Police warn they may not be able to afford Tesco's £3m riot compensation bill

 

In total, the retailer has asked for nearly £3m in compensation from police forces around the country, following the riots that tore through some high streets in August. It is likely that this is the biggest request from a single retailer. The company is claiming under the Riot Damages Act, a piece of Victorian legislation that allows businesses and individuals affected by riot damage to claim directly from the police, rather than their own insurer. In the immediate aftermath of the civil disturbances, the British Retail Consortium urged small retailers to put in their claims to make sure their businesses were not harmed. However, the Greater Manchester Police Authority, which has been hit with 280 claims totalling £4.4m, has criticised Tesco for using the Act, saying there was no guarantee the police force would be able to afford all of the compensation. The force faces £134m budget cuts in the next five years. It added that J Sainsbury was one of a number of large companies that had chosen not to submit any compensation claims. Tesco has submitted more than 20 claims for compensation to Manchester police, including one for £40-worth of looted stock.

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Hunger strikes at California prison renew debate over confining prison gangs

 

The sun rarely shines on the kingpins of California's prison gangs. To stop them from orchestrating mayhem on prison yards and neighborhoods across the state, prison officials condemned hundreds of reputed gang members to years of isolation in windowless cells. For five years, the tough strategy worked, wardens insist. Quarantined crime bosses lost contact with their followers. No one could hear what they had to say. At least, not until July 1, when some of the most securely held prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison stopped eating and broke through their shuttered lines of communication with a mass hunger strike that spread into prisons across the state. "Am I an innocent lamb? By no means, but I can tell you this: I never deserved to be locked up in a dungeon for seven years just because they allege I'm a gang member," said Ronnie Yandell, one of the leaders of the hunger strike that lasted three weeks and spread to 12 other prisons with promises of more strikes to come. Now, as a court-ordered mandate forces California to reduce the number of low-level criminals in its overcrowded prisons, protests of inhumane conditions for the most hardened, violent criminals are forcing the state to rethink another problem: How can powerful and savvy prisoners be stopped from directing violence on the outside without their rights against cruel punishment being violated on the inside? Life in 'The SHU' Yandell and the other 1,110 men in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit -- known as "The SHU" -- spend at least 22 1/2 hours each day in their concrete, bathroom-size cells. Some inmates have a cellmate and some do not. Prisoners can have TVs but little human interaction. Their daily outing is a solitary 90-minute break in a barren exercise pen lined with 15-foot-high concrete walls and a limited view of the sky. Hearing about the hunger strike through a network of family members and activists, more than 6,000 inmates across California joined in. The prisons weighed each hunger striker daily, finding only about 11 percent of Pelican Bay's protesters lost weight during the 21-day strike. One lost 30 pounds. No one died, but after weeks of unwanted attention and a legislative hearing in late August, top prison officials now say they are reviewing how long and why they segregate and isolate some inmates in the state's harshest cellblocks. "Everything we're doing with these men is lawful and constitutional," said Pelican Bay Warden Greg Lewis. "I really didn't see the need to negotiate anything. On the other hand, in the department, we need to evolve and change with the conditions that are going on." Dogged with mistreatment complaints and lawsuits since its inception, Pelican Bay's conditions were found by a federal judge in 1995 to "hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable." But judges have also repeatedly upheld California's practice of confining inmates in isolated conditions, and in March commended Pelican Bay for improving conditions. Still, experts say, the prison realignment prompted by the court order to reduce prison populations offers an opportunity to reconsider the practice of isolating criminals. "There's a growing consensus that these ultra-isolation prisons are a bad mistake," said criminologist Barry Krisberg, director of research at UC Berkeley's Earl Warren Institute. "The theory behind these prisons was we'll collect all the worst people in one place and that will make the rest of the prisons safer and easier to manage. But they weren't necessarily the most dangerous, violent criminals. " And the levels of violence in the other places didn't really go down." 'Living like dogs' Prisoners promise another fast could begin next week inside the remote facility, just south of the Oregon border, if their demands for better conditions and an easier path out of isolation are not met. Prison officials said the strikes are a dangerous, costly and ineffective way for prisoners to voice their complaints. Yandell said it is the only way anyone will pay attention. "We're tired of living like dogs," the former Contra Costa County resident wrote in a handwritten letter to this newspaper, one of several interviews conducted between the newspaper and self-defined leaders of the strike. "Not even terrorists at Guantánamo Bay are treated like this." Convicted of killing two men in El Sobrante a decade ago during a drug deal, Yandell was placed in Pelican Bay's SHU -- the oldest and biggest of three similar units around the state -- after prison officials designated him a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white-only gang. The only way out of solitary confinement was to "debrief" -- to convincingly denounce his gang affiliation and ideology and name former collaborators. But many prisoners never find their way out of the SHU; the average time spent inside the state's isolation units is 6.8 years, and some prisoners have been there for decades.

