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 Hot TOPICS
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Arrested face a trip to Salisbury in future (July 25, 2010)
PEOPLE who fall foul of the law and are arrested in Warminster are to
be taken to the custody suite in Salisbury rather than Melksham in
future, town councillors have been told.
Inspector Dave Minty said that although the Salisbury station is further away it
is less busy and would mean police officers spend less time caught up
dealing with procedures.
Once upon a time when people were arrested they were taken to the local
station, banged up overnight and let out in the morning but that all
changed when the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) legislation came
in in the early 1990s.
Since then arrested people have had to be banged up by specially trained custody sergeants.
Until 2003 Warminster was in the old police 'A' Division - hence the
call sign Alpha Whisky - and all arrested people would go to Salisbury
as a matter of course.
When the divisions changed and Warminster had to be included in the C
division to comply with Labour's 'coterminosity' rules, this forced all
the work to be done in Chippenham division - which also had the only
disability and human rights compliant courtroom at the time.
''What this latest change has done has been to return us to the more
sensible situation we had before,'' said VFW's Steve Dancey.
''It also means that people are likely to face their first appearance
before magistrates at the new fully compliant Salisbury courts complex rather than in
Chippenham.
''It is a dreadful shame that local justice has been dispensed with by
the Home Office as it was far more transparent when the court was here
in Warminster (until 1993) but at least Salisbury is more easily
accessible than Chippenham.''Click here to return to the HOT TOPICS page
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