Jersey Reform Day.
This site is dedicated to the day, now officially recognised annually by the States of Jersey, to mark the anniversary of the events of 28 September 1769.
Jersey's own Independence or Bastille Day.
Jersey Liberation Day comes and goes every year along with Holocaust Memorial Day and the service at the Crematorium in memory of the "slave workers"...
Here, on Liberation Day 2012, our 51 Elected States Members march along with the brass bands together with VIPs from the government and adminisitration of Jersey, young people in military uniforms, and church officials - all in front of an audience of thousands of residents and visitors.
Yet this week, another report is published drawing attention to the lack of the most basic anti-discrimination laws in Jersey.
This time it is the failure, not only to safeguard the rights of all women but also reminds us that this Island has still not even ratified the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
What sort of a community is this? How is it possible that 51 elected representatives can so resolutely fail, year after year, to implement the necessary regulations and reforms so that Jersey's International Profile is worthy of respect? Why also is it possible that Jersey's 250 lawyers allow this international scandal to remain unchecked and in silence?
Who in our States will grasp this matter as a matter of urgency now that Bob Hill is no longer a Deputy?
Shall Senator Bailhache have the courage to demand that this Island achieves international human rights standards in parity with other territories?
Who will demand that funds are allocated so that the people of Jersey are educated and informed on human rights matters and who will undertake to promote ratification of the many outstanding treaties and conventions that protect for example, the rights of children and disabled persons in this Island?
It is very unlikely that a copy of this book will be included in the house contents auction sale that has attracted so much attention in Jersey this week.
In fact it’s not a book that can be found in any public library, bookshop or even on “Amazon.” It is a truly rare first edition with a plot set in Jersey - any copy would be unique – yet nobody seems even to know of its existence.
Surely the prize item in such a sale of rare items - since it was actually written by George Seymour Tett himself (with a little help from a paid professional “ghost writer”) - but it has strangely been consigned to oblivion. Why?
Of course, the book was not very flattering about Jersey, as might be gathered from the title.
When I last saw Mr Tett in December 1978 he was trying to decide what to do next with the typescript of the book. Publish and be damned he wondered or go back to the courts to seek further satisfaction for the wrongs that had been spoiling his life for the past decade?
He even had a scheme in mind whereby he would donate a piece of land as a play space for local children near his home in St Saviour to be paid for out of the award of damages he was expecting.
He was planning to spend that Christmas and New Year at “Reid’s Hotel” in Madeira enjoying some good food and company and mulling over the various possibilities.
My last sight of him was of an incredibly agile 82 years old man skipping between the traffic in a town street just a few days before he was due to depart.
Sadly, his departure was to be much more final because he died within a day or two. He never reached Madeira and any thoughts of seeking justice or publishing the book evaporated. Yet strangely he apparently left final instructions that the contents of his house should only be sold after his wife had died too. That came to pass last year – hence Mr Tett’s extraordinary life-time collection of antiques is being sold off.
Death was no stranger to Mr Tett.
He had served in the First World War and had experienced mustard gas and been marooned in no-man’s land in freezing temperatures.
The gas more or less destroyed his teeth and his first greeting to me (having discovered my bachelor status) was to urge me to have all my teeth removed and to find a wife.
But he was also a great believer in proper “behaviour,” just like the sort of Edwardian gents that might have been encountered at Reid’s Hotel or on the Orient Express in the 1920s. He really belonged to another long-gone age. He was that almost mythical beast - the English gentleman – but he was very angry about what had happened to him in Jersey.
George Seymour Tett, born 1896 in Kent, went to France in 1916 and probably served with the “Household Battalion” at Ypres and Passchendale where his battalion suffered very heavy losses. They were disbanded in 1918.
He returned to civilian life and prospered.
In 1933 he patented a design for a dish washing machine but he was mainly involved in industrial water treatment, so far as I know.
He moved to Jersey as the equivalent of an 11K in 1958 and soon settled down into the pleasant life.
On arrival he had asked his bank to suggest a Jersey lawyer to him and was somewhat surprised when a living, breathing example was promptly produced, without much prior negotiation. But in those days there were only about 50 Jersey lawyers and this one was as likeable a Methodist Freemason as any other.
In the event they worked together satisfactorily for some years and life was good.
Mr and Mrs Tett were soon part of the croquet playing set at Government House.
For their own home, Mr and Mrs Tett had finally fallen in love with “Alphington House,” St Saviour just handy to the Church and the Parish Hall. It was the inherited property of Francis de Lisle Bois (Deputy Bailiff and OBE in the fullness of time) but at the last minute Bois became reluctant to sell for some reason.
Nevertheless the Tetts bought it and spent many happy years there having renamed it “Priors.”
They also bought some properties for investments such as a small block of flats at Gorey. All the purchases and transactions were of course contracted through the ever-attentive Jersey lawyer and several of the flats were let through the then Housing Department to States employees. The leases included a payment for external maintenance and looking after the gardens and such like as a “global rent.”
Then one day, Mr Tett was advised by William Hamilton, the States Housing Officer, that he had arbitrarily reduced one or more of the rents to exclude the global part of the rent. Mr Tett was outraged and of course consulted his ever attentive lawyer for advice…
How could the Housing Department tear up an agreed contract and re-write its terms wondered Mr Tett. What sort of “behaviour” was this? Surely it was just some simple mistake?
