This is from Kingston:

 

I have been asked to pass on the following message by the custody manager/Insp Marcus Moore at Kingston and Wandsworth police stations who is keen to start video conferencing on laptops from tomorrow using Microsoft Teams until a more sophisticated system is operational. He writes…

“Just had a conversation with my Superintendent who is keen for the whole of the Met to use this (Teams) method for Solicitors in interview, at least until anything else comes up. He will be driving this tomorrow at our COVID-19 Gold Group meeting.

 

There has been discussions with our Digital Policing Team around security and they did make adjustments to our “Firewall” to allow external contacts to be invited to Teams meetings so I’m assuming the security concerns must be reasonably low risk.

 

Anyway, the attached Presentation will be placed in all our interview rooms by tomorrow afternoon. It shows our officers how to add external email addresses to their Teams via Outlook. This should work for all MPS Laptops, if the officer does not have a Laptop then ask them to borrow one from the Custody Sgts.

 

If you have any issues then escalate to an Inspector who should be familiar with this process. At the very least, the fall back option should be the telephone on the desk method.

 

If you have any issues, do please let me know.”

 

 

Harvey Fox

Police Station Advice Coordinator

FREEMANS SOLICITORS

07973 259382 (24 Hours)

Secure email: harvey.fox@freemans.cjsm.net

 

 

 

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From: members@mail.lccsa.org.uk <members@mail.lccsa.org.uk>
Sent: 03 April 2020 13:01
To: BRIAN ALDRED <baldred@hotmail.com>
Cc: LCCSA MEMBER LIST <members@mail.lccsa.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Interview Protocol Day one - As Highbury PS duty

 

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

This email is confidential and may contain legally privileged information. It is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee named above. If you are not that person it may be unlawful for you to read, copy, distribute, disclose or otherwise use the information contained in it. If you have received it in error please notify me immediately by return email.



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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