Police slam new rules on racial descriptions in seeking crime suspects

A LIMIT on racial descriptions of criminals was putting political correctness before crime busting, police say. Descriptions including Black African, Indian and Eastern European are among those dumped in media releases seeking crime suspects. They have been replaced by four categories: Aboriginal, Caucasian, Asian and other.

Police Association secretary Greg Davies said it was putting unnecessary impediments in the way of catching criminals. "It is quite silly and counter-productive and of no assistance to anybody to make everything vanilla," he said. "It is not a matter of being racist, it is a matter of solving crime." Sen-Sgt Davies said it should be about giving the public the best information possible. "It is political correctness taking precedence over solving crime," he said. "We need to have accurate descriptions of suspects if we are going to release information to the public. "We need to make it as specific as possible."

Chief Commissioner Simon Overland said they tended to use broad categories of race when speaking to the public. "We have moved away from those terms because sometimes they can cause offence," he said on radio.

SOURCE






Attention BBC: which of Australia's cities is almost dry?

By Andrew Bolt

A word to the BBC’s Sydney reporter Nick Bryant. Mate, Australians now have the Internet and can read and check the bizarre reports you file back home, like this one:

Australia is in the grip of “the Big Dry”, one of the worst droughts in a century.

Major cities confront the major possibility of running out of water daily, and some are building desalination plants that draw from the sea.

Here’s the rain anomalies for this summer, showing above average rainfall for most of the country:



And here are the current storage levels on these cities that “confront the major possibility of running out of water daily”:

Sydney: 59%

Melbourne: 34.3% with desalination plant to come online next year.

Brisbane: 97.7%

Perth: 39.6% with desalination plant online.

Adelaide: 62% plus water piped from the Murray.

Your correction should be a beauty. Claiming you simply consulted Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery is no excuse.

SOURCE





Police carry bashed Geelong teens to hospital in divvy van amid ambulance shortage

A teenager rushed into emergency surgery after being bashed was ferried to hospital in a divvy van because no ambulances were available. Len Lowry said his son Dale was out town with friend Daniel, who was celebrating his very first night out at a nightclub, after turning 18 four days earlier. ''This guy came up to Daniel and started having a shot at him and my son knew the guy, so he has tried to calm the situation down and has got hit,'' he told Radio 3AW this morning.

''Daniel was laying unconscious in the street, he had to have emergency surgery on Sunday afternoon and he has a broken eye socket and bleeding on the brain.'' ''They were bashed, Dale has a broken nose, six stitches in his cheek and an eye that is just starting to open now,'' he said. Despite their injuries Mr Lowry said the mates were thrown out of the Room 99 club by bouncers, along with their alleged attacker.

Mr Lowry said police were called to the scene and when they called paramedics, they were told an ambulance would not be available for an hour. ''It is an absolute disgrace, police should never have been put in that position,'' he said. ''I don't blame police for moving them but what is happening when we only have three ambulances to cover the whole of Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula?'' Mr Lowry said he intended to make a formal complaint to Ambulance Victoria and the State Government.

Police are believed to be investigating a link between the attack and a man who allegedly bit half another man's ear off later that night.

SOURCE






Case brought by incompetent Federal regulators thrown out

Let's hope massive costs are awarded against them

John Kizon has walked free from an insider trading trial in the this morning after all charges against him were dismissed. Today in the Perth District Court, Judge John Wisbey discharged all counts of engaging in insider trading and conspiring to trade in shares while possessing insider information against the prominent Perth businessman, after concluding there was not enough evidence to support the charges. Mr Kizon's co-accused, his business associate Nigel Mansfield, had all but four charges dismissed.

Outside court, Mr Kizon's lawyer Stephen Shirrefs, SC, said the judge had ruled the evidence submitted by the prosecution against his client was "fatally flawed" and defective. He said the evidence "pointed entirely the other way and was fatal to the prosecution case" against Mr Kizon. Mr Shirrefs said the alleged insider information which the prosecution relied on "could not be established by the evidence to be correct or true". In other words, it could not support the Commonwealth's case against his client and as a result, Judge Wisbey was right to acquit Mr Kizon on all charges.

The charges related to share trades in Adultshop.com and online gambling company My Casino during a six-month period between January and July 2002. The prosecution had claimed Mr Kizon had traded in the two companies after receiving information not available to the general public. However, Judge Wisbey today ruled that the information that came to Mr Kizon could not be classified as "insider" information.

At the start of the trial, the court was told that between January 6 and January 21, 2002, Mr Kizon and Mr Mansfield conspired to procure shares in Adultshop.com after they caught wind of lucrative information, including that the Perth-based company's expected 2001-02 profit had surged from $3 million to $11 million after its turnover lifted from about $50 million to $111 million that year.

Judge Wisbey has dismissed the jury for the day. They will return tomorrow to hear closing arguments from the prosecutors and defence before deliberating the final four charges against Mr Mansfield, which relate to the trading of shares in companies My Casino and Eurast Limited.

Outside court, Mr Kizon said he would not comment on the specifics of the case as the trial against Mr Mansfield was still ongoing, but he thanked Mr Shirrefs and Mr Mansfield's lawyer Martin Bennett for their efforts in the trial. The insider trading trial against Mr Kizon and Mr Mansfield started approximately eight weeks ago.

SOURCE