Full Police Authority Meeting 28 June 2012 A full meeting of Cambridgeshire Police Authority is to take place on the 28th of June 2012. I intend to seek to use the public speaking slot at the meeting to make a statement covering the following points: Was a secret, private, pre-meeting held before this public meeting? [...]
Cambridge MP Julian Huppert At the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference being held on the weekend of 10-11 March 2012 Cambridge MP Julian Huppert is moving a motion titled “Civil Liberties” scheduled for debate at 10:45 am on the Sunday morning. The text of the motion is available, but only deep within the Conference Agenda (on [...]
Superintendent Vicky Skeels, Police Commander for Cambridge The latest Star Radio Police Podcast is an interview with Superintendent Vicky Skeels, the new area commander for Cambridge. Following operation redesign Cambridgeshire Police has aligned its organisational structure to the local authority areas. As I understand it Skeels took on the role in January 2012 but the [...]
TASER armed officer in the UK Further details of Cambridgeshire Police’s plans to expand TASER deployment have been published. The Chief Constable intends to train one hundred and twenty non-firearms officers to use the weapons. That’s just over one in ten of the force’s 1011 constables. A paper from Cambridgeshire Police’s Chief Constable to Cambridgeshire [...]
Police Officer Carrying a TASER A full meeting of Cambridgeshire Police Authority held on the 20th of December 2011 began debating proposals from Chief Constable Simon Parr to expand the force’s TASER use. I attended the meeting and used the public speaking slot. My statement: I hope when the force’s proposed changes to TASER policy [...]
TASER armed officer on duty outside a pasty shop in Padstow, Cornwall. TASER use by Cambridgeshire police is currently restricted to their Tactical Firearms Unit. I support this as I am concerned that having officers routinely armed with TASER will damage the relationship between the police and the public and will lead to an escalation [...]
Statistics on the use of TASER weapons by the UK police used to be published quarterly by the Home Office. This routine pro-active publication has stopped and the latest published data available at the time of writing is from September 2009*; it is well over a year old. I have been chasing the Home Office [...]
On the 7th of December Cambridge MP Julian Huppert and his fellow members of the Home Affairs Select Committee held a session on the police use of TASER weapons. I wrote an article prior to the meeting in which I suggested a number of questions it might be worth asking of the Chief Police Officers [...]
On the 7th of December 2010 the Home Affairs Select Committee questioned Home Office civil servants, primarily Graham Widdecombe of the Policing Directorate, about the award of an “authorisation” to handle TASER weapons to a company called Tactical Safety Responses Limited. In the UK TASERs are treated as prohibited weapons under Section 5(1)(b) of the [...]
TASER Preferred Target Areas Shown In Blue (Source: TASER International Training Bulletin 15) A couple of days ago Cambridge MP Julian Huppert forwarded me a press release from the Home Affairs Select committee alerting me to a one-off evidence session on the use of tasers by UK police forces to be held on Tuesday the [...]