Chesham: Two arrested after man shot at from car
Two men have been arrested after a pedestrian was shot at from a car.Thames Valley Police said the victim, a man aged in his 30s, was targeted on Broad Street in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, at about 18:10 BST on Tuesday before a silver coloured VW Scirocco was driven from the scene. The car was later found burned out in Rickmansworth at about 22:00.The victim suffered injuries to his shoulder and was taken to hospital, but his injuries are not life-threatening and he has since been discharged.A 31-year-old man from Chalfont St Gile has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, while a 37-year-old man from Chesham has been arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon.
Officers said that both men remain in police custody.Det Insp Phil Turner-Robson said: "I would again appeal for anyone in the area who saw or heard anything; if you have any footage from the area and haven't already spoken to the police, we would urge you to please come forward."Anyone with information is asked to call police on 101.
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BBC News
19 minutes ago
- BBC News
The families hiring 'private bobbies' to police their homes
Listen to this article on BBC SoundsWe are driving at speed through the green hills of rural Hertfordshire. Through the passenger seat window, large elegant houses flash by. Each front lawn is neat, each hedgerow well-kept. It looks like England from a storybook - but this part of the country is actually on the frontline of a relatively new (and some might say divisive) approach to crime the driver's seat is Robert, a guard employed by Blueline Security. His car is painted with blue and yellow stripes, meaning it looks a lot like a police car. Inside there's a walkie-talkie, a first-aid kit, and a Belgian Malinois dog called Bella (given similar training to a police dog, I'm told).But Robert - who wears a bullet-proof vest and carries a pair of handcuffs - is careful to point out that he is not a real policeman."The more keen eye will realise that this isn't a police car," he says as he flicks his indicator. He points out that they follow the regulations on vehicle markings designed to distinguish police cars from other cars. "But it looks similar enough where criminality will see it at a distance and think, 'Let's maybe not go there'." Blueline is one of a handful of "private policing" firms that have emerged in recent years. It has operated mostly in wealthy enclaves of southern England since 2019 and, for a fee, its team of ex-police or ex-army guards can patrol villages, looking for burglars and car thieves. Robert, in fact, spent 14 years working in the police similar businesses have sprung up around the UK in recent years, including My Local Bobby, which was founded in 2016 and now has almost 150 security guards, as well as a fleet of to some customers who spoke to the BBC, this fills a gap left by the real police, who they claim they no longer trust to turn up promptly to a 999 call in their residents who can afford these firms, they are a "lifeline", as one customer tells me. But to others, they represent an affront to the values on which British policing was founded; a step towards a country in which the wealthy get better access to law enforcement than the former senior figure in the Metropolitan Police says she fears the emergence of a "two-tier society".So, with pressures on real police growing, is there room for private firms to help ease the load - or do so-called "private bobbies" blur the lines between police and profit? Rise of 'private policing' The firms offering "private policing" that I've spoken to say that demand for their services has risen. According to a paper published last year by criminologists from the universities of Sheffield and Brunel, the UK's private security industry grew substantially between 2008 and 2021, with an increase in revenue and in the number of licensed security according to the Home Office, the number of real police officers in England and Wales fell most years from 2009 onwards, reaching a low of about 122,000 in 2017 - before ticking back up, to about 147,000 last year. The study's co-author, Dr Matteo Pazzona, a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Brunel University, describes a shift in policing from the "public to the private" realm. Whilst most UK security guards work in shops and other businesses, his data does also signal a rise in the sort of residential work carried out by private firms, he are lots of reasons why the security industry might have grown over this period. But David Spencer, a former Detective Chief Inspector at the Metropolitan Police, thinks that private firms could be filling the gaps left by police. "If you've got money and you don't feel that the police are effective, then it's no surprise if you