Have seen a couple of letters containing the following recently.
In order to properly investigate this matter it will be necessary for you to be interviewed
under caution at a police station. In the circumstances your arrest for this purpose will not be
necessary, if you attend a police station voluntarily to be interviewed.
By attending voluntarily, you will be entitled to free legal advice before, and to have a
solicitor present at, the interview. Should you not have your own solicitor, arrangements can
be made for the duty solicitor to attend the interview location to represent you. Should you
wish to speak to a solicitor, he or she will advise you of your rights.
Aside from the poor punctuation, surely the bit I've highlighted just isn't on? The implication is that if you attend voluntarily you can get free legal advice, but if you don't ......
Interested in anyones informed take on this.
Can't go into details (but it's not me!)
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Comments
my advice to you is either go in and say no comment to everything if you do not want a duty solicitor, only confirm your name address and DOB do not answer any other question ( Don't Trust OB)
if you feel that you want to put your side of what ever you are involved in then always have a solicitor present
I had a chat with her at a BBQ and she was telling me about the standby money for being on call, expenses for taxi's, hours she books for nights and weekends, she is earning some serious money for doing very little at what I assume would be the tax payers expense?
"Have seen a couple of letters containing the following recently."
How many police interviews have you been invited?!
It can be a part of what I do for a living - and I don't mean drug dealing - but it's more the tone of the letter that grates.
I KNOW you're entitled to free legal advice at any stage. The people getting the letters may not and the implication is that unless you come and have a word with us you WON'T get free legal advice. That's my beef.
Are these people allowed to be so disingenuous without any recourse? My thinking is that something like this could put a spanner in their case from the off - i.e. they haven't properly advised of the legal rights someone has in these matters.
It's a legal matter and the people involved need to take proper advice, I was just wondering if anyone had a take on whether these fuckers can get away with sending out such garbage.
(For the record, I genuinely believe the fella has done no wrong - but that's not the poitn here)
Cheers
A while ago I worked for a police force (not the Met, I hasten to add). Part of my remit involved internal systems audits (the joys of IT security), which led me to working closely with the Professional Standards lot (Internal Affairs). Anyway, I ran some reports on a copper and passed them on. Thought nothing further of it, left their employ and was six months into a new role when I got a letter to my home address 'requiring' me to attend an internal tribunal to present evidence where they were going to do this copper and get rid of him before his pension was due. Sent them a letter back, politiely inviting them to fcuk off - whereupon I promptly started receiving phone calls from them telling them i was 'legally obliged' to attend. I laughed at the first couple, but after about three or four I started to get extremely irate and took out some legal advice which naturally totally supported the fact that I wasn't 'obliged' to do any such thing, and that any responsibilities I had along those lines ended when I left my post. I also recovered the costs of the legal advice I'd had to pay for.
It's my experience that the police's approach to legalese is utterly incompetent - and I'm pretty sure that it's because they never bother to check anything before they do it.
Trying to put the shits up somone like that and not outline the full facts just isn't on.
As an aside, the rest of the letter is shockingly badly written. Particularly the part where the writer ssasys that he wants a response within 7 days or else an arrest may occur at any time, then says he's going to be away for the next two weeks!
youtube.com/watch?v=DhDURPuqM0k
There have been horror stories about the plod asking people in for a "friendly chat". It's a long read but see some of the stuff that's happened on here: pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=10&t=1304235&mid=0&i=0&nmt=Police+want+a+chat+about+a+complaint%3F&mid=0