Of course, Mr Tett did not then know that the upstanding ex-colonial Colonel Hamilton was a former senior police officer and magistrate in Madras or that he was married to Marguerite de Lisle Bois or that he occupied premises adjacent to the Rent Control Tribunal office.
But, of course these are the sort of things we must expect in such a small Island as Jersey and Mr Tett also learned that his ever attentive Jersey lawyer – who was also an elected States Member - was about as useless as a chocolate teapot too. He had no useful advice to offer except to accept the new arrangement.
Eventually, after complaining everywhere and speaking to anything that moved, Mr Tett resorted to Mr Falle, the charming, aged librarian at the Central Library and he searched through local States enactments….
…and low and behold discovered that not only had the States (the Jersey government) recently voted for a specific amendment to the relevant law that prevented the Housing Department from arbitrarily altering a rent – but the chocolate teapot had actually voted for it!!!
So the jubilant Mr Tett went back to his lawyer and protested – but it was all a waste of time because the Jersey system, then as now, is based upon the rule of never admitting to a mistake.
Mr Tett’s frustration boiled over in 1968 when William Hamilton was sworn-in before the Jersey court as a Jurat.
He protested again by shouting from the back of the royal room – appealing for justice and against the swearing-in – but of course was removed and silenced. The JEP duly reported on the scandalous outrage and in their fine journalistic tradition failed to investigate what Mr Tett’s behaviour was really about.
So what happened next? The croquet invitations to Government House stopped arriving of course and Mrs Tett sometimes returned from the supermarket in distress because old friends had snubbed her. For Mr Tett it was all very upsetting too but he had served at Ypres and was not to be defeated by such a spat over such a silly, simple dispute.
His circle of friends changed a bit.Norman le Brocq became an invitee at Priors and Mr Tett started writing to other Jersey dissidents and even UK MPs.
He also managed to get some hearings before the Jersey courts and lost – at least until he engaged Linklaters, an important and large law firm in the City of London to advise and instruct. As a wealthy man, Mr Tett could afford to employ them but they then held the hand of a Jersey lawyer based in London who duly appeared for him in the Jersey court
Eventually he won. The global rent was restored. But of course the illusion of paradise had been damaged. That could never be fully restored.
For the full story of Jersey’s “shady side” it may be necessary to find a copy of that very rare typescript at the auction but for those who have an eye to see, the same or similar administrative defects are ever apparent today.
After all, the States' building, which houses the courts and the government assembly, is sited on the shady side of the square.
In fact Ronnie was not buried – he was cremated on 5 May 2011 after killing himself with three shots from a nail gun, hired for that purpose.
At the time Ronnie was in the care of the States of Jersey and had been farmed out, at considerable public expense, into the world of a private, so called, “Luxury Residential care home” in Jersey.
His suicide should have come as no surprise. He had written a handful of “suicide notes” a year previously and these had been disclosed to the appropriate staff and the police – but nothing was done officially to help him, so far as I know.
I knew Ronnie for just one year – the last year of his life – because I was already visiting a friend incarcerated in the same “luxury care home.”
Unlike Ronnie, she (F1) was severely disabled by strokes, was visibly unhappy and often talked about wishing to die. Yet she was initially well enough for a few of us to take her out on her birthday to a restaurant and she seemed to enjoy that well enough.
Yet her care was so inadequate that another old friend (OF) and I both contacted the Chief States Regulator of Care homes in April 2010 to express our disquiet about her treatment and some other aspects of the home in general.
We understand that enquiries were made – but nothing was done. Nothing improved.
We heard no more.
To give an example of my concerns, on one occasion whilst I was visiting F1, another resident of the home entered her room and without speaking a word seized the beaker of fluid from her bed-table (it might have been medicine), drank it and departed. He was of course a man with problems of his own, but apparently he frequently entered her room, at any hour of the day or night, causing her considerable distress. She had complained but nothing was done to prevent his access.
F1’s mental and physical state deteriorated rapidly during 2011 and she died soon after Ronnie killed himself.
Towards her end, both OF and I were refused admittance to the care home to see her. Previously she had complained that staff had “broken her leg” and I expressed concerns about this to the Deputy Viscount (DV) when arrangements were in hand for Ronnie’s inquest. F1 had begged me not to raise the matter with the care home staff.
The DV made enquiries and reported to me that he was assured that her leg had not been broken, but I do not know her cause of death and the DV rejected my suggestion that her subsequent death should be subject to an inquest too.
Coincidentally, soon after I began visiting F1 at the home, another friend started working there and it was her (WB) who introduced me to Ronnie Allan.
He was then a charming, modest, articulate but very lonely man of 57, who desperately wanted to leave the “luxury care home” to live on his own in St Helier where he would be near his circle of friends. At the home he was often “locked in” or “locked out” (having no key or knowledge of the lock combination number), finding the walk into town both difficult (it involved a steep climb back from town) and subject to weather conditions.
Ronnie was admitted to the GeneralHospital following an accident at or near his town lodgings over Christmas 2009 and had suffered a head injury. He was subsequently taken into care at this Luxury Care home at public expense because Jersey’s Health service is desperately short of suitable placements and wants to farm out many such cases to the “private sector.”