decide to use your resources to keep your family safe," he says. Confidence 'hangs by a thread' Until the 19th Century, protection from crime was largely a privilege enjoyed by the rich. Wealthy people employed "thief takers" to guard their property, whilst ordinary folk had to make do with volunteer watchmen, who focused on the more basic task of keeping changed when Sir Robert Peel, a Tory prime minister, started London's Metropolitan Police - Britain's first modern, professional force funded from general taxation. He instilled in the force several principles that can still be reeled off from memory by many constables today: being visible in the community; treating members of the public equally, regardless of wealth or social standing - and perhaps more important than all: policing with some worry that trust is being undermined. Most burglaries and car thefts go unsolved. A YouGov survey from last month found that 50% of adults in Great Britain held "not very much confidence" or "no confidence at all" in their local force - up from 42% in 2019. The government's police inspector, Andy Cooke, said in a report in 2023 that confidence in police "hangs by a thread" (although his report last year noted some improvements).Mr Spencer, who is now head of crime and justice for the centre-right Policy Exchange think tank, says demands on police time have risen dramatically. Online fraud has shot up in recent decades, and police have recognised the need to tackle issues that were once considered "private" (like domestic abuse and sexual violence). And police resources are failing to keep up pace, he he thinks, helps explain the interest in so-called private police. A deterrent to burglars? Laura (who didn't want to share her full name) signed up for private security to patrol her road a few weeks ago, after a spate of burglaries in the area. She lives in rural Hertfordshire with her husband and one of her three already had CCTV installed and, on the night that her neighbour was burgled, it showed a gang of masked men sitting on her garden chairs. "You can see them looking at the camera, and they've seen it's zoomed in on them. And then they went."Her neighbours held a meeting; about 40 households decided to subscribe to a private firm. Each pays £1,500 per year. In return, guards patrol the area daily. Laura says she can call a guard at any time."I don't think we can afford to be confident that [the police] would get here in good time," she says. However, private guards have no more power than a member of the public. The aim for many is not to catch or restrain criminals but to act as a deterrent. Jamie Strickland, a former soldier who founded Blueline, stresses that he does not regard his business as a replacement for the police and argues that even a perfectly-resourced force would struggle to reach remote areas of the countryside."The police can't be everywhere all the time," he a spokesperson for the National Police Chiefs' Council says they remain "resolutely committed" to attending the scene of crimes, and that all English and Welsh police forces now aim to attend a property following every burglary added that private firms "should not replace or supplement police and it is for properly trained officers to intervene when a crime has been committed". 'I'm lucky I can afford it' The question, though, is whether so-called private police firms signal the emergence of an unfair two-tier system, in which the wealthiest can pay to be better protected from is a concern for Parm Sandhu, a former chief superintendent at the Metropolitan Police who left the force in 2019 and has since written a book about her experiences of prejudice. "If you're living on a council estate, you cannot afford to pay for policing," she says. "Does that mean you deserve to be burgled, sexually assaulted, or mugged? No you don't."She argues that the correlation between falling police numbers and an expanding private security industry signals something "totally wrong".Andy, who also lives in rural Hertfordshire, near Laura, and employs a private security firm, has his own feelings on this. "I look at it and say, 'It's £1,500 a year, I'm lucky I can find that,'" he he argues that not everyone who uses the service is wealthy. "You watch the CCTV [of burglaries], you feel worried for your family." The expense, he adds, is worth it for that doubts remain. Ms Sandhu points out that the police-like appearance of some of these security firms could be confusing. "If you've got somebody who's under the influence [of] drugs or alcohol, they will look up quickly and think, 'Oh, this is a police officer'," she says. "It's really important to have that differential between police officers and security guards."Members of the public [could] go to them thinking they're talking to police officers, and take their advice."Which raises the question of what, exactly, private guards can