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Criminal gangs are stealing everything from power lines, metal railings and farm animals in highly organised hits.

Thieves regularly put their lives at risk by hacking away live copper cabling to try and cash in on increasing scrap metal prices.

British Transport Police has said the thefts cost a staggering £43m pounds in the past three years.

Risky: Criminals are endangering their lives to steal live cabling from power lines and railway tracks

While some of the thieves are believed to know how to cut the 1,500 volt cable without being electrocuted, there are fears that teenagers are also being used to carry out some raids.

In July, a 16-year-old boy who broke into a disused power station in Leeds was killed after touching a high-voltage cable.

Commuters are suffering during rush-hour with more than 16,000 hours of delays in the past 12-months.

Travellers were also left stranded last week when overhead power cables were stolen and caused delays between London Liverpool Street and Stansed Airport.

Bermondsey in south London was also targeted when 65-metres of cable was ripped up. It led to 146 trains being cancelled with 840 being delayed.

Callous criminals are also targeting grave sites and and only last week more than 50 brass memorial plates were taken from a crematorium in Crawley, West Sussex.

Callous criminals are also targeting grave sites and and only last week more than 50 brass memorial plates were taken from a crematorium in Crawley, West Sussex. 

Loved ones of the deceased were left devastated when boss Adrian Barbour contacted families to break the bad news.

Homes are also being stripped of highly-prized metal garden ornaments and telephone cables are also being hacked away.

BT has reported 900 cable thefts in just six months and has said 100,000 customers have been affected and left without vital communications.

Farm animals are also being targeted and a 1,500-strong flock was stolen

There have been calls for tougher sentencing for cable thieves, some of whom come from other European countries to carry out the crimes.

Deputy chief constable Paul Crowther for British Transport Police said: 'There have been incidents around the country in which homes, businesses and even hospitals have suffered power cuts and surges as a result of criminals stealing copper from power substations.'

He told the Sunday Express that police were devoting hours of manpower to try and tackle the problem.

There has also been a massive increase in sheep rustling with highly organised gangs using lorries and sheep dogs to round up farm animals.

A 1,500-strong flock was taken from fields in Lincolnshire in what is believed to be one of the biggest cases of rustling in the UK.

NFU Mutual insurance company said it was a 'remarkable achievement', which has left authorities baffled.

A spokesman told the Sunday Times: 'It would have involved sheepdogs, up to five articulated lorries and three men with each truck.

'There would have been a lot of whistling and calling to the dogs.'

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Defendant’s brother testifies he didn’t want to ‘snitch’

 

Paroled killer Edward “Butchie” Corliss drunkenly confessed to gunning down a Jamaica Plain convenience store clerk in 2009, his younger brother testified yesterday, but William “Billy” Corliss claimed he was so terrified of a reputed crime family’s disdain for “snitching” that he kept quiet for months. “For years, I was associated with the Winter Hill Gang,” East Somerville native William Corliss, 64, said in Suffolk Superior Court, where his brother Edward is facing murder charges. “I know they don’t take lightly to somebody trying to testify.” William Corliss’ alleged underworld ties surfaced in the sixth day of Edward Corliss’ murder trial for the cold-blooded killing of Surendra Dangol, a 39-year-old Nepalese immigrant, in a Jamaica Plain Tedeschi’s on Dec. 26, 2009. Edward Corliss, 65, was on parole from a life sentence for killing a Salisbury store clerk in 1971. Hours after Dangol was killed and $746 was stolen from the register, Edward Corliss showed up at his brother’s house with a six-pack of beer and a wad of cash, William Corliss said. “He was pulling it out of his pockets, laughing, throwing it in the air, like he hit the jackpot,” he said. “I asked him where he got it. He said, ‘I pulled a score. . . . The guy said there was no money, but I found it. He lied to me, and I shot him.’ ” When Boston police questioned William Corliss about the crime, he denied knowing anything, he testified, staying silent as police drove him through the city. “It’s all organized crime,” William Corliss said. “Charlestown, Somerville, East Boston, South Boston, and I was getting driven around in an unmarked cruiser. I was terrified someone would see me.” But when he was called before a grand jury, William Corliss said he told what he knew. “I didn’t want to perjure myself,” he said.

