The Shooting Times magazine this week has announced that the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation (NGO) has launched a pioneering scheme to aid rural policing and reduce wrongful arrests of keepers and other lawful shooters.
The National Gamekeepers’ Organisation is to train police forces in an initiative to improve law enforcement in rural areas and reduce the wrongful arrests of gamekeepers and other lawful shooters. It’s a pity someone did not offer training advice to the Wildlife Crime Officer for Lancashire last year before he asked a second officer to use the provisions of the Police Reform Act 2002 to illegally issue a Section S59 to enable police to seize the vehicle of a raptor worker. You can read an accounts of this story as it unfolded by following the three attached links.
http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/?p=194 http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/?p=227 http://raptorpolitics.org.uk/?p=529.
Back to the story, a new NGO one-day course titled Gamekeeping and the law: Training for the police is being offered free of charge to officers and civilians within any police force in England and Wales. It is designed for those who wish to know more about what gamekeepers do, what the law actually says on things such as trapping, shooting, poaching and other rural crimes, and shows how keepers and the police can work together. Of course there is no mention of what the law says regarding the illegal persecution of raptors. We will not talk about this taboo subject.
Representatives of every police force at the National Wildlife Crime Enforcers, Conference said that they would like the course to be delivered to their staff, and Sussex, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire forces have each asked for more than 100 employees to be trained by the NGO.
The first training session will take place this month and officers others will follow rabidly. The training will be carried out by the NGO’s two development officers, Louse Stimson and Tim Weston, with assistance from local NGO gamekeeper members.
Lindsay Waddell, the NGO chairman, said “we are doing this for gamekeeping and for the whole rural community. The police want to do their best, but with staff cutbacks and many officers having no background in the countryside there have been bad misunderstandings in the recent past and sometimes wrongful arrests. The obvious thing is to explain what gamekeepers do, what the law says and how we can help each other.” We all know what many gamekeepers do, and we all know what the law says, but they still do it. Perhaps a better idea of using police resources would be to provide advice and training to gamekeepers, helping each of them understand that the persecution of protected raptors is a criminal offence.
Chief constable Richard Crompton, who leads for the Association of Chief Police Officers on all rural policing issues, said “The attendance of the National Gamekeepers’ Organisation at this years’ National Wildlife Crime Enforcers’ Conference was very welcome. The production of training materials and the offer to provide input to police training is further welcome evidence of a maturing partnership.
We wonder if house breakers, bank robbers and other professional criminals will now also be invited to train and offer advice to the police to help avoid being wrongfully arrested or the subject of any miscarriages of justice in the future!
Forgive my naivity, but isn’t it the job of the police to know the laws and enforce them?
Preferably without the influence of someone with a vested interest.
Utterly unbelievable
I can confirm that there are substantial numbers of police officers who don’t know the law with respect to photography in public places, so I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if their knowledge of the law was ‘fuzzy’ in other areas …
Just when you think that you have heard everything something like this appears, the gamekeepers look like they are trying to make it so they are a law unto themselves. This was something probably thought up by land owners and high ranking police officers at one of their meetings with funny hand shakes.
Maybe it would be a good chance for the police to reinforce the message that they know what goes on and that it won’t be tolerated.
Bird of Prey persecution like all other crimes have to be investigated, and the evidence of that crime examined and if there is a case to answer,that person or persons arrested and charged with breaking the law. “VOILA”. No need for gamekeepers and the police force to to have a tax payers day out on the grouse moors.As JAMES states on (English Hen Harrier..recent comments)YOU WILL NOT STOP PERSECUTION. Educate police cadets at root level is the answer.
Once again: friends in “high” places. There seems no depths to which the morally bankrupt will stoop. And they wonder why some of us wish to get rid of the whole sordid show altogether.
Well if the RSPB lets this one go unchallenged then we all know where they stand, this is just pure cheek and rubbing salt into the already deep wounds.
Mike Price, where have you been hiding?
nirofo.
There has been an attempt by the Scottish Gamekeepers Association endorsed by some police forces, to get more gamekeepers to become special constables under the guise of reducing wildlife crime.
This seems to be a cosy parnership with police and gamekeepers without much thought given to the fact that a high proportion of gamekeepers are wildlife criminals.
This move has made many raptor workers in Scotland very nervous mainly due to the sensitive information that gamekeepers will have at their disposal if this goes ahead.
I’ve heard of poacher turned gamekeeper but gamekeeper turned police officer… I don’t think so!
As I have been saying for years you can not have the police working against keepers in summer during the breeding season, and with them in winter fighting to prevent poaching. This solves everything the police will work with them all the time!!! You criminal raptor protectors!!
this is nothing short of a joke,surely?
I think the jokes on us!
Once again the keepers and estate owners are scoffing at our feeble attempts to “protect” Raptors, they’re having a good old laugh. They know full well that they can sit back and relax after a good days unrestricted Raptor poisoning and shooting, if any trouble crops up, they’ll just revert to their roll as “Wildlife Liaison Officers” and liaise with the police to talk themselves out of it again and again. They know full well that the police, the RSPB and all the other so-called wildlife protection agencies in the UK will do nothing. Very soon it won’t matter anyway, there’ll be no Raptors left for the agencies to not protect then the keepers won’t need to liaise !!!
nirofo.
Whose’s stupid and totally ridiculous idea is this, I just can’t believe it, the world is going mad. If this comes about we might as well say goodbye to all the wonderful raptors we are all working so hard to protect as they will at the mercy of the very people who poison and kill them with the perfect excuse of helping the police. This whole thing beggars belief and scares me to death.