This particular care home is registered for just a couple of dozen residents but has had a chequered existence since it ceased trading as a private treatment centre and was converted, at considerable expense.
The main buildings are superficially attractive and comfortable but the UK owned management attempts to care here for a very wide age and disability range, from Autistic teenagers to very elderly and fragile people with intense nursing care needs.
Respite care is one area of provision that the home seems particularly keen to offer at the present time and it is understood to be currently bidding to provide this service, for the Jersey Health Department, for the next few years.
The UK parent business is deeply in debt to the tune of £800 millions due to be settled this September. This was reduced from £1.5 billions in 2009 following a rescue deal when the Bank of Scotland took a 40% share.
Adverts on the Internet show how the care group is constantly recruiting staff (of which there is a general shortage) from all over the world for its many establishments and it is apparent that there have been difficulties in finding suitable, qualified and competent staff for the group’s several Jersey homes.
Ronnie must have recovered well from his injuries but whether he was ever properly assessed or re-assessed is not known to me. When I met him he assured me that he felt fit enough and able to look after himself (although he hardly ate) but was desperate to leave the care home where he shared a room with an aged, alcoholic smoker with a heavy cough. Ronnie found it difficult to sleep there.
Ronnie had previously given up smoking (so he said) but re-started whilst living at the home and it was also subsequently claimed, by others, that he too was an alcoholic showing Korsakoff’s symptoms.
If Ronnie did ever have a drink problem I was not aware of it.
During the year that I knew him he sometimes drank coffee or a half pint of lager which often took him an hour or more to consume.
He claimed to be uncertain why he was being detained at this home, that he had asked to leave and that he did not knowingly have a social worker appointed.
I began to know Ronnie through giving him lifts into town and learned that he had broken his back in a fall as a carpenter on a Jersey building site in 2004 and been unable to work since.
I offered to help if possible to return him to independent living and to engage a lawyer through the legal aid scheme to advise him regarding his accidents, current standards of care and housing status. We duly filled out the relevant forms so a lawyer was appointed to investigate and advise. She claimed to have UK expertise in care home cases. The legal aid certificate was (finally) issued on 2 August 2010 after some delays.
I contacted several States members, including past and present Ministers and officers of the Housing Department, Trusts and Roseneath hostel with a view to obtaining suitable housing accommodation. Ronnie and I attended many appointments together - with the lawyer, the Social Security Department, CAB or elsewhere - and met States members to raise other concerns. We spoke together on the ‘phone many times about any progress - but there was none. This dialogue went on until the end of November 2010. On the 9 November, following many ‘phone calls, I helped him complete an application form to be accommodated by a Trust and returned this to Deputy Green (then a backbencher) and on the 19th of that month wrote again to the Deputy confirming that it was in order for him to contact the Housing Department for any further details.
On the 21st of November I wrote to Ronnie’s lawyers expressing concern at their lack of progress and the non-arrival of certain papers.
The only real success was that following our visit, his bank agreed to re-issue his credit or debit card so that he might access his limited funds. We learned there that the bank claimed to have been instructed by the care home not to issue a card.
Ronnie had rattled off his bank account number from memory on this occasion when asked and this was typical of his ability to remember and recall information.
For a while Ronnie seemed much more cheerful and optimistic, presumably in anticipation that he might soon leave the care home.
At the end of June 2010, WB, had become so concerned about the low standards of care at the home that she “blew the whistle” by contacting the CEO of the group in England and the head of the Jersey Registration and Inspection service. She also resigned her job there and went with Ronnie to consult his GP.
She also attended a day long interview, in company with Deputy Tadier, on 2 July making a formal complaint to (RO) another Registration and Inspection Officer at the Jersey Health Department.
This complaint concerned many specific concerns about the care of several residents at the care home, including Ronnie Allan and F1, besides more general matters about staff competence and training and she signed a six page witness statement.
The Inspector RO wrote in August that he had completed his investigation of the concerns raised by WB and published his own report - dated 4 August - which included just a few criticisms of the home’s management and offered only minimal recommendations for change.
Deputy Tadier tabled written questions to the Minister of Health on 6 July and 12 October 2010 with regard to matters arising from these concerns.
Meanwhile, from 17 to 22 June 2010 an advertisement appeared in the JEP for a Home Manager for the same care home.
According to the Health Minister’s answer of 12 October to Deputy Tadier in the States, the investigation of the complaint by RO was completed on 23 July and he applied for the advertised job on 26 July, was interviewed on 29 July and received written confirmation offering him the post on 4 August – the same day that he signed his report.
He tendered his resignation the same day and became manager of the care home soon afterwards.
His former job as a Registration and Inspection Officer was advertised in the JEP on 26 August 2010 and a successor appointed “in the last few days” according to the Health Minister (in the States) on 12 October.
Deputy Pryke added…“I am satisfied that the utmost probity has been undertaken by the officers of the Health Protection Service.”…”the appropriate level of investigation has been undertaken”…”I do not consider in the circumstances that it is either expedient or appropriate for there to be yet another investigation. The home will continue to be inspected twice a year in accordance with statutory regulations.”
