human rights

Democratic Policing – Human Rights and Ethics

The protection and preservation of life must be the highest priority of the police. Now this may sound like the obvious, and it is to those police in democratic societies that practice democratic policing. However, it is not obvious to many police from many different countries. They prioritize things like maintaining order or protecting the government far above that of preservation of life. That is why you have police from countries that routinely indiscriminately fire guns into crowds and cause widespread death and injury. Iran is one of the obvious recent examples but this has also recently happened in India, Nepal, Kenya, and Zimbabwe to name a few. The populace rarely will put up with this for long before uprisings or even insurgencies appear.

Police should always work with integrity and professionalism. This simply means that the police should do the right thing in an acceptable and transparent manner even if they “know” no one is watching. If they continue to operate this way they should have no problems.

It should be clear what the police should (can) and should not (cannot) do. Clear cut policies and guidelines, particularly concerning use of force and when you can and cannot search are so important in policing. See the “Maintaining the Rule of Law” section for a further description of this topic.

All police at times can temporarily detain citizens. It should be noted that all police have the authority to temporarily detain citizens. In most counties some type of reasonable suspicion is needed to temporary detention of movement. However, this may simply be a suspicious person in a suspicious place under suspicious circumstances. Once again – the policies and rules and laws should be clear to the police and citizens when this can take place. Read the rest of this entry »

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Promoting Human Rights Above the Prevention of Drug Abuse?

Britain now has an estimated 1% of the population taking illegal drugs. Approximately 300,000 children are being raised in homes where one, or both, parents is an addict. And the trade is estimated to be worth more than £5.3billion.

Yet it seems that Human Rights is the god of the era. A report in The Daily Telegraph, by Neil McKeganey, Professsor of Drug Misuse Research at the University of Glasgow, concludes that, “For too long we have couched our nation’s drug habit within a moral vacuum, in which the decision to use or not use illegal drugs is seen to be a matter for the individual.” It’s enough to make you weep. And it certainly makes you wonder how this generation of policy-makers will go down in history. All the talk about preventing drug abuse just seems to be a lot of hot air. Have we abdicated all reason and morality?

Too right, we have!

TEENS AND DRUG ABUSE
I knew very little of the facts about drug abuse when my daughter started experimenting with soft drugs at school, but I knew something was wrong. Wrong enough for me to seek help on her behalf. Without exception, I was made to feel by successive establishment figures that I was an over protective mother. My daughter wanted to leave school, to befriend drop-outs and felons and to live with her boyfriend who was on bail, awaiting trial for his part in a gang rape. My ‘interference’ was seen as over protective parenting which impinged upon her Rights. The child psychologist mounted a campaign against me which almost cost me custody of my children. Citing my faith and church attendance as indicative of my ‘repressed sexuality’, he implied this as the motive behind my desire to ‘curb the needs’ of my under-sixteen year old. Read the rest of this entry »

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Identity Theft Laws – How The Legal System Can Protect You

Not that long ago, people didn’t worry much when they lost a credit card or threw away a bill. They knew they could contact their creditors and straighten it out pretty quickly. But today, you may be a victim of identity theft and not even know it. This malicious crime is also hard to prosecute because it’s difficult to identify and track down the perpetrator.

In 2004, the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee issued a report with some surprising statistics about identity theft. They estimated that about 27 million Americans were victims of identity theft from 1999-2004. Half of them didn’t know how the thief had gotten their personal information, although a quarter of them knew that the identity theft resulted from a lost or stolen credit card, checkbook, social security number, or personal mail. A few of the victims even reported that the identity thief had used their personal information to carry out a crime under a false identity.

In 2003, the Federal Trade Commission said that reports of identity theft were up 33% from the year before, that they were aware of over 200,000 cases of identity theft in 2003. States with the most reported cases of identity theft were Arizona, Nevada, California, Texas, and Florida. And for almost three quarters of the fraud cases reported, the use of victims’ personal information was used for credit card, phone or utility, or bank fraud. They also found that, on average, the misuse of victims’ personal information lasted from three to six months and resulted in a total loss of about $5 billion to victims, plus over 300 million hours of personal time resolving the problems once discovered.

The 2003 FTC Survey reported over $50 billion in losses to business as a result of identity theft. They also reported that, in that year, each victim spent from $500 to $1200 and from 30 to 60 personal hours to have their credit problems resolved. Unfortunately, there is little hope that this trend will decrease in the near future. Identity theft seems to be getting easier, not harder, and the criminals are learning how to hide their crimes from victims longer and to hide their person from law enforcement altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

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