As many as 1,950 youngsters under the age of 16 were groomed by drug kingpins and held by officers over the last 12 months for dealing crack cocaine and heroin
First hour: news review: with Labour Councillor for Easton Afzal Shah and Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset police Andy Marsh. Councillor trying to report crime arrested as he looked like suspect: A British Asian councillor has described his humiliation at being arrested and held in the back of a patrol car after being wrongly identified as a suspect when he went to his local police station to report a crime. Afzal Shah said he did not believe white colleagues on Avon and Somersetâs police and crime panel, on which he sits, would have been treated in the same way and accused some officers of institutional bias. Shah, whose role on the panel includes trying to make the West Country force more representative of the people it serves, claimed such mistakes undermined public confidence in the police. âI felt humiliated sitting in the back of a police car outside a police station,â he told the Guardian. âIâd done nothing wrong. I went in to report an offence and I was treated like that. There were people walking past looking, wondering what I was doing in the back of the car. People know me in that area very well.â The force has insisted its officers acted in good faith, but Shah, who represents an inner-city ward in Bristol, disagreed. âI do not believe the officers acted in good faith,â he said. âIt falls far short of the expectations we have of our police officers. One of [Sir Robert] Peelâs principles is to serve by consent. The police is the public and the public is the police. This kind of behaviour causes people to lose confidence in the police. Knife crime increasing: Avon and Somerset police are dealing with knife offences every day on average. A third of those involved in knife crime are under 24. Knife crime convictions in Avon and Somerset are at their highest level in six years. Knife and offensive weapon offences led to 500 cautions or sentences in Avon and Somerset in 2017/18, the highest number in a year since 538 were recorded in 2011/12. Figures revealed under the Freedom of Information Act show that between January 1, 2018 and March 31 the same year - the most recent statistics available - police recorded 102 offences including knives or bladed instruments in just 92 days. They include 33 assaults that resulted in injury, 25 assaults with intent, one attempted murder, 36 robberies and seven threats to kill. The statistics show that the youngest victim of knife crime was less than 12-years-old, and that 68 men and 27 women found themselves on the wrong end of a blade in those three months, with six cases where the gender was not recorded by police. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown criticised police and The City a decade after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the £700 billion bailouts of bankrupt banks: Mr Brown said that the trade war US president Donald Trump has launched against China would be a major obstacle to any international co-operation in a future crisis. He said: "Trumps protectionism is the biggest barrier to building international cooperation." The former PM admitted that Labour should have been tougher on the City in the boom years leading up to the 2008 near meltdown. He said: "Yes, we did not know what was going on in some of the institutions, some of it illegal, and which was being covered up." He added: "The penalties for wrong-doing have not been increased sufficiently. "The fear that bankers will be imprisoned for bad behaviour is not there. There has not been a strong enough message sent out that government wont rescue institutions that havent put their houses in order." The £166 trillion timebomb: Former Bank governor King warns debt will trigger the next financial meltdown - Lord Mervyn King was governor of the Bank of England as crisis hit - He warns it is essential to tackle global debt pile which stands at £166 trillion - King says private sector debt to GDP is now higher than before crash - By JAMES BURTON FOR THE DAILY MAIL 7 February 2018 A worldwide debt binge could trigger the next financial crisis and tip Britain back into recession, former Bank of England governor Lord King has warned. Households, companies and governments have borrowed ever-greater amounts of money since the Great Recession, egged on by central bankers who cut interest rates to record lows. Government admits role in Birmingham prison failure. Prisons minister takes share of blame for poor state of G4S-run jail being taken over by MoJ. The government bears a share of the blame for the state of HMP Birmingham, the prisons minister Rory Stewart has said, after the Ministry of Justice was forced to undertake an emergency takeover of the G4S-run jail. A report by the chief inspector of prisons, published overnight, found drug abuse and violence was rife, prisoners lived in squalid conditions and staff were afraid, sometimes locking themselves away from inmates. Prison staff in England and Wales have taken part in widespread protests over "unprecedented violence" in jails. Staff complained about safety within prisons, saying they had been attacked by gangs of inmates, been spat at and had urine thrown at them while on duty. The union said there were protests outside "a majority" of jails, which ended after six hours when the government agreed to talks on Monday. Prisons Minister Rory Stewart said the action was illegal. When it announced the suspension of the protest, the Prison Officers Association said the prison service had withdrawn the threat of court action against the union. General Secretary Steve Gillan said he was "confident a deal is a deal", adding that he hoped "for meaningful, constructive dialogue" next week. The protests caused delays in courts because prisoners were unable to be transferred for hearings.
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