Progress with Ronnie’s appointed lawyers was very slow. Ronnie had asked me to deal with them on his behalf, in part because it was sometimes inconvenient for him to walk into town but also because he wanted his affairs kept private from the care home staff – who he suspected of interfering with his mail. The months rolled by. In spite of many reminders, the Housing Department would not respond positively or at all. Other potential housing leads also remained in limbo.
Then out of the blue one day in the autumn I received a ‘phone call from a woman demanding to know who I was, my full name and address and other personal details. I asked who she was and was told that she was Ronnie’s Social Worker (SW) and she did not like my involvement in his case. Somewhat surprised and having discovered who she was I offered to meet with her immediately to discuss his problem. She declined, saying that she was too busy, was only part-time and would go off duty in about one hour. She could offer no other possible time to meet and was going on holiday.
It was to be a turning point.
I ‘phoned Ronnie who was very upset because she had also advised him to have nothing further to do with me. I said that in the circumstance he had better deal through her and that I would also advise the lawyers accordingly. But we should keep in touch.
Following this intervention my dealings with Ronnie were much reduced. We spoke only a few times by ‘phone and his lawyers refused to speak with me about his case because I was not their client. Ronnie became very subdued.
Ronnie Allan died at the GeneralHospital on 14 April 2011 after shooting himself with a nail gun, at the care home. He had hired the nail gun for that purpose locally.
I learned about this after reading a comment on a blog-site and discussed the matter with WB, the whistle-blower who had previously worked at the care home. She proposed sending a copy of her witness statement to the Deputy Viscount and offered to assist him in any way.
I too drafted a statement and contacted the Deputy Viscount to express my concerns. He referred me to the States Police and I attended several interviews on or after 2 May with a view to producing a revised version that better suited their needs.
In fact, I found the Police officers to be generally unhelpful and ill informed. They had no knowledge of Ronnie’s previous “suicide letters” and did not seem keen to discover it. Their purpose appeared to be primarily to “cleanse” my statement of criticisms and I declined to sign their version.
I re-drafted my own statement of six pages and submitted this to the Deputy Viscount on 10 May and asked to be invited to attend the inquest.
I wrote that “there are several issues referred to above [i.e. in my written submission] which warrant further investigation because they suggest inadequate or improper conduct which might;
a) Have contributed to Mr Allan’s state of mind or
b) Warrant censure or
c) Need to be addressed for the protection and well being of others.
…..Also that the circumstances of his detention at [the care home] and the restrictions imposed upon his several freedoms, should be investigated.”
The inquest was delayed but finally took place on Monday 19 September 2011.
It was late in starting on the day because the police had failed to produce important documents.
I had suggested several people to the Deputy Viscount that might usefully be called to speak – including WB the whistle-blowing former employee - and asked that I should be able to comment if necessary. None were called and I was refused permission.
Both the pathologist and the Senior Psychiatric worker called as witnesses had never met Ronnie Allan whilst he was alive. Yet both presumed to describe in detail how he had severe alcohol induced impairments and that his general behaviour, abilities and faculties such as memory were severely damaged.
They described a person who was totally different from the Ronnie Allan that I had known. I specifically asked to be permitted to question the veracity of this evidence but was denied.
Ronnie Allan’s GP was not called although he had been, to my certain knowledge, consulted recently by Ronnie with regard to several ailments and with a view to achieving his “release” from the care home to a more suitable place.
Ronnie’s social worker (SW) spoke for about twenty five minutes.
She described herself as a “social worker with a university degree” and repeated the tale about Ronnie’s “history of alcohol abuse” and how he “was always very charming” but “lacking in capacity.”
She also described how an attempt to have a curatorship initiated was refused by the Crown Officers because he lacked sufficient financial assets to pay their charges and there were no next of kin in Jersey to assist him.
His bank, she explained, froze his account “due to his lack of capacity,” but it had been arranged for the care home to manage his pocket money and an “unmet need form had been completed.”
The legal basis for these arrangements was not clarified.
On the contrary, SW explained that there was no clear procedure for Ronnie to be sectioned or articled and that the whole basis of the concept of “capacity” was uncertain under Jersey law.
Furthermore, when his GP referred him for re-assessment by a Mental Health Team on 29 June it was decided that he did, in fact have “capacity” and following the whistle blowing (by WB) an “emergency review” took place but SW did not participate in it.
She used the expression “duty of care” on several occasions and how Ronnie wanted “his own front door and key.”
On 12 April 2011 she “reviewed Ronnie in his apartment” and explained how “he seemed positive – there was no evidence of Mental Health issues…but his was a complex case with many issues.”
During September SW must have become aware of my existence because she claimed that I was “verbally aggressive (to her), his lawyers and the bank” and that “we had an adult protection case conference which was not upheld due to lack of evidence.” I presume that this latter was the official and failed attempt by the Health Department to investigate and destroy my character and friendship with Ronnie.
Nevertheless she had clearly felt it sufficiently important to rubbish my reputation and participation for trying to assist Ronnie and the Deputy Viscount clearly deemed it appropriate to allow her to make such unwarranted statements, based largely on hearsay.
I asked to be able to respond to her statement but was only permitted to reply to those comments that referred specifically and critically to me. These comments had, of course, very little to do with the tragic circumstances of Ronnie Allan’s death.