do. The companies I speak to are clear that their staff can restrain somebody they suspect to be a criminal, only in the same way that any member of the public can, a power commonly known as a "citizen's arrest".And it comes with risk. Under English and Welsh law, a citizen's arrest can only be used for an "indictable" offence - a serious crime tried at the Crown Court. You cannot use a citizen's arrest for a lesser "summary" offence (tried at the magistrates' court).In the heat of the moment, it may be difficult for a guard to judge the difference - and if they get it wrong, they could be guilty of a crime themselves. Questions about accountability There are also questions about accountability. Police forces are inspected by the Government's Inspectorate of Constabulary; if a serious complaint is made against a constable, it will be investigated by an independent regulator. Few such tools of accountability exist for private firms - other than having their licence revoked by the Security Industry Martin Gill, a criminology professor and the director of Perpetuity Research, a security consultancy, points out that in shopping centres and hospitals, the "majority of policing is undertaken by private police forces" (in other words, security guards). Most of them, he argues, do a "very good job".In his view, when a private firm starts operating in a residential area, the local police force should engage. The founder of My Local Bobby, David McKelvey, says he now has a "good relationship" with police forces, after a rocky start. "There was a lot of reticence [from the police] in the first place, but now they're starting to see the benefit of [our service]," he would like police to work closer with firms. "At the moment, there's a reticence still within policing to sharing information [and] intelligence. Often that information is absolutely vital for us to do our job."The College of Policing has said police forces should only share intelligence under strict circumstances. Not quite Starsky & Hutch Ultimately, the sort of work carried out by 'private bobbies' is a tiny fraction of the real police work carried out across the country. But whether more residential communities will in future opt for the private model depends largely on whether the police are able to restore public confidence, says Mr Spencer of Policy Exchange."If it doesn't, then I think it's inevitable we will see more people […] turning to private providers," he on the road with Robert, midway through his patrol, his radio buzzes. A customer has called: a horse is loose and wandering in a country lane. Within minutes, he has driven there and helped return it to its field. It's not quite Starsky & Hutch, Robert concedes, but it's an insight into the sort of work they do. And yet, he admits, there are recalls one shift, on an April night this year, when he drove along a country road in his patch and saw a car that looked like it was being used for drug dealing. "If they've had drugs and they're behind a wheel, that's a summary offence - I have no power to deal with it," he he sat in his car and called the real image credit: Getty Images BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
Times
31 minutes ago
- Times
Wrongly accused of child murder, he's still seeking justice 10 years on
While Harvey Proctor is trying not to cry, I'm trying not to be sick. The 78-year-old former Conservative MP is driving us, very jerkily, down winding country lanes to his home on the Belvoir Castle estate in Leicestershire and recalling how he was falsely accused of child murder and sex abuse ten years ago. 'Please ignore me if I get emotional,' he says, welcoming me into the cottage he shares with his partner, Terry. The house comes with the job: Proctor is private secretary to the Duke of Rutland, who lives alongside his ex-wife, the Duchess of Rutland, in the 356-room castle down the road. Hardly cheek by jowl. It is 11.15am, so I decline my host's offer of an alcoholic drink. Proctor, who was once described by Private Eye as 'so far-right as to be somewhere in the North Sea', is dressed head to toe in shades of Tory blue. We have tea in his book-lined sitting room. Through the windows are bucolic views of the Vale of Belvoir. It was in this tranquil setting that Proctor's life was ripped apart. Early on March 4, 2015, about 20 Metropolitan Police officers, mostly in blue forensic uniforms, stormed the modest farmhouse. 