Manchester police ordered drivers with previous convictions to turn around.
The Manchester Evening News reported:
Officers stationed on key routes into the city have been instantly checking registration plates of vehicles against a string of national databases. Known criminals have been intercepted and ordered to turn around.
On Wednesday evening alone, 50 vehicles were turned away from Manchester by officers determined to keep the streets trouble-free.
Chief Constable Peter Fahy told the M.E.N: “We were instructing anyone with a previous conviction that they had to leave the city. Quite a number of them had serious previous convictions.”
The policy will be repeated if trouble flares again.
Numerous points and questions can be raised over this:
- What legal power do police have to tell someone to leave a city when there’s no evidence they are doing anything illegal or intend to do so?
- Did they do this for any person with any conviction? Trivial or otherwise? Violent or otherwise? Spent or otherwise?
- Surely anyone intent on riot would simply have gone to another venue, got a friend to give them a lift or returned in a different vehicle?
- What about drivers using their spouse’s, parent’s or relative’s car? Would they have been turned away due to the owner of the car having a decade old conviction for petty theft?
- Having a previous conviction does not mean one is intent on riot.
- What if someoe turned away actually lived in the city and was trying to get home? What do the police expect them to do?