At the conclusion of the hearing the Deputy Viscount outlined his duties as he sees them and that his brief narrative statement would be submitted to the Bailiff for his approval prior to the death being notified to the Parish Registrar for entry in the deaths book.
I wrote to the Bailiff, following the Inquest on 20 September 2011 that I was not satisfied with the proceedings related to Ronnie Allan’s treatment and care, his death by suicide and the subsequent inquiries as carried out under the Deputy Viscount’s authority. I copied my statement of 10 May to the Bailiff, complained that personal criticism of me had been permitted whilst I and others had not been called or allowed to speak and I suggested that the whole “inquest” process needed to be looked at afresh and reformed. I also suggested that there might be Human Rights defects in the inquest process and that the public interest was not being adequately served etc.
The Bailiff referred my letter to the Viscount.
On 1st December I wrote again to the Bailiff that I had received no response from the Viscount nor had I been invited to speak with him or to answer any questions.
The Viscount’s office responded on 6 December to advise that the Viscount would meet me during the week commencing 19 December. A meting duly took place and he personally undertook to investigate the matters complained of.
Following a couple of chance meetings in the Royal Square with the Viscount I learned that the investigation had been completed but it was not clear what action if any he proposed to take, except that he agreed that the acoustic systems at tribunals needed to be improved and that the public notification of inquests should be addressed.
I contacted the Viscount’s office again at the end of March 2012 for news of progress and asked for a copy of his report. This was supplied to me on 29 March and transpires to have been written by an Assistant Judicial Greffier, who sat next to me during the inquest. It is hardly an independent or useful document.
It is dated 2 February 2012 and endorsed;
“This report is confidential and is not to be reproduced, transmitted or shared with any other parties in any format, printed or electronic.”
In the covering letter dated 29 March 2012, the Assistant Greffier also wrote;
“Please note (as stated on the document) that the contents of this document are confidential and are not to be copied, reproduced, transmitted or published in any way and in any medium, printed or electronic.
Please also note that our telephone conversation was also confidential and nothing that I said during that conversation is to be quoted or repeated in any medium, electronic or printed.”
To date, the only useful result of all my efforts is that the day and time of inquest hearings is now posted on the electronic screen in the internal lobby of the main entrance to the courts/States' building.
It is a wholly inadequate response to the tragic events of the past two years.
As a postscript, the Health, SS and Housing Scrutiny Panel has this week published its report on Respite Care for Children and Young Adults (SR 2/2012).
I (among others) asked for this Review to take place although I did want it to look rather wider than just at the facilities for young people.
Suffice to say that the luxury care home that “cared” for Ronnie and F1 features in this Scrutiny Report and I hope that many people will study very carefully the comments that are offered both there and here.
A previous report to the States (on Stakeholder Consultation in January 2010) included the following advice from the Law Officers;
“The current legislation underpinning care homes is no longer fit for purpose.”
That report also questioned whether the regulator should sit within the Public Health and Social Services Department at all.
Helen Collinson, a campaigner with UK Christian Aid, was in Jersey today - 25 April - to address a couple of meetings.
Her first was with the "Business Connect" discussion at the Town Hall between 1pm and 2pm.
It was part of the series of such meetings where business people - mostly from Finance - are confronted with their own image by various speakers.
Not many active farmers seem to attend - although there were at least two retired agriculturalist sitting at my table - but today's audience was more varied than usual.
Other speakers were Geoff Cook of Jersey Finance, Richard Syvret who was the first chief at the JFSC in 1998, and Father Francis Macauley, the newly arrived priest at St Thomas'. John Scott facilitated well to keep four speakers contained within the hour available and Business Connect will be posting a video of the proceedings via YouTube in due course.
I interviewed Helen shortly before she set out to speak at the Georgetown Methodist Chapel.
I wonder whether the Christians are getting to grips with such issues rather more usefully than the "progressive" politicos in Jersey at the present time?
Strange that Jersey's pirate history is not visibly celebrated but we do wax lyrical about the 18th century British Colonial, Imperialist and bloodthirsty past.
Here the pirates put the current case for globalisation.
See also the interview with Shaxson on Treasure Islands (including Jersey) in a previous posting on this blogsite....when the author was washed ashore here in 2011.
The public discussion on the potential introduction of “TASERS” is useful because it tries to address the Jersey perspective. But is policing any different here?
Governments world-wide see the need to control the public with much the same degrees of priority. They will resort to almost any methods - whether justified by statistics or any other evidence.
Needs must, will usually be the final decider, especially where financial cost is not too excessive. But how those “needs” are determined is not at all clear.
All policing agencies are required to have the means to control individuals as well as groups – so anything from guns to water cannon, to CS gas or rubber bullets or armoured vehicles will be commissioned and justified if deemed necessary, to maintain the status-quo or somebody’s notion of “public order.”
Innocent bystanders elsewhere have been visibly beaten by truncheons to collapse dead or injured at a demonstration (Ian Tomlinson April 2009, G20), or, a person carrying a table leg shot dead in the street (Harry Stanley 1999), or, an electrician (J.C. De Menezes 2005) shot dead at point blank range on his way to work in a tube-train etc - but the relevance here of such activities remains difficult to evaluate. Except that Jersey’s UK structured and largely integrated States Police tends to follow suit with whatever technology or method is available and adopted in other forces or according to Home Office dictates.
