High On The Hog And Other Tales

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly of Law and Order: 

First the Bad Boys: In 2019 the Italian Police were trailing a drug gang, comprised of Albanians and Italians ......

Porky Was In Hog Heaven

..... and had bugged one of the criminals phones.

So they heard the gang complaining to each other that wild boar had destroyed £17,000 worth of cocaine that they had stashed in the Valdichiana forest near Arezzo.

The police moved and arrested 3 Albanians and 1 Italian member of the gang, which had been selling 2kg (4.4lb) of cocaine a month in nightclubs in Arezzo. They also had some very wild pigs up in the forest for a while ... Two million wild boar are estimated to roam Italy, according to president of the Italian farming association who complain that the numbers are too great.

On a side note: Last time I stayed in Italy near Pisa, it was December, and all you could hear was the bang of guns all day, as the locals shot at pigs and anything else that moved in the woods.

Second the Good Girl: We all feel these days that the police rarely catch serious criminals let alone, petty thieves or burglars etc, and this is leading to desperate measures by a citizenry who want to keep their possessions .... sometimes this has resulted in the death of the criminal, and the persecution of the honest citizen, but other times it just leads the victim to dangerous acts.

Take the 33 year old German lady commuter, who in July 2016 got off a bus in Munich, and realised she had left her bag and possessions on the bus. She instinctively flagged down a passing car as shouted "Follow that Bus" to the startled driver. Amazingly he did just that, and after a chase through heavy traffic they managed to intercept the bus. on boarding the bus she found some of her possessions but her ID, headphones and purse were missing. However she then spotted two teenagers getting off the bus and running away.

So, undeterred and with the adrenalin of righteous outrage coursing through her veins, she leapt off the bus and chased after the suspects through the streets of Munich. She caught a 15 year old with her headphones, and £16 of her cash. She was given the rest of her cash and ID when police caught up with the other teen.

Third the Ugly Cheat: I always thought that the standard required to be a magistrate in England was high ..... certainly some probity and intelligence, but apparently I was very wrong, and that in fact its been infected by the same woke quota issues as the rest of our society.

The Driveway of Deceit ....

Sandra Howell, a then 46 year old single parent was a domestic cleaner with her own business (ababcus) in Greater Manchester, but was also serving as a Magistrate in Stockport Greater Manchester, while claiming disability benefits for her alleged mobility issues, which she claimed  meant she could barely walk, and needed round-the-clock care, following a road traffic accident in 2007.

Of course this meant she needed a wheelchair. However investigators found out that she was defrauding the Benefits system and she was taken to crown court trial .... however in a pathetic attempt to 'prove' she wasn't a lying cheating fraudster, she continued the charade of needing a wheelchair in the court room, even while the court and jurors were shown images and film of her walking to the court on the first day of trial, walking about shopping at the Trafford centre in Manchester, even walking faster than other shoppers, and finally working on her driveway (which would bite her again later).

She had also danced at her wedding (after the alleged accident|) ....  the jurors saw through the contemptible courtroom display, and found her guilty of fraud between between 2011 and 2016. In 2019 she was jailed for 9 months .... the Crown Prosecutor Service said she had "grossly misrepresented her disability", adding she had been breaking the law while "dispensing" it. She had stolen more than £26,000 in benefits and possibly motoring allowances, while working on the side. She was terminated from the magistrates list. We won't see much of that money again and she would almost certainly be trying to claim benefits when she left prison. 

Yep, by 2022 she was back in  court again telling a judge she couldn’t afford to pay a £20-a-month fine for ignoring a notice served by her local council. Ironically, her the enforcement notice was against her carrying out unauthorised alterations to the driveway to her home, and then failing to comply with an enforcement notice to put it back the way it was before.

The judge said that  because of her “bloody-mindedness”, after she had failed to attend court for her one day trial earlier that year and was convicted in her absence of failing to comply with an enforcement notice ... but Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council had run up a £25,865 bill in legal costs when she opted for crown court trial. 

She was still swinging the disability claims around, telling the judge that she now had agoraphobia and complex regional pain syndrome oh and apropos of nothing, she had had a hysterectomy .... none of this was relevant to much.

How this woman  was ever considered as a viable candidate to be a magistrate in the first place, is beyond me, and there should have been an urgent review of how she got through the tests and safeguards.