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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:22
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While they let the woman go after public outcry, I think the original arrest was outrageous. She was defending her property against pillagers who were standing there after having vandalized her son's car. The police came and arrested her, not the criminals.
What is wrong with Britain?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/s...1476687,00.html
"A special needs teacher who fired an air pistol at youths gathered outside her home was yesterday freed from jail by the appeal court.
Linda Walker, 48, from Urmston, Greater Manchester, was given a conditional discharge but refused permission to challenge her conviction.
She was jailed for six months in March this year after she was convicted of affray and possessing a firearm in an incident which occurred last August. Mrs Walker said she fired the gun after youths had terrorised her. She described the gang as "yobs".
Mrs Walker, who has 25 years' experience working with special needs children, had served about five weeks of her sentence in Styal women's prison, Cheshire. A petition demanding she should be freed from prison attracted 10,000 signatures.
In prison, she briefly went on hunger strike after learning that an appeal court judge had refused to allow her to go home on bail pending appeal against conviction. She said she felt let down by the police and criminal justice system.
Mrs Walker, a mother of three children, and her family had telephoned police on 15 occasions after seeing their garden shed burgled, their garden trashed, and damage caused to a car and security light. But they allegedly got no response.
At midnight on August 14 last year, she looked out of her window and saw her son's car in the drive covered in washing up liquid. The empty bottle had been placed on the bonnet. She took a gas-powered Walther CP88 pellet pistol, belonging to her partner, John Cavanagh, from a drawer and went outside to confront three youths. When they goaded her, shouting: "Come on then, are you going to shoot?", she fired up to six rounds at the ground.
Her counsel, Farrhat Arshad, argued that the jail term was wrong in principle. Although she accepted firearms offences were serious and usually punished by imprisonment, she argued that Walker's case was exceptional.
A pre-sentence report had recommended a community rehabilitation order. She had been of previous exemplary character, and "stressful circumstances had come to a head".
Walker had sought at the appeal to use fresh evidence from a milkman, David Matthews, that one of the youths had been seen on her property. However, the judges said the evidence did not relate to what happened on the day she confronted the youths.
A spokesman for Salford city council said Walker was suspended from her teaching post pending the police investigation and court action. "Now legal proceedings are ended, this formal disciplinary action will be completed as quickly as possible."
Lisa Davies, of the Justice for Linda Campaign, said: "It is fantastic that she is out and able to return home. But this matter should never have gone to court in the first place."
Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, welcomed the decision to free Mrs Walker. What she had done was wrong, "but so was the sentence".
Outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday, Walker thanked everyone who had backed her campaign."
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Kontiki
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Canada
Aug 2001
time: 00:22
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"yobs"?
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:22
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yobs = pondlife scum.
A more expansive description would generally be 14-24 old, male, unemployed, hefty on the drinks/drugs, terrorizing neighbourhoods with vandalism etc.
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Caligastia
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I can't be compromising in my thoughts no more
I can't prevent the times my anger fills my heart
I can't be sympathizing with a new lost cause
I feel I've lost my patience with the world and all
And all the politicians and their hollow promises
And all the lies, deceit and shame that goes with it
The working man pays everything for their mistakes
And with his life too if there was to be a war
So we can only get one chance can we take it
And we only got one life can't exchange it
Can we hold on to what we have don't replace it
The age of innocence is fading.......like an old dream
A life of petty crime gets punished with a holiday
The victims' mind are scarred for life most everyday
Assailants know just how much further that can go
They know the laws are soft conviction chances low
So we can only get one chance can we take it
And we only got one life can't exchange it
Can we hold on to what we have don't replace it
The age of innocence is fading.......like an old dream
You can't protect yourselves even in your own home
For fear of vigilante cries the victims wipe their eyes
So now the criminal they launch right in our face
Judical system lets them do it, a disgrace
Despondent public worries where it will all end
We can't protect ourselces our kids from the crime trend
We cannot even warn each other of evil in our midst
They have more rights than us, you cannot call that just
So we can only get one chance can we take it
And we only got one life can't exchange it
Can we hold on to what we have don't replace it
The age of innocence is fading.......like an old dream
The age of innocence is fading like an old dream
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Bereta_Eder
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that was unexpected from you
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05-05-2005 21:04
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