Crime

The federal sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs resumed on Friday with testimony from a former girlfriend and alleged victim, identified as “Jane”.

On the stand, the woman, described by prosecutors as a single mother who met Combs in 2020, described the drug-fueled sexual encounters involving male escorts – referred to as “hotel nights” – she says she endured during her relationship with Combs, where she said Combs would watch and direct her and the escort to perform sex acts while he masturbated.

Jane testified on Friday that during the sexual encounters, which sometimes lasted more than 24 hours, Combs pressured her to have sex with male escorts without condoms. She told the court that during their relationship she told the music mogul multiple times that she did not want to have sex with other men but that he was “dismissive”.

Combs, 55, was arrested in September and faces federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Even willing to agree that Combs is something of a ghastly shit with deeply weird desires and habits. But bird agrees to have sex with people is not, in fact, a crime. If he beat (fnarr, fnarr) her into it then it would be a crime. “You want to do this so that you can stay with me?” “Not really, but if necessary” is not a crime.

One of Britain’s biggest trade unions had a “pervasive fraud environment”, a leaked auditors’ report has concluded.

Global tax advisory firm BDO found there had been a culture at Unite that “did not challenge the appropriateness of transactions” and failed to ensure appropriate financial reporting.

The review, which took four years, concluded that “dominant personalities and a weak control environment facilitated opportunities to commit fraud” at the union.

Didn’t they build a hotel that was 7x over budget or something?

Ah, yes, that was the one.

Two Scottish men have been shot dead outside a bar in southern Spain.

The victims were gunned down outside Monaghans, a popular Irish-themed bar in the coastal town of Fuengirola, Málaga, at about 11pm on Saturday.

A masked man opened fire on the pair as they stood outside the venue before fleeing on foot. Both men died at the scene.

We might have a little guess at their business occupation of course.

A Top Gear producer has been banned from driving after exceeding a 20mph limit by 4mph.

Yes, obviously, funny ha ha but still…..even I as a cyclist can do more than that.

Two illegal migrants suspected of killing a US soldier in a jet ski crash over memorial day weekend have been threatened with the death penalty.

Nope, they’re not:

Witnesses told law enforcement that the jet ski made several “reckless” manoeuvres at high speed before crashing into Moore, who was in the process of steering away, according to an arrest warrant seen by Fox4.

Idiot youth stupidity more than anything else we might think.

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said that both suspects were in the country illegally, which the acting head of the ICE Dallas Field Office confirmed, according to reports.
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Tributes have poured in for Moore, who had recently graduated from the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School and was set to commence basic training.

No, that’s not one that they’re going to enjoy the sentence about.

Up to 43,000 criminals are set to avoid prison each year under Government plans to combat jail overcrowding, an analysis of official figures by The Telegraph reveals.

The criminals, including burglars, shoplifters and knife offenders, will instead face community sentences under the plans to scrap most jail terms of under 12 months.

The law change, recommended by an independent review headed by David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, will order courts to only jail offenders for less than a year in “exceptional circumstances”, including domestic abuse, stalking and breaching orders linked to violence against women and girls.

The analysis also reveals that up to 1,500 killers, rapists and other serious sexual and violent offenders will be eligible for early release each year under the shake-up, which is designed to free up nearly 10,000 prison spaces.

As a logical exercise yes, you can deal with restricted supply by reducing demand. As a logical exercise do note that it’s also possible to deal with excessive demand by increasing supply…..

France is to build a €400 million US-style “super-max” prison for drug lords and Islamist terrorists in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

Gérald Darmanin, the hardline justice minister, said on Sunday that the facility would be located in Saint Laurent du Maroni in the overseas territory of French Guiana. It is the same region where the notorious Devil’s Island penal colony was situated and was the setting of the novel Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

So. All we’ve got to do is change the status of South Georgia from a dependent territory (I think?) into a full and whole part of the UK and we can then build there. Because we’d not be sending people somewhere else. We would, like France, be sending them to a part of the UK which just happens not to be close to London.