To deliver an electric shock rather than a bullet might sound like more humane policing but it is just too simplistic as justification in this community.
“Drop the banana or we will kidnap your granny” might prove to be an equally effective anti - crime tactic if given a try, in some instances. Especially since the parameters of use can never be sufficiently defined unless “potential deviants” are prepared to act in accordance with a set of published rules or policies.
Of course they won’t – that is presumably why they are deemed “deviants” and need to be controlled.
“Operation Blast” has shown that the Jersey Police collect information – for their own or other agency’s purposes - about all sorts of people and their interests, but it is just the tip of the mammoth surveillance business that lies behind all human activities in 2012.
It is not just the government or their police agents who collect information about us, our conduct or beliefs and act upon it.
Information gathering is very big business and its miss-use is presumably just as likely to originate in private policing organisations such as G4S or Securicor. Thus the sorry queue of shoeless, half-undressed people waiting to board aircraft at airports, are an everyday example of inevitable modern trends. The dubious arguments in favour of Tasers have to be considered in the context of our surveillance obsessed society.
It is not too difficult, under current conditions, to imagine Tasers or some similar device being deployed on innocent “potential deviants” about the fly off on some dream holiday.
Less likely to imagine is the possibility of Tasers being aimed at somebody who returns an overdue library book – but it would not be so improbable if the avid reader had a data record indicating a persistent interest in turning weed killer into dangerous devices or even more explosive uses. The more so if the reader happened to be a bearded Muslim - with or without a hook-hand.
Yet, the already known abuses are almost inevitable.
Within the last few days a nine year old boy has been Tasered in Ohio because he would not go to school. The Chief of the local police force has already been suspended and other officers stood down.
A dog-walker has been Tasered in the back by a female San Francisco National Parks warden for failing to use a lead, as required under local regulations.
French gendarmes recently Tasered a pig which had escaped from its pen in a Paris suburb. What might they have done without this device to re-capture the animal?
When Mark Duggan was shot dead by trained London police in August 2011, riots started in Tottenham, spreading widely over England within hours but could a Taser have been realistically deployed instead?
The simple word of mouth system that led to Harry Stanley being shot dead for carrying a table leg in a London street belongs to the policing standards of Peelers of the nineteenth century but modern information gathering techniques are just as flawed in their origins and application.
The end results are equally likely to be physically or mentally harmful and as has been suggested elsewhere, the availability of such devices as Tasers will not reduce the deployment of “justified force.” On the contrary, they will tend to raise the stakes all round. Tasers won’t replace truncheons, handcuffs or guns but merely join with the existing devices already in use.
Two cases reported from El Reno (USA) concerned; a) an 86 years old, bedridden and disabled woman who was Tasered twice by police when she produced a kitchen knife from under her bedclothes in 2010 and, b) a man Tasered when falling into a state of diabetic shock in 2008.
A Californian Court has already decided that the application of the 50,000 volt device to be “excessive force” and more serious than the use of pepper spray. This decision threatened that local police force’s practical use of Tasers.
When Barrie Cooper was illegally detained at La Moye prison (Jersey) in the 1970s – upon the basis of wrong information – he was injected with the drug “Largactyl.” This was not a treatment for any illness but was simply given as a sedative (it was known as the “liquid cosh”) to put him to sleep for a few hours.
Although this “treatment” was probably illegal in human rights terms – amounting to “torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” – it was the sort of “less dangerous” use of force by a government agency upon the citizen. It was therefore deemed as “justified.”
In previous years, “Paraldehyde” would probably have been the preferred injection drug being also very painful for the receiving “deviant.” Thus, arbitrary punishment could be administered under professionally qualified authority without affording access to tedious scrutiny or challenge.
During the eighteenth century, British justice favoured the use of the pillory for many offences but especially for some classes of persons or deviants. Thus Jews and homosexuals were especially likely to be treated harshly by the public so that many such punishments proved to be fatal.
In Jersey, the use of the triple pillory in the Royal square was discontinued in 1836, shortly after three Jewish merchants were exposed there.
In the UK the pillory continued until it last appeared during 1872 in Wales.
By modern human rights standards, this was clearly a “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and would have been contrary to international standards supposedly accepted by Jersey soon after the Liberation.
Yet public executions by hanging continued in Jersey until 1907 (according to the law) but in practice only until 1875 (the last public hanging in the BritishIslands) whilst the last Jersey death sentence was handed down in a Jersey court in 1984 (and commuted by the UK government). Now such capital punishments are prevented by the application of the Human Rights Jersey Law (2006) which incorporates Protocol 13 of the European Convention.
Thus it can be shown that types of punishment and the behaviour of such agencies as the police are no longer domestic matters solely for the people of Jersey to determine for themselves. Furthermore, the international standards are constantly being reviewed, reformed and up-rated just as governments and commercial operators are dreaming up devices such as Tasers which can be deployed to defeat such aspirations.
Unfortunately, it has to be acknowledged that Jersey’s government has a very luke-warm enthusiasm towards signing up for the latest international human rights standards or implementing those that have already been ratified.
