Police screw up, taxpayer pays the fine. Business as usual.
Kent Police fined £100k for leaving interview vids of informants in old cop shop
Kent Police have been fined £100,000 after interview tapes and other confidential information were found abandoned at a former police station. The highly sensitive information, including records going back to the 1980s, was left in the basement of a former police station when it was vacated in July 2009. The cock-up was …
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Wednesday 19th March 2014 23:35 GMT billse10
Re: It's the same as with companies
so don't fine the organisation, fine the individuals - and if a specific named individual cannot be identified for a given *-up, levy the fine on the salary bill for the entire organisation, and then apply the same fine again (on the same basis) on the political overseers who were asleep on the job ...
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Wednesday 19th March 2014 16:48 GMT All names Taken
"How does fining the taxpayer discourage bad behavior by the police?"
You got it in one dude!
That is precisely how civil servants work - they take no responsibility, lots of money, excellent pensions (better than most if not all of private sector), early retirement built in to the job (who wouldn't want paid retirement from age 55?), and if something goes wrong it is always someone else's responsibility and if anytyhing has to get paid for it will always be the taxpayer who picks up the bill?
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Thursday 20th March 2014 08:52 GMT Corinne
Please try to get just a FEW facts right before generalising and laying into the entire body of public servants.
Police, armed forces, health workers, local government and central government employees all have different packages and T&Cs, you can't assume that because one type gets a particular benefit then all the others will.
Police may retire at 55, normal retirement age for most civil servants is 67 and likely to increase soon.
Lots of money? Typical central government clerical pay in central London is about £15k - £17.5k, outside London it ranges from £14k - £16.5k.
"Gold plated" final salary type pensions are fine - provided the final salary is half decent. 40% of £17k isn't exactly what I would call excellent.
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Wednesday 19th March 2014 17:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
When I was in my first year at university we used to wander about the abandoned sister building, a derelict Victorian asylum. The NHS had sold it to developers years before, and the developers were hoping the massive building would decay enough that they'd be allowed pull it down despite its heritage status. During our wandering we came across loads of patient records dating from the 1950s up until the early 1980s, complete with photographs. I assume the records were finally destroyed when the building was redeveloped into apartments for the extremely wealthy.
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Wednesday 19th March 2014 17:25 GMT Spoonsinger
Re :- " I assume the records were finally destroyed when the building was redeveloped"
Developers seem quite efficient at that. Look at the old Coulsdon Cane Hill looney bin site. C) says "Nope you can't knock down that listed bit", D) says "Ahhhh! sad face", then big fire on listed bit, C) says "ok do what you want".
(In no way am I implying that C & D had anything to do with it - just a time lined observation).
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Thursday 20th March 2014 11:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re :- " I assume the records were finally destroyed when the building was redeveloped"
Just as the fire in the old Gibbons stores buildings in Hackney, the undestroyed bits suffered "landslip" just as the box-room hotel being built next to it dug down three storeys,
wonder who will buy the soon to be vacant corner plot they didnt own before due to listing status
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Wednesday 19th March 2014 17:23 GMT Anonymous John
Guidance.
"A subsequent ICO investigation faulted Kent Police for the absence of any guidance or procedures in place to make sure personal information was securely removed from former police premises."
1) Take everything.
2) Leave nothing behind.
Sorted.
It could have been worse. The new owner might have found a skeleton in one of the cells.
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Wednesday 19th March 2014 21:57 GMT All names Taken
Re: Bah!
But I applaud the award to H.M. Govt. of One hundred kiloquid from the bottomless British taxpayer bucket o' funds in order to punish whoever was to blame.
Who am I to question why?
But there is a difference between UK Government (as in elected members) and UK Government (as in non-elected civil servants).
I'd guess it is the latter Whitehall governed civil servants authorising payment of the fne as a means to transfer a number on one Treasury account to another Treasury account and by so doing denying morality and justice to all?
Can you imagine a Tory Guvmint minister authorising such a payment?
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Thursday 20th March 2014 09:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
No no no!
"I'm guessing these videos ........ had been abandoned in places nobody cared to visit for ages."
If you are leaving a property, or even planning to, the * first * thing you do is go through it and decide what to move, what to destroy, what to put in a skip. (And even what to sell, if only for scrap).
I spent the last few weeks of my gainful employment as a local authority education manager doing just that, at the start of the period between the powers that be scrapping my team and scrapping the building we'd worked in.
Someone, probably not a plod, was responsible for managing the move and the decommissioning of this cop shop.
Somebody just didn't do their job.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 09:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Been there, done that
Funny thing is, I used to do the double check to prevent this exact senario (different county), and the number of times people queried why bother, we know we have cleared it out but I completed the work, happy in the knowledge that I was doing the right thing. Something always turned up every now and again.
Most of the old cop shops are rabbit warrens having changed from multiple houses to converted offices or custom built with some very strange internal architecture and storage locations.
Other issue is cabinets going to be sent for disposal without clearing them out.......again, part of the standard double check.
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Thursday 20th March 2014 13:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wigan police station
When I was into urbex a few years back we found riot gear, video and cassette tapes and even blank fixed penalty notice books in the old Wigan police station. The fire door at the back was wide open but some of the stuff was just dumped in the bins in the car park.
As usual the media portrayed the urbexers as "breaking in". All lies, as were the claims of breaking into locked rooms to get to the items.
Photo of newspaper:
http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=28749&sid=a3f56e26e982c67dab13553a0c2a1aa4