'I assumed it was something to do with the castle,' Proctor recalls. He quickly learnt that the raid, which lasted late into the night, was part of Operation Midland. Carl Beech, a former NHS paediatric nurse known at that point only by the pseudonym 'Nick', had accused Proctor and others — including the former home secretary Leon Brittan, the former armed forces chief Lord Bramall and the former prime minister Edward Heath — of operating a murderous VIP paedophile sex ring in Westminster in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Carl Beech, the fantasist who was known by the pseudonym 'Nick' PA Unfolding in the dark shadow of the Jimmy Savile scandal, the sensational tale was swallowed whole by the authorities and a classic moral panic ensued. Beech, from Gloucestershire, a divorced father of one, accused Proctor of rape, the murder of two children and being involved in the murder of a third child. He also alleged that Proctor had threatened to cut his genitals off with a penknife. It turned out that Beech, 57, was a complete fantasist. He is now in prison serving an 18-year sentence for perverting the course of justice and fraud. He was also found to have more than 300 indecent images of children on his computers. Operation Midland, which cost £2.5 million, lasted for 16 months and ended in 2016 with lives left in ruins and without a single arrest. To Proctor's understandable fury, not a single officer involved has faced any consequences. 'Bernard Hogan-Howe [the head of the Met at the time of Operation Midland] was ennobled,' he says. 'Cressida Dick [who was referred to the police watchdog, the IOPC — Independent Office of Police Conduct — over her role but found to have no case to answer] was made a dame. Steve Rodhouse [who led the inquiry] was made No 2 at the National Crime Agency. Lower ranks were promoted.' Proctor had hoped this month he might finally see some accountability. Rodhouse faced a misconduct hearing to answer claims that he used 'inaccurate and dishonest words' at the conclusion of Operation Midland. On June 5, however, the IOPC unexpectedly dropped the misconduct hearing at the 11th hour. It said the decision came after a 'large volume of relevant material was recently disclosed to it' by the Met. 'It is cowardice. It is complicity. It is a cover-up,' Proctor says of the U-turn. Brittan's widow, Lady Brittan, was similarly appalled when the hearing turned to dust, telling the BBC: 'I feel that it would have at least put a closure … on the whole episode if somebody had been held to account, either for misconduct, or even for incompetence.' Brittan died before his name was cleared. The apparent lack of consequences for his tormentors clearly weighs heavily on Proctor. 'It is an open wound because it's not scarred over. It's still open, it still hurts,' he says, sinking further into a brown leather armchair. 'Never a day goes by without thinking about what happened. Not a day.' A decade ago, at his solicitor's office, Proctor learnt the gruesome details of the accusations levelled against him. 'What's so horrible is the thought that anyone, let alone the police, thought I could conceivably have done anything that this chap was suggesting,' he says. The morning after his home was raided, he woke to see his face leading the morning news bulletins on television. He said it was a horrifying 'flashback' to 1987 and the first time his life had been cruelly upended. In 1986, when Proctor was the Tory MP for Billericay, the Sunday People newspaper carried out a sting, paying a 19-year-old male prostitute to visit his flat. At the time the legal age of consent for gay people was 21. Proctor was charged with gross indecency in 1987 and forced to abandon his political career. 'It takes quite a while to recover from something like that,' he says quietly. After a stint selling shirts in Richmond upon Thames, he left London and built a new life working for the 11th Duke of Rutland, David Manners. During the second unravelling, in 2015, he was accused of heinous crimes and had to leave both his job at Belvoir Castle and his grace-and-favour home. 'You have school groups going around, you couldn't have somebody working there who — not only the allegation had been made by somebody that I'd sexually abused children and murdered children, but the Metropolitan Police had gone on TV and radio and confirmed that [detectives considered Beech's account to be] 'credible and true',' he says. Throughout our day together, Proctor's pale blue eyes fill with tears and his voice keeps catching. 'The way that juries believe police, I genuinely thought that I could be charged, face trial and be found guilty and spend the rest of my life in prison,' he says. Inevitably, he received death threats — and still receives the occasional one today. 'I know some of the people who made the death threats,' he says. Fearing for his safety, in mid-2015 he moved to live in Spain at a friend's villa with Terry, a retired art dealer, whom he has known for more than 50 years. During that year, late into the Spanish nights, Proctor wrote his book, Credible and True, in a frantic attempt to document his innocence. He voluntarily flew back for police interviews and, in August 2015, against the advice of his lawyers, he held an extraordinary press conference at St Ermin's Hotel in Westminster. 