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The violent life and death of crime gang member suspected of several murders

 

MICHAEL KELLY (30) first came to the attention of gardaí for serious crime when he was still a teenager 11 years ago. On that occasion, he was caught in a north Dublin pub with a consignment of ecstasy tablets, convicted of drug dealing and given a suspended three-year jail term. Far from representing a short sharp shock, though, that might deter a young man from a life of crime, the incident was merely one of his early steps into the gangland underbelly of working class Dublin that now appears to have claimed his life. Kelly was a member of an organised crime gang based in the north Dublin suburbs of Donaghmede, Baldoyle, Coolock and his native Kilbarrack. The gang imported consignments of cocaine, heroin and other drugs from more significant international criminals in the Netherlands and Spain and sold them on to smaller gangs in Ireland. However, when the leader of the gang, David Lyndsay (38), and his friend Alan Napper (39) went missing in 2008, they were presumed murdered and Kelly was suspected of involvement. The men have not been seen since, although blood from one of them was found in a house in the North. Both are believed to have been killed. Their bodies have never been found. Kelly owed Lyndsay a large amount of money at the time of the pair’s disappearance. One gang member who effectively split from Kelly in early 2008 was shot dead in the weeks leading up to the Lyndsay and Napper disappearances. Anthony Foster (34) was gunned down at his home in Cromcastle, north Dublin, in July 2008. Kelly was suspected of involvement in the murders of at least two other men whom he knew through the drugs trade. Seán Winters (41) was shot dead outside an apartment block in Portmarnock last September, although the Real IRA in Dublin was also suspected of involvement in that killing. In the years since then, he had continued to deal drugs and to build his wealth. In December 2008, he was the target of a major raid by specialist Garda units including the Criminal Assets Bureau, when 12 properties were searched as part of a major investigation into the proceeds of drug-dealing in north Dublin. Last December that investigation concluded in the courts when a house in Navan, Co Meath, and two cars were confiscated from Kelly after the High Court ruled the assets represented the proceeds of crime. Since then he has spent his time in Dublin and Europe, apparently fearful that if he stayed here for too long, he would be killed by some of the many criminals he had crossed in the past decade. Apart from his drug-dealing conviction from 2000, he had about a dozen other convictions, most of which were for motoring offences and resisting arrest.

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Grilling for phone hack witnesses

 

Four former News International executives will face a fresh round of questioning from MPs over the phone-hacking scandal. The Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee will quiz the News of the World's former editor Colin Myler and ex-legal manager Tom Crone after the pair publicly challenged evidence given by James Murdoch over his knowledge of the illegal practice. News International's former director of legal affairs Jonathan Chapman and Daniel Cloke, former group HR director, will also appear before the committee as the probe into the scandal is resumed following the summer recess. Mr Myler and Mr Crone have been summoned before MPs for the second time after publicly disputing claims made by Mr Murdoch earlier in the Parliamentary inquiry. The News International chairman told the committee he was not made aware of an email in 2008 indicating that the practice of illegally intercepting voicemails was not confined to a single "rogue" reporter. But the two former Sunday tabloid executives insist that they told him about the message in June of that year. The panel of MPs could now recall Mr Murdoch "depending on their evidence under questioning". Committee chairman John Whittingdale said the latest round of questioning was an attempt to uncover the truth in the "continuing difference in the accounts of James Murdoch and Tom Crone and Colin Myler about whether or not James Murdoch was aware of the so-called 'for Neville' email". The 2005 email contained transcripts of hacked phone messages and was headed "for Neville", in an apparent reference to the News of the World's then-chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck. Its existence came to light in April 2008 when Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor brought a damages claim against the paper over the interception of his voicemail.

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