The human rights lawyers would be defeated…

Added bonus – this could also be applied to asylum seekers and small boat characters….

Foreign offenders jailed for crimes in the UK will be deported as soon as they are convicted in a bid to tackle prison overcrowding.

OK. Whoo hoo!

David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, who is heading the review, has also recommended giving ministers powers for earlier deportations of foreign criminals jailed for more than three years. There are 10,800 foreign prisoners – one in eight of all inmates – which costs taxpayers £580 million a year.

And the kicker?

Under the early removal scheme, deported foreign criminals do not have to serve any more prison time after they are returned to their home countries.

So, to recast this:

Foreign criminals to be released and sent home without serving time……nott quite so exciting now, eh?

A pregnant burglar stole jewellery worth more than £500,000 from a £105 million London property by posing as a cleaner.

Luminita Zamfir, 24, stole rings, necklaces and earrings from what is London’s second-largest home after Buckingham Palace in February.

The then-pregnant Romanian
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Zamfir has four previous convictions for burglary and shoplifting dating back to 2016 and will be sentenced on June 11.

So, started her life of crime …..ah, no, first got caught in it….at 15?

Prisoners will be released from jail as little as a third of the way through their sentences if they behave well, under government plans to tackle the overcrowding crisis.

Offenders will be able to earn their freedom after serving a third of their sentences if they complete work, training or education assignments and demonstrate good behaviour before being freed.

If they fail to behave, they will have to spend longer in jail under the shake-up that will see the current automatic early release of offenders 40 per cent of the way through their sentences scrapped.

But, of course, they’re going to be really, really, tough on that training now, aren’t they?

A retired special constable was arrested and detained over a social media post warning about the threat of anti-Semitism in Britain, The Telegraph can reveal.

Julian Foulkes, from Gillingham in Kent, was handcuffed at his home by six officers from Kent Police – the force he had served for a decade – after challenging a supporter of pro-Palestinian marches on X.

Police body-worn camera footage captured officers scrutinising the 71-year-old’s collection of books by authors such as Douglas Murray, a Telegraph contributor, and issues of The Spectator, pointing to what they described as “very Brexity things”.

It was the Farage gimp mask that gave him away, right?

Terrorism financing now means selling paintings to a bad guy:

A BBC Bargain Hunt art expert has admitted failing to report a series of high-value art sales to a man suspected of financing the militant group Hezbollah.

Oghenochuko Ojiri, 53, pleaded guilty to eight offences under section 21A of the Terrorism Act 2000 during a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.

Now perhps there is a law against this, perhaps there even should be a law against having dealings with a snactioned person. But flogging someone dodgy modern art is not, in fact, terrorism financing now, is it?

Mahdi was sentenced to death in 2006, and the execution was carried out on 11 April. On the evening of his killing, Mahdi was brought into the state’s execution chamber, strapped to a chair and had a red bullseye target placed over his heart. Witnesses were positioned behind bulletproof glass, and three prison employees on the firing squad stood roughly 15ft (4.6 metres) away.

Officials placed a hood over Mahdi’s head before the staff fired, according to an Associated Press reporter, who was a witness. As shots were fired, Mahdi cried out and his arms flexed, and after roughly 45 seconds, he groaned twice, the AP said. His breaths continued for around 80 seconds, then a doctor examined him for a minute. He was declared dead roughly four minutes after the shots.

Apparently they missed his heart from 15 feet.

Donald Trump has ordered the US Bureau of Prisons to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison off the coast of San Francisco.

In a message posted on Truth Social, his online platform, on Sunday night, the US President announced his plan to turn the small island into symbol of law and order, to deter “vicious” criminals whom he called the “dregs of society”.

It’ll take too long.

But lovely political optics, obviously.

Prosecutors have linked him to the Zizians, a “death cult” of transgender vegans,

Aggressive vegans, eh?

Properties burn as turf war rages in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Gang wars over the peat trade, d’ye see?

