We have no real idea what has been going on in the Stepping Hill tragedy. A nurse seems to have been falsely accused on very little evidence and treated badly in the press, much as Mr. Jefferies in the sad case of Ms Yates not long ago. I no doubt pulled a few in on not much myself, for one reason or another. None of them were subject to this kind of press idiocy.
As usual, public scrutiny has more or less no facts to work on. The idea that’s held sway is that material matters should not be discussed other than in court or after a trial. This is received wisdom – but received wisdom has a poor track record outside of areas like science where everything is open to public scrutiny.
There seems to be some fingerprint evidence, but this is meaningless without context, though a judge has dismissed it for utterly obvious reasons the CPS should have recognised. This doesn’t make the arrest wrong, but it remains scary that there was a remand in custody as does the notion of a ‘holding charge’. The real worry is that many of us could be subject to this kind of arrest, if unlucky enough to work at what becomes a crime scene.
One wouldn’t want to second guess the investigation, but I do think the ‘mechanism’ of the crime should be reported for precautions across our hospitals = prevention should be more important than detection.
One might speculate a link (if not in personnel, potential intent) between this crime and that of substituting anti-psychotics for Nurofen – the contamination of low-level medical supplies. We might even be seeing a new form of direct action terror.
GMP have some really good detectives, but I doubt any of our forces can resource majorl enquiries such as this with no obvious suspects or motivation. This first questions in nearly all police projects these days are business ones. I believe this pressurises a fall back to forms of enquiry that are quick and cheap. This is not incompetent in-itself – that comes in not being able to realise when this is inadequate quickly enough, and that the players don’t conform to stereotype.
In this case one needs to establish ordinary working practice and what is likely to happen in that; and what has been odd and who may have been involved – a massive task. Given how easy it is to interfere with saline drip bags leaving almost no trace, it is likely to be difficult even to exclude non-employees. When I’ve been laid up, nurses seemed to be fiddling with drips all the time and it would have been easy enough for me to have interfered with the things, either as a patient or when visiting my partner. I am diabetic – better stop before I get lined up! No doubt the personnel records are under intense scrutiny in an attempt to place an individual/s repeatedly where the problems have been found and that an innocently contaminated batch is not at fault etc.
If Ms Leyton is innocent she should be compensated whether police/CPS have been negligent or not – but the underlying incompetence here is the lack of investigation for public scrutiny that is needed to prevent any of us falling foul of such circumstances. The IPCC should be in now on the basis of public interest and given a remit that includes the CPS. But the IPCC haven’t even been able to tell us that the shooting that led to the recent riots was righteous weeks afterwards. My feeling is the secrecy on grounds of later proceedings needs to be changed. Better the press were reporting evidence than the gossip and personal drivel they do.
Are the rioters now going to call the DPP to sentence appeal hearings? Our legal system is a mess.
Allcoppedout's Blog 