GV Hale news

A professional pianist who swept up mulch from the pavement outside his house and scattered it in a wood, has been fined for fly-tipping.

 

When 56-year-old pianist John Goodall Smith and his wife, Sharon, moved into a four-bed rental property in Upper Penn, Wolverhampton, on Oct 3 they discovered he didn't have a garden waste bin. 

Hundreds of thousands of records were accidentally deleted from the Police National Computer (PNC) which may have compromised criminal investigations and the ability of employers to carry out background checks.

 

Home Office officials were left urgently trying to retrieve the lost data and assess the potentially disastrous impact of the mistake. The lost information relates to suspects who have been investigated but not convicted of any offence. Fingerprint and DNA evidence taken when a suspect is arrested is also thought to have been lost as a result of the human error.

Plans to create a powerful watchdog to hold the criminal justice system to account could see the police taken to court and having to pay compensation.

 

A report, commissioned by the victims' commissioner, recommended she should have powers to bring legal action for breaches of the Government's new victims' code. Writing for a national broadsheet, Dame Vera Baird said thousands of victims were being let down by the failure of police and courts to fulfil obligations under the code. 

A coordinated effort by police forces to tackle knife crime has resulted in more than 2,000 arrests. 

 

Intensified action by the 43 police forces in England and Wales to take weapons off the street, arrest habitual knife carriers, educate young people about the risks of carrying a knife and signpost them to the relevant support services, took place under the name of Operation Spectre.

A man who admitted deliberately piercing a condom with a pin before having sex has been jailed for rape.

 

47-year-old Andrew Lewis, a train driver, was jailed for four years when he appeared at Worcester Crown Court, having previously admitted rape at an earlier hearing.