Richie's Police Report

Law and legal process…American style There has only really been one story here over the last couple of days, and thats been Ferguson .  There’s lots of comment being made about this unfolding situation and I don’t plan to add to those. However, it was interesting to watch events unfold against a process and backdrop, very different, to that found in Scotland. First off here there is the Grand Jury .  This is something I’ve heard off before but had no great knowledge of.  It strikes me as a bit of a strange beast.   In Scotland decisions to prosecute lie with the Crown.  Decisions are reached by experienced, trained and independent legal brains.  That is not the case here.  Rather, for major issues,  it’s likely a Grand Jury will be called.  The jury should be selected from local citizens as it is in Scotland. However, thats where things start to change.  Here there is jury selection; this process gives the prosecutio...

Sports on the weekend! On Friday night I went to my first ever basketball match and first live sporting event in the States.  This was the first game of the year for the Mason Patriots, the women played Virginia Tech and won, the men played Cornell and lost.  It was, for me a marvellous experience! It was packed.  This was a college game, not a pro match and I reckon there were around 2000 people there at $25 a seat.  There were students, parents but also members of the local community who supported  The Patriots just because they are the local team. There were a couple of things going on that got me thinking.   Land of the fur-eeeee…… First was the anthem.  At the start of the each game the band (more of which in a minute) played the Star Spangled Banner .  Everyone stood, everyone was silent, everyone faced the flag.  Most people had their hand on their heart.  Everyone was respectful…I was jealous....

Active Shooter Training?  But, I’m just in charge of a desk…! I got properly started at George Mason University this week.  It is very big and I have a very wee desk in the Centre for Evidence Based Crime Policy Department.  I’ve had to do all the orientation you’d expect, getting an ID card, finding out where to eat, getting a library card, undertaking my active shooter training.  What, active shooter training?  That’s guns and stuff; and I have no plans to go near guns whilst I’m here! However, when I got logged on to the intranet for the first time, I saw there was a link for students and staff to undertake a ‘active shooter’ awareness training video .  Active shooter incidents are those dreadful incidents where a gunman enters a populous place and fires indiscriminately, killing as many people as possible before he is apprehended, or more often than not killed.  In Scotland, Dunblane and Thomas Hamilton is the worst example of this. ...

It’s been a really good and interesting week here. When is a costume too shocking for Halloween? First off there was Halloween…man, oh man, American loves Halloween!   I have never seen anything like it.  The media build up in the days running up to last Friday was huge!  It’s not really a thing that has the kids at the forefront anymore, although the trick or treat thing is still massive, it is, rather, far more an adult event than I had expected.  That takes many forms and has a number of controversial sides too.   What to wear is all important, people like a bit of character and a wee bit of scare, however there were a couple of outfits that really caused debate in the US.   First off was the Ray Rice ‘costume’.  Rice is/was an NFL player who, in February this year assaulted his partner , who has since become his wife. The incident was caught on camera and resulted in a heap of publicity and Rice being suspended indefi...