UPDATE:  I’ll be doing a proper update article on this article as there have been developments, hopefully by tomorrow morning but I would like to refer you to one of the comments below for the latest information.

Britain’s various police forces are rapidly losing both the trust and support of the British public and this trust, that was built up over many decades will, in my view, be difficult if not impossible to fully rebuild. This trust has been lost not because it has been actively withdrawn by the public because of any growth of an anti-police mentality, but because of the actions of various forces themselves.

This is not a recent thing, it goes back decades possibly even to the days of the Miners Strike back in the 80’s when police ceased to be seen as protectors by residents of mining communities, but were instead seen as occupying and oppressive forces. As the police in various parts of Britain have become more capricious, arrogant, lazy, more obsessed with political correctness and have become more politicised as they were from 1997 onwards, this ‘us and them’ attitudinal gulf between police and people has widened.

We’ve all seen how various police forces behaved in a supine and cowardly way when confronted with the problem of Islamic Rape Gangs and how the police’s first course of action was to bury these cases for many years. We’ve seen the disgraceful kneeling by police to BLM/Marxist thugs and the gleeful way that they have used additional covid related police powers to harry and hassle ordinary Britons. From talking to ordinary people both online and in real life I sense a palpable anger and disappointment about the disgraceful position where Britain’s police forces have ended up. I’m even getting people telling me that they will not report anti-social behaviour by teenagers because they know in their heart of hearts that the police will do nothing at all about it, if doing something about it requires the police to make some sort of effort. These individuals have also told me that they fear making reports because they do not trust the police’s data security and fear that reporting crime to the police will result in their details being leaked to the perpetrators.

Now there is another case that has come to light showing not only police arrogance but also how the police are continuing to lose trust from the public.

Between July and October of this year, Gloucestershire has been plagued by a pretty nasty violent attacker. This attacker has been driving around the county in a van and engaging in hammer attacks against young women. There have also been allegations made that this same offender has been carrying out attempted kidnappings. These are serious offences and must have terrified the population of Gloucestershire as they were apparently random in nature.

Recently a suspect was arrested for these offences and was subsequently charged with kidnap and assault offences and brought before a Magistrates Court. However, contrary to the usual practise, Gloucestershire Police is refusing to name the suspect and will not even tell journalists what Magistrates Court the alleged attacker attended. This is highly unusual to say the least. There are of course good legal and moral reasons not to name suspects before they are charged. As I pointed out in a previous article about naming suspects before charge, it used to be the case that the police would tell journalists about the identity of suspects prior to charge. But, following the wrongful arrest for the murder of Joanna Yeates of Christopher Jefferies in 2010 and the subsequent media targeting of him, the police will no longer name suspects prior to charge.

However for the police to go to such lengths as they have to prevent the name of a charged person getting out into the public realm, is really unusual. I can think of only a few legitimate reasons for Gloucester Constabulary to take such an action. The first would be if the defendant and one of the victims were closely related, the victim was a minor and the offence was sexual in nature. In that case naming the defendant would in turn enable the identification of the alleged victim and would therefore be against the law. The other reason I could consider as justifying the police’s action in this case is if there was a national security aspect to it. Now unless the alleged hammer attacker is an employee of GCHQ (something that I believe is highly unlikely based on the information that has come out so far), I don’t see how a national security justification could be applied in this case. The only other reason for silence by the police is if the police are looking for a currently at large accomplice. If that was the case then it would be a simple matter for the Magistrate to impose a reporting restriction on this case. There would be no need for such arrogant secrecy from the police. It could even be that the defendant is a minor themselves but this is highly unlikely as the press reports say ‘man’ rather than ‘youth’ or ‘teenager’.

The police are behaving very suspiciously in this case. They claim that they are not naming the suspect or the court he attended for ‘operational reasons’ but are not stating what these operational reasons are. They are refusing to answer questions from mainstream media journalists and have breached reporting protocols to such an extent that the Daily Mail has published an email address for readers to tell the paper what they might know about the suspect with, according to the police, no identity, no race and no age.

The Daily Mail said:

Gloucestershire Police refused to name the suspect, despite him being charged and appearing in court. The force’s control room supervisor refused to tell MailOnline which court the defendant had appeared in on Wednesday, despite that normally being a matter of public record. 

He said the unusual secrecy was for ‘operational reasons’ but refused to say what they were. The officer refused MailOnline’s requests to speak to a force press officer.

Judges can impose reporting restrictions on defendants being named, but police do not have any such powers. It is unclear whether the court the suspect appeared in has done so. 

This is a police force directly and overtly preventing the press from covering a crime story when there is no legal or moral justification for doing so and of course this is going to induce speculation as to why this is the case? The police are only declaring that they have made their decision on ‘operational reasons’ but this is a very broad term and could mean anything from arse covering for officers who cocked up investigating this case right through to more sinister motives. One of these sinister motives could be that the hammer attack and kidnap suspect could be from a community with ‘protected characteristics’. In that scenario then the police’s primary concern is not that justice should be done and seen to be done, but instead to protect the community that the suspect may belong to from criticism or public anger.

Gloucestershire Police have shot themselves in the foot on this one. They’ve given the public the impression of bias and the impression that they are hiding something important from the public. All that Gloucestershire Constabulary have done is make the public suspect that the defendant in this case is some sort of ‘enricher’, maybe a Muslim extremist for example or someone else imported from some other culture where violence and especially violence against women, is culturally normal or acceptable. It’s my belief that the secrecy by the police in this case will do more damage than if they were honest, followed protocols and named both the defendant and the court that he attended.

The speculation gates are now open and opened very wide. What is worse is that these gates of speculation have been opened by Gloucestershire Police themselves. There will be now all sorts of accurate and inaccurate speculation flying around about this case, about the defendant and about Gloucestershire Constabulary’s undue secrecy about this matter. The defendant has been remanded into police custody until he makes a higher court appearance at Gloucester Crown Court on November 7^th and I would suggest that this, due to the police’s own actions, is a case that both the mainstream media and alt news media need to watch. The Crown Court may impose some sort of reporting restriction on this case and the reasons for this potential reporting restriction, if they are not related to matters such as protecting the concept of a fair trial, may need to be legally challenged.

In amongst all the speculation that has started to circulate about this case, I know one thing about it that is certain. That is that Gloucestershire Constabulary have taken yet another step towards creating more hostility and suspicion among local people about the conduct of their force than would otherwise be the case. It’s yet more trust lost between police and people. The people of Gloucestershire need better and less arrogant policing than has been apparent in this case.