Of course, the manufacturers and distributors of such devices are very keen to promote their latest gadgets and governments are keen to buy into anything that offers simplistic solutions to difficult problems. It is remarkably similar to the vigorous promotion and take-up of surveillance equipment which has reached almost saturation point in the British Isles.
The primary American supplier is currently embarked on a sales campaign to promote
the shocking device for police (public) and private (domestic home) security use. Internet articles suggest projected sales up to $150 millions producing a $20 millions profit in 2012.
Tasers (there are differing types, manufactured in several countries, having different characteristics) are just another tool in the huge armoury of “more acceptable devices” and/or methods available to those in authority or having power over fellow citizens.
It matters not whether those with authority are trained professionals such as doctors, or prison officers, police officers, lawyers, magistrates or politicians because the opportunity to covertly bully, or punish, deliberately or otherwise, is an ever present risk.
Unlike sedation drugs, the application of electric stunning devices can never claim a justified medical “treatment” purpose.
Yet Tasers will be authorised by such people as are necessary to control others and there will be very minimal opportunity for any prompt redress or complaint. Taser abuse is as certain as night follows day.
Many court cases have already been initiated resulting from Taser use.
Law Professor Robert Cunningham was Tasered and arrested in 2008 whilst walking with a female friend in Fremantle (Australia). His case alleging “unlawful arrest, imprisonment, battery and assault” by the police had reached the court system in March this year.
George Asore, a 25 years old Ghanaian-born university graduate was allegedly shot several times by London Met police in February this year and then Tasered as he lay on the pavement in a pool of blood.
AUniversity student, allegedly fleeing with a packet of biscuits from a shop in Sydney this same month, was Tasered by three pursuing officers and died shortly afterwards.
According to Amnesty International, the use of electric shock devices has been noted in 490 subsequent deaths in the USA since 1990.
Yet there is very little monitoring of Taser use even in such places as Chicago where their deployment by police has increased fivefold since 2008. Typically this city has very little regulation either to control the use of Tasers and private ownership of the device is already widespread in the USA.
Ontario, on the other hand, set down controlling regulations in 2010 although many policing bodies claim that it is impossible to realistically predict and regulate Taser use for operational reasons.
Apart from the potential accidental damage that might result from the “proper deployment” of Tasers (such as loss of eyesight, concussion or broken teeth from falls), it is inevitable that the device will be used as a form of punishment, or to induce fear or distress. It is also inevitable that they will be deployed inappropriately, for example, when the distance is too great (as little as 6 metres being the max range), or when the “deviant” poses no actual threat or risk, having already been restrained.
Aaron Anderson has just been Tasered in Truro (Cornwall) after pleading with the police to shoot him. He was armed with a knife.
Tasers were deployed at the conclusion of the Dale Farm Travellers site dispute during October 2011 although they are not recommended “as a public order tactic.”
In Jersey, it is especially difficult to determine the class of “deviants” that might warrant the deployment of Tasers at all. There is certainly very little known history of criminals or political activists resorting to the use of fire-arms.No police officer has been killed in service since honorary officer Centenier George Le Cronier was fatally wounded by a female brothel-keeper who suddenly produced a knife in 1846. Even if Taser technology had been available then, it would clearly have not helped to save that officer.
More recent Jersey murders have predominantly occurred in “domestic” circumstances without any “Taser-fight at the OK corral” style policing confrontations or engagements with “deviants.”
Mike Bowron, Jersey’s Chief Police Officer claims that Tasers are needed now because his officers have to attend about 20 knife incidents each year.
Unfortunately, it is especially difficult to determine how Jersey’s twelve Honorary (Parish) Police forces might respond to any use of Tasers by the States Police.
Parish police officers – over 250 in total – are as unlikely as the 240 States Police officers to encounter a potential “Taser deployment” situation, but what might they do in that eventuality? Should they be equipped with this device too? If not, why not?
If fully trained, professional States of Jersey police need the extra protection afforded by this device the part-time honorary officers can hardly be left out. But who might ensure that they are adequately trained in Taser use and who might speak for them during the current debate?
Who might actually be promoting the use of Tasers in Jersey is not totally clear.
This is presumably an operational matter for the Chief Officer Mike Bowron to determine but it has already been made the subject of political debate and scrutiny
(see Scrutiny.gov.je for the Terms of Reference of the ongoing Scrutiny Panel inquiry).
The potential relaxation of UK “export” controls on these dangerous devices has been offered as the pretext for the renewed Jersey interest but the UK Home Office has been promoting policies that all police cars in England and Wales will carry a Taser X26 in a few years and that 30,000 officers will carry them as a matter of routine.
ACPO (UK) guidelines issued in December 2008 declared that;
“Tasers can only be used where officers would be facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and/or the subject(s)”
Usually the ultimate veto on cost grounds would rest with the Jersey States but Home Affairs Minister Senator Le Marquand has indicated that he will only sanction Tasers if that assembly agrees. His own view – which might reasonably be expected to reflect his Christian beliefs – remains ambiguous.
Attempts to speak with the States Police or Minister Le Marquand by telephone for further clarification in the context of writing this article have not been very forthcoming.
