BBC
Monday, April 20, 2008

A Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officer will face a court after being accused of punching a 12-year-old boy.

The youth was arrested in November and claims he was punched in the face when officers at West Didsbury station searched him for a weapon.

Pc Daniel Paul Gaffney, 29, based at Wythenshawe, has been summoned before Warrington Magistrates Court on 12 June charged with section 39 assault.

He is suspended from duty pending the outcome of an inquiry, GMP said.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is conducting its own inquiry into the allegations.

The youth was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

Naseem Malik, IPCC Commissioner for the North West, said: “Due to the age of the boy and the nature of the allegation, it is wholly appropriate that any investigation has some independent oversight.

“I will ensure a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the circumstances behind how the boy sustained his injury.”

FOX News
Saturday, April 12, 2008

A Texas sergeant and his son recently found themselves separated not only by an eight-hour time difference, several bodies of water, hundreds of miles and a war, but by a high school official who suspended the boy for answering his dad’s call during class.

Cove High School in Texas, where half the students have at least one parent deployed, justified the punishment against Brandon Hill by saying he had violated the no-cell-phone policy when he took the call from his father, who is serving in Iraq.

“I have been going through a lot of stress lately and my dad’s like my best friend, so I go to him for everything,” the sophomore told FOX News on Saturday.

“I needed to talk to him, so my mom got a hold of him on Yahoo and told him to call me, so I answered the phone call in class.”

When he learned of his son’s punishment, Master Sgt. Morris Hill said he was unsettled.

“When my wife told me, I was pretty disturbed by it,” he said in a phone call from Iraq.

“I was pretty shocked, considering that several months before we left I had talked to the … assistant principal and thought everything was fine,” Morris Hill said.

“Since my kid’s been going to the school we’ve had a pretty good working relationship.”

And when his mother, Patricia Hill, tried to contact school officials, she received no response until her son’s story garnered media attention.

The matter has since been resolved, Patricia Hill said, but she added that more must be done to protect children around the country from being punished in similar circumstances.

Uninformed.co.uk
Jennifer Hallary / Tobias Cunningham
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Uninformed.co.uk founder Tobias Cunningham was stop checked by police whilst walking to his home in Manchester late on Saturday night.

Heading from a road past a local school towards a footpath leading towards his estate Cunningham was followed by a police vehicle and ordered from the window by a female officer in the passenger seat to stop.

With other people nearby Cunningham attempted to clarify by responding, “Who me?”. “Yes” replied the officer, as the two got out of the vehicle.

Cunningham was asked what he was doing, to which he replied that he was simply walking home. The male officer and driver proceeded to query him as to whether he had been inside the nearby school grounds to which Cunningham gave an agitated reply of “No.”

The male officer questioned Cunningham’s attitude towards them. Being no stranger to police attention in the past Cunningham was understandably vexed at being stopped for no reason but soon began to talk in a more relaxed manner with the officers, agreeing to sit in the rear of the car while they took details from him.

Whilst writing down his address, appearance and his and his colleague’s own details the male officer informed Cunningham that a spate of burglaries had been occuring locally and thus police presence in the area had been increased and that they were wary of people wearing hooded tops, which Cunningham was wearing at the time as it was raining.

They were satisfied that Cunningham had not done anything wrong whatsoever, but explained that as a matter of procedure details had to be taken.

There exists in these days that we live in a thin line between good police presence and alienation of the general public who are stopped on a regular basis whilst going about their everyday lives. Cunningham was simply walking along a road towards his home and yet has to deal with having his own time wasted whilst these 2 officers and their vehicle are inactive for at least 15 minutes while they deal with a complete non-issue.

Although the 2 officers were simply doing their jobs (something which they explained to Cunningham) the facts are clear that what they were doing was of no help to anyone.

Cunningham complied fully throughout and it is his advice that all members of the public do this when confronted with this kind of situation as despite the theme of his website and what goes with it he is not against the police, rather he would simply prefer it if they got to dealing with things which were of actual importance.