Inability To Prosecute Police
The Police are involved in a significant number of deaths each year - people die in police custody, in police pursuits and, rarely, civilians are shot by police (see below). No matter what the circumstances in which the police have killed or injured someone in the line of duty, the IPCA is unable to prevent police from pursuing 'fleeing' drivers and powerless to prosecute officers for anything they do. All the IPCA can do is make recommendations - which the police are not obliged to follow. In October 2012 a survey found 76% of respondents believed the authority should have the power to prosecute police officers. After publicity in 2012 about the slow police response to the assault on Jakob Christie, the newly appointed head of the IPCA, Sir David Carruthers, said he was considering whether to recommend new powers of arrest and prosecution for the authority.
Read more about this topic: Independent Police Conduct Authority, Independence and Effectiveness
Famous quotes containing the words inability to, inability and/or police:
“It is in our interests to let the police and their employers go on believing that the Underground is a conspiracy, because it increases their paranoia and their inability to deal with what is really happening. As long as they look for ringleaders and documents they will miss their mark, which is that proportion of every personality which belongs in the Underground.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The real stumbling-block of totalitarian régimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men’s inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,—now under one disguise, now under another,—like a police in citizen’s clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)