'I am a homosexual. I am not a murderer. I am not a paedophile,' he told the packed room of journalists, who were agog. It was a brave and shrewd move; the tide started to shift and the press began to scrutinise the tales of 'Nick'. In 2016, as the inquiry dragged on, Proctor moved back to the UK. 'We had no money, we had nowhere to live,' he recalls. 'A friend let us use her garden shed to live in. Terry, me and three dogs lived in a garden shed half the size of this room,' he says, gesturing around the small sitting room. Proctor pictured himself living homeless on the streets of nearby Grantham. When the accusations first came out in 2015, some friends abandoned him, never to return; others abandoned him and later, when the truth emerged, came crawling back. He still can't work out which is worse. Other friends were loyal and supportive, 'without which you wouldn't survive'. Over a homemade lasagne, I hear how Proctor grew up in Scarborough, and his father, who ran bakeries, abandoned the family for another woman. He never forgave him and didn't go to his funeral. After graduating from York University, Proctor served as the Conservative MP for Basildon, then Billericay, between 1979 and 1987, and advocated for the voluntary repatriation of immigrants. His political hero is Enoch Powell. Proctor, by his own description, is not a clubbable man. Why does he think he was targeted by Beech? 'What happened in 1987 was definitely a factor,' he says. 'He went to journalists and I think they probably exacerbated his allegations. Thirdly, I was a homosexual and I've described [the inquiry] by the Met as a homosexual witch-hunt.' In November 2019, Proctor received nearly £900,000 in compensation and costs from the Metropolitan Police. In early 2022, he resumed working for the duke. 'No two days are the same,' he says cheerily. Slowly piecing himself back together, he has had therapy and now preaches the importance of talking things through. He is rejoining the Conservative Party and is president of the clunkily named Facing Allegations in Contexts of Trust (Fact), an organisation that advises those who have been falsely accused of abuse. He has had students, politicians and police come to him in desperation. 'I don't want anybody else to go through what I and others went through,' Proctor says. 'I try to help by talking to them, trying to reassure them and trying to establish what I lost, and that is confidence.' He feels only 'icy contempt' for his accuser, and seems to have more anger for the former director of public prosecutions (DPP), one Sir Keir Starmer, under whose five-year tenure rape convictions rose. He stepped down as DPP in October 2013, more than a year before Operation Midland was launched. Proctor says: 'He didn't like the fact that there [weren't] sufficient numbers of successful rape convictions, so he told the police wherever they would listen — and they did a lot, to a DPP — that 'henceforth you should believe the victim'. He wasn't DPP at the time of Operation Midland — he didn't need to be. The damage he'd done had already been done.' Proctor proudly shows me Belvoir Castle's art collection — Gainsborough, Holbein, Stubbs, Reynolds — and tells me about a foiled burglary last year. On the surface, his life seems comfortably back on track. But after everything — the accusations, raid, threats, homelessness and prospect of life in prison — does he live looking over his shoulder? 'I try not to but I think it's inevitable. Things can get quite difficult,' he says, his voice cracking again. 'But not everything has been doom and gloom. I've had a remarkable life. And here we are, ten years later. I'm still here.'
The Sun
31 minutes ago
- The Sun
Teen girl, 15, dies in suspected drugs tragedy at bus stop in village as 29-year-old man arrested
A MAN has been arrested after the tragic death of a teenage girl in a suspected drugs-related incident. The 15-year-old girl collapsed at a bus stop in Allerton Bywater on 6 June. 1 She was rushed to hospital in an ambulance to receive treatment after taking what initial tests suggest was MDMA. Despite doctors best efforts the young girl remained in a critical condition and tragically died on 12 June. A 29-year-old man was who has not been named was arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning on suspicion of manslaughter and supplying Class A drugs. He remains in custody while officers from Leeds District Safeguarding have been carrying out enquiries to establish the full circumstances. A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said they "Are supporting the girl's family and ask that people show consideration and respect their privacy at what is clearly a very difficult time for them. 'Initial tests have shown the drug involved to be MDMA and there is no suggestion of any wider risks arising from this incident, other than the inherent dangers of all illegal drugs.'