Sir Keir Starmer is facing a grassroots rebellion over his refusal to launch a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal.

The Prime Minister has rejected demands to launch a statutory inquiry into the historical sexual abuse of thousands of children by gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani heritage.

On Thursday, Sir Keir denied that plans for up to five initial local inquiries had been scaled back after the Government said it would make the money available for councils but they could use it as they wished to tackle grooming.

And this is exactly the aspect of Third World politics that we don’t want to have here. But are getting.

That whether a crime is committed, a crime is investigated, depends upon the political power of those suspected. That is, the rule of law is subject to politics, the rule of law is not supreme.

That very idea, that rule of law, was one of our great innovations those centuries back. Sure, sure, breaches in it of course. But the ideal was there and often enough it did in fact retain that paramountcy.

We’ll miss it when it’s gone – we’re missing it already in fact.

And such things always do die because of that little bit of political expediency. We’ll do it this time, just a little, because elections, power, our people. And decades later everyone’s doing it because why not?

The tsunami is unprecedented. Retailers reported more than 20 million cases of theft in 2023-24. Violence and abuse are up by half to 2,000 incidents a day. Shoplifting is, says the British Retail Consortium, “out of control”. Now, with police unable to stem the tide,

Rather, police – and the CPS – won’t stem the tide. A few more Constables Wade Dooley having to forcefully restrain offenders who were attempting to resist arrest plus some decent dentences and we’re done.

When shoplifting gets punished then shoplifting will stop.

A prison governor began a relationship with a drug dealer who gave her a £12,000 Mercedes car after she released him on licence from jail, a court heard.

Kerri Pegg was seen as a “rising star” in the Prison Service, quickly climbing the career ladder from graduate entrant to prison governor in six years, Preston Crown Court heard.

But the 42-year-old “didn’t play by the rules” and while governor at HMP Kirkham in Lancashire began a relationship with inmate Anthony Saunderson, who gave her the coupé bought with drug money, it is alleged.

Quite what it is that led to this is unknown of course:

“Her downfall was two-fold, the first, despite having a good income, she lived beyond her means.

“She spent all her income and more, incurring debts and she had county court judgments made against her. As a consequence, she became vulnerable and open to exploitation.

“The second was that she became emotionally and personally involved with a serving prisoner, Anthony Saunderson, and later accepted an expensive car, a Mercedes C class, which was paid for by him out of his proceeds of criminal activity, i.e. trading in drugs.”

Given that no woman would ever just for a flash bit of rough we’ll never know the reason, will we?

Burrows boasted in emails of “living in paradise” while in Phuket province under the name of his friend Peter Leslie Smith, whose details he had used to fraudulently obtain a passport in 1997 and leave the country without detection.

Chester Crown Court heard how Burrows found work at an advertising company and even featured in the local news in 2019 after his retirement.

Police had launched four unsuccessful appeals on BBC’s Crimewatch UK to locate the serial child abuser.

On Monday he was found guilty of 54 sexual offences at Chester Crown Court, including indecent assault of boys, buggery, attempted buggery and indecency with a child.

So, buggery’s an offence. As it has been since H VIII’s time. It was a hanging offence until the 1860s and there’s – apparently, I did once track it down and it seemed true – a year in the 1830s (?) when England hanged more for buggery than for murder.

But, clearly, buggery’s not an offence after a cuddle and a Judy Garland movie.

So, we’ve a change in the meaning of the word – or the definition of the criminal offence perhaps. My guess – and it is a guess – is that buggery now means unwanted/imposed/forced, as in rape. My guess is also that this was true – in fact, if not wholly in definition – back into the past. Well, obviously, as this was true yesterday. But how many yesterdays?

When did buggery as a prosecutable offence become not the act between consenting adults (if indeed it ever was that in practice) but the violence of rape with the act?

My suspicion is that back under the Bloody Code there was very little hanging of people for a shared interest in interior decoration but that there would have been a certain frowning upon in the streets with violence……