Kingston Police Station likewise.  

Spoke to two officers involved in a three handed money laundering and two custody sergeants.  Not one had heard of the protocol.   No cascading at all.  All very fraught.  

Kindest Regards
Ros
Ros Olleson(solicitor)
07951 242 693
Secure Email:  ros.olleson@rosol.cjsm.net

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On 3 Apr 2020, at 11:40, BRIAN ALDRED <baldred@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear All, 

I thought I would share my experience as duty 1500-2300 yesterday so that others might be prepared and things might improve:

Yesterday was without doubt the most stressful duty slot I have ever done: It started with the police demanding to know if I was going to attend before they would even give me the basics from the custody record (as I was told there was a directive to do so from management, albeit that this before the Protocol came out) and went downhill from there for 9 continuous hours on the phone or on hold on the phone or listening to a phone ring, emailing, typing notes, reading and re-reading Protocols.  And it will be lunchtime today before I have filled in all the notes of the stuff I simply did not have time to write down at the time. Not pleasant. 

And simply not worth it either.  At the end of the day, I eventually persuaded the police to release all four of my clients without interview because that was the right thing to do - one charged and bailed without interview for obstructing a negative drugs search and the other three RUI'd for the grave crimes of drugs possession (personal), fraud (committed ages ago) and possessing IIOC (on the basis of the client mentioning child porn when brought into custody for other matters which were rightly NFA'd as they were in the words of the custody sergeant "complete tosh"). I never even got to speak to two of them because they needed interpreters and there was no way to set that up.

So, it would seem that until facilities are actually in place to do video interviews, and until the police have actually filtered the advice down to the troops on the ground, the Protocol is no more than a poisoned chalice because the only end result can be that you get nothing more than a telephone advice fee for hours of bashing your head against various walls.

Of course, this experience may be because there are no facilities in Islington PS or a particular unwillingness to see sense on the part of individual officers (although credit is due to the late turn Sgt. who took a much more pragmatic view than his predecessors) but I think it would be helpful if members would report the stations where it is working and where it is not. For the moment, I report that at Islington it absolutely is not.

Stay safe,

Brian Aldred

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