The City of London Police – Mike Bowron’s former employer – is a force of 884 officers equipped with 46 Tasers.
72 officers are authorised to use them and 5 routinely carry them. They are classed as “firearms” and the City website includes a 29 page guidance document which clarifies how they might be used and regulated (“as a less lethal option”) together with some guidance on “Interference with Human Rights obligations” etc. besides listing the pistols and other more conventional weapons, Launchers with Baton rounds, shotgun breaching rounds, CS irritants, Pyrotechnic Distraction Devices, armed response vehicles and body armour that are issued when necessary.
In its brief Human Rights Review, the City of London Police restrict their comments to the application of the European Convention of Human Rights citing Articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10,11 & 14 as being affected.
There were a couple of hundred parrots in Royal Court No 2 today. Not actually flying around the room and talking their heads off – but they might as well have been.
Many of them have been on the endangered list for decades - but not so long as the Jersey legal system has been facing extinction. Today, their futures must have looked dismal before dawn – a bad parrot day as they were saying in court - but it’s amazing how the darkest hour brightened up once the lawyers’ cash registers started to ring up a few hours of fees.
Back in October 2009 Martin Fernando was complaining that a helicopter was buzzing his collection of rare species in St John and that several birds died from shock. He blamed his wealthy neighbours then. Presumably they were from the de Zille 11K family – though not named at the time in the JEP – but identified now in Court because the Minister for Health – Deputy Pryke – had been persuaded to invoke her abatement powers under the Jersey Nuisance Law against the noisy parrots.
What was a nuisance? Was it the English meaning that applied in Jersey for these exotic creatures and how about Article 8 Rights under the ECHR for “respect for private and family life”? Everything was very confusing – even the wording of the Jersey Statute defied interpretation.
It was Deputy Bailiff Bailhache (the presiding judge) who raised that rights-issue though he stressed it was Mr Fernando’s rights he had in mind – not the parrots and - and towards the end of this very tiring day he did suggest that strangling the wearisome oiseaux might have been one way of removing the nuisance at little cost.
But the legal argument was very complex on what should have been so simple really.
Does Jersey have its own Jersey law and legal system or not?
It’s a question that has been heard thousands of times since the glorious day (for lawyers) in 1204 when King John lost Normandy and the Channel Islands finished up in a legal no-man’s land.
Since then it has never been clear which law actually applies on so many basic things.
Even with the offence of fraud - as they reminded themselves today - do we follow English interpretations and statutes or rely on obscure Jersey “common law”.
After all, this was vitally important in the finance industry - but some of us had heard it all before in the case of the unfortunate Peter Marriot many years ago. We remembered too how fraud was interpreted then as English on Mondays and Wednesdays but anybody’s guess on market days.
As it turned out, today being Wednesday, it was probably English Statute Law that prevailed but the written judgment has not yet been delivered so we do not know for sure.
Tomorrow it could be Norman law, or “Jersey common law” or Amazon parrot law for all that it matters to Mr Average Joe - now or ever.
Of course, for big Ian and Cyril of the “common law” fan club today’s proceedings would have sounded like the return of the true messiah and “Voisinage” was being bandied about as the true Jersey common law solution – just as it hadbeen applied to the unfortunate recyclers in the “Reg’s Skips” case of blessed and sacred memory!
Why hadn’t the aggrieved neighbours initiated an action under this bit of Jersey law themselves and why was the Minister becoming a party on the “public’s behalf”?
For the parrots, their best chances for a future seemed to be bound up in yet another international treaty namely CITES but its relevance here today was not clear (Although they do have their own FACEBOOK campaign page.).
Today though, logic was being swamped under endless discussion of yet more international standards on “noise nuisance.” According to WHO (the World Health Organisation of the UN) the range of 45 to 55 decibels was considered relevant. The lack lustre Solicitor General and some Health Department staff reports based upon countless site visits used these standards too but the judge wondered if the parrots were really worse than native crows…
It was a great pity that the parrots could not be allowed to speak for themselves especially since their homes had apparently been bulldozed this very morning in an effort to satisfy the vague abatement notice demands. But it was not even certain if there was any requirement for Mr Fernando to do anything within the 91 days prescribed or whether the 21 days allowed for the appeal stayed any penal sanction being applied. The Solicitor General assured the court that he would not seek any Draconian punishment if the decision went against the appellant, which was nice…especially since it was not clear whether there was a nuisance at all.
In any case, as it was revealed, the affected neighbours had already bought another house in another Parish (Trinity – but not too near the Zoo we in the public seats hoped) and it was only some parts of their garden that was affected. The parrots could not be heard at all from within the house.
Jersey would become a very quiet place if this judge’s thoughts prevailed it seemed.
At the end of this day, the latest saviour of our civil rights and the parrot’s protection rested with the Human Rights lawyers’ favourite concept - namely “proportionality.” Was the Ministers decision to issue an abatement notice proportionate?
She was not in court and so did not hear the learned Judge deliver his decision FOR Mr Fernando and the parrots with costs. The full reasoning will follow and the costs are to be discussed but nearby, in de Gruchy’s shop window at the moment is displayed one of only a few surviving skeletons of the extinct Dodo.
When and where might we similarly display the corpse of Jersey’s law and legal system?
