm not sure how much faith I'd put in a channel 5 documentary giving one side of the story and private investigators wanting exposure.
I don't recall there was much doubt he was guilty at the time. He's had numerous appeals fail on top of that.
I've got to say I'm very skeptical about this program, convenient the best suspect died last year isn't it!I don't recall there was much doubt he was guilty at the time. He's had numerous appeals fail on top of that.
Trying to make you feel sorry for the mum by highlighting her hardship is unnecessary influence.
Greendubber said:
tim0409 said:
I thought it was interesting that the person alerted by his parents was able to wipe his devices to the extent that the data was irrecoverable. I know it can be done but I thought it required software (ie not simple deleting the files), or has this changed with encrypted ssd drives?
I dont know enough about it TBH, there are e-forensic examiners but I guess there are always those who can defeat them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)
mr_fibuli said:
I think that it is pretty much impossible to recover deleted files off an SSD. On a magnetic disk, when you delete something it just marks the space as empty in the index, but the data stays on disk until the drive writes over it sometime in the future. An SSD does a similar thing, but then as soon as it gets a spare few seconds it goes back and zeros all the deleted data. They do this because it speeds up the process writing new data to the flash memory in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)
True. Add smart enough encryption and data is unrecoverable (in any meaningful way) even if not deleted.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)
I wonder just how computer literate the bad people are.
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