Dave Thorp's Blog

Been a bit quiet on this blog lately. Had a lot of stuff going on which has affected my frequency of posting to this blog. So here’s a quick update on all thats been happening in my life

New Floaty Tablets

During July and August my venlafaxine tablets stopped treating my depression and were playing havoc with my blood pressure. Consequently I am now on mirtazapine  which seems to be working better

Houseguests

During July we had Yvonnes sister and her friend staying with us. During this time as well as causing more rises to my blood pressure, they treated our home as little more than a doss house where they could just laze around all day. So eventually we were forced to make some rules, which they then broke half of. Not to mention one of them had me and Yvonne wandering around in the rain for 3 hours trying to find them because they had wandered off in a suicidal state. Think they’d be grateful dear reader…. well read on

Police abusing their powers (again)

Readers may want to read back to March last year where the police abused their powers, harassed a law abiding family including a two week old baby in the early hours of the morning. Well some good did come of it as they eventually paid us compensation of £1000. Regrettably this also seems to have made them have a grudge against us.

So come 25th August this year, my anti depressants have well and truly stopped working, I’m in an incredibly vulnerable state and also for some inexplicable reason developed feelings for the most ungrateful of the two people we let stay with us. Early hours of the morning I’m out for a walk and next thing I’m stopped by a police officer who attempts to manhandle me into his vehicle. I resist and then get arrested for a so called public order offence….. with no members of the public in a visible 1/2 mile radius!! I’m later charged with this offence and also with harassment of the person I’d developed feelings for. Apparently sending a text message asking where you stand with being friends after said person contacts you at 3 in morning on MSN and has a conversation with you for 20 minutes or so after you’d left them alone for over a week construes harassment. Least it does in the heavily prejudiced eyes of the law who cant see past getting back at the people who managed to take them for £1000. Not to mention I was detained for an excessively long time during which the police committed many more breaches of the police and criminal evidence act including most of the ones concerning dealing with mentally vulnerable people and appointing appropriate adults. Then again this is the same constabulary who arrested, charged and successfully prosecuted someone for stealing……. from a rubbish tip!

So the moral of these stories dear reader

1. No good deed ever goes unpunished, particularly when the punisher’s have grudges against you

2. The police have no more idea of the law than anyone else

3. In order to prevent anti depressants from stopping working you should take lots… of different ones….. at the same time (only joking)

Going off our experience at 3am yesterday morning the answer is a very clear yes!

At 3am yesterday morning we are rudely awakened by some knocking on our front door. It isn’t long before this is joined by knocking on our windows and lights being shined into our bedroom window. After about five minutes of this someone shouts that it is the police and they will kick the door in if we don’t open. At this point myself, Yvonne, Stuart and Alex are all very distressed at which point I get up and go to the door.

When I open the door there are three officers there who ask if I’m called Richard. Now given the amount of contact we have had with the police over the last two years complaining about the dickhead upstairs it they should surely know that my name isn’t Richard. They say they are looking for someone reported to be at our address and ask me for ID which I provide. They then come in to search the premises.

It’s at this point that they seem to forget about the fugitive that they are so desperately seeking that they don’t mind waking up two small children at a stupid time in the morning and decide to bother more about the condition our flat is in. Admittedly we aren’t the tidiest people though with two children and ourselves crammed into a tiny one bedroom flat we don’t really have room to keep things tidy however ultimately, if the police were so desperate to catch someone that they threatening to kick two law abiding citizens’ door in they really wouldn’t be concerned with this. Over the next 15 minutes, they take all our families details off myself and Yvonne (despite being in the bedroom and them saying they would not enter the bedroom) and make us feel like we are criminals.

After doing some research it transpires that the officers actually had no authority to kick our door down (despite the senior officer on the scene stating they did under section 18 of PACE when I enquired if they had a warrant after seeing how distressed Yvonne and the boys were…. section 18 of PACE grants right of access to a property following the arrest of the resident). So clearly the officers in question are abusing their powers as well as not doing their jobs properly as some simple detective work and checking of their records could have avoided the whole unpleasant incident.

Needless to say a complaint has been filed with Lancashire Constabulary