In court over breach of bail conditions - being tagged.

Nine_Lives

Posting it in here in a bid to get help, seen as though the 2 responses i've had in the other forum have been a total waste of time.

Basically without getting into the hows & whys, my brother is now tagged.

The G4S folk came round last night to tag him. They had him going into every room to sync it & when it flashed once, it was synced. He did this in every room until the bathroom which is the furthest point. It flashed 3 times. The bloke told him to try again & it flashed 3 times again. The bloke then said "it'll be ok as i'll just adjust the settings on the machine". He never tested it again though to get it to flash once like the other rooms.

This is the first point where there's a question about is there any grounds for complaint (moving beyond the "shouldn't be in the position to be tagged in the first place" argument).

The police came round to check my brother was at home under his curfew. He was.
What we later found out through the solicitor was that once tagged, the police will claim they need to come round but in actual fact they do not. One copper admitted this, but said his boss says they have to go anyway.

Then in the early hours the G4S boys call asking to speak to my brother. My mother says he's asleep as he's up for work in the morning.
Before it's pounced on, she now realises that this was a big time mistake & almost cost him being locked up.
The G4S chap said it's ok & my brother was to call them in the morning.

15 minutes later another G4S chap called asking to speak. My mother made the mistake we just addressed - by saying she told the last chap he's up for work early in the morning & is asleep. The chap said ok, goodnight. She thought this was accepted as at no point did they press for him to come to the phone - say she needs to wake him if he's there etc.

An hour later there's police at the door saying my brother is under arrest for breach of bail conditions - apparently he had been out of the house for 15 minutes. This was not possible as he would've needed to pass my mum in the living room & he didn't.



The argument was that the machine is faulty. Not only this we were told it runs on an o2 signal with a backup of Vodafone. At our home you can forget getting an o2 signal. I'm on o2 & i've got to position my mobile in the corner of the window to get a signal & even then it's 1 bar.

So my brother was facing being locked up for breach. Thankfully they were able to convince the court that the machine was faulty & that if called again, my mum needs to wake him up regardless of what time it is.

Again, she realises what a stupid mistake she made. My brother has given her grief for not waking him, my sister has & as have i - so we don't want to spend too much time on what she should & shouldn't have done.


The question is - if this machine is faulty, is there grounds for complaint that the installation bloke didn't sync it properly? He didn't satisfy himself that it flashed once in the bathroom. He just said he'd tweak the machine & left it at that - didn't check to see if it worked.

Obviously there's no compensation being sought here. The end goal is to not have a repeat of a 'false positive'.

Add on from this - my brothers curfew begins at 11pm. The police have just now been round at 9pm asking what my brother plans to be doing later. All this after the solicitor said they don't need to keep coming & continuing doing this goes down the harassment route. I could understand coming at 11pm, or even 10:50pm & waiting, but 9pm? What are you doing later? What's he going to tell them? Planting bombs?!?!

Anyway, we just don't want a repeat of this false-positive & are looking at how to not have this happen again (excluding replies of "make sure he behaves" & other responses that wont deal with the issue at hand).

System

You're not going to get much decent advice on here. For one thing it's "praise, vent and warning" not a legal board. It attracts a lot of personal judgements!

You're best off seeking legal advice from qualified help.

Hope everything works out.

Nine_Lives

goater78 wrote: »

You're not going to get much decent advice on here. For one thing it's "praise, vent and warning" not a legal board. It attracts a lot of personal judgements!

You're best off seeking legal advice from qualified help.

Hope everything works out.

Thanks for the response. At least you didn't take a preaching standpoint, which is what i expected the first x-replies to be.

We don't seem to have a forum for the legal side of things, other than the employment forum. I don't know who can make the complaint either - whether it's my brother because it's directly him, or whether it can also be my mother, as she's found herself involved & could potentially go to court if she continues doing what she did (she wont).

System

You could try this forum?

http://www.thelawforum.co.uk/forums/ask-question-here

Tiddlywinks

K_P83 wrote: »

We don't seem to have a forum for the legal side of things, other than the employment forum. I don't know who can make the complaint either - whether it's my brother because it's directly him, or whether it can also be my mother, as she's found herself involved & could potentially go to court if she continues doing what she did (she wont).

Go to a solicitor - that way you get fact and not opinion from strangers.

Either way, I'm not at all interested in how badly your brother is being treated over his 'tagging'... just be thankful this is the good old UK and not some other country where he'd be flogged or worse.

kermitfrog

Tiddlywinks wrote: »

Go to a solicitor - that way you get fact and not opinion from strangers.

Nah, people would rather come here and get responses from unqualified strangers than speak to experts who might tell them something they don't want to hear.

Pollycat

I agree you should seek legal advice.

But I have to say that I feel sorry for your poor Mum in all this.

She's had 3 adults 'giving her grief'!

!!!!!!, she answered the phone twice "in the early hours of the morning"!

I guess the offence for which your brother was tagged didn't give her grief, then?

Shame on the 3 of you!

K_P83 wrote: »

So my brother was facing being locked up for breach. Thankfully they were able to convince the court that the machine was faulty & that if called again, my mum needs to wake him up regardless of what time it is.

Again, she realises what a stupid mistake she made. My brother has given her grief for not waking him, my sister has & as have i - so we don't want to spend too much time on what she should & shouldn't have done.

NBLondon

So... we're presuming that he went to the bathroom; the signal from the tag dropped out and that set off a warning in the control centre and it didn't reset when he got back in range. (Or he was 15 minutes in the bathroom).

So step 1 - move the phone to your brother's bedroom if you can - he should be getting up to answer it. Step 2 - go back to your solicitor and get them to challenge G4S to reinstall the tag.

Hoof_Hearted

I think you should just forget it. You can't spend your life challenging every annoyance -- just move on.

Get a telephone extension cable and put the phone in his bedroom.

Ask G4S to check that the tag works through the house as there are false positives.

Make sure he answers the phone if anyone calls to check.

He is a criminal and is going to have to put up with some inconvenience until his sentence has finished, although I am sorry for the family.

shaun_from_Africa

There is another thing that may help.

Get your brother to go into the bathroom (or whichever room appears to have the worst reception for the tag), and wait for G4S to call the house again.

When they do, get your brother to answer the phone and confirm that he is in the house ane tell him to ask G4S to record the conversation and also record it from your end (tell G4S that you are doing this).

Once this has been done, you will have verifiable proof that there is a problem with the mobile phone reception causing false indications, and if it did come to court, you would be able to present this evidence.

This is all my untrained legal opinion of course and may not stand up in court, but I can't see why not.

Nine_Lives

Those who say get legal advice are indeed correct. It's been taken further anyway now.

As for those saying move the phone - this is why those who say take legal advice are correct (although the help i was looking for wasn't advice on moving phones) ... because the phone or the tag cannot be tampered with. Moving is tampering with - so it cannot be moved by us. Before it's mentioned again - this is actually being dealt with & hopefully soon as they called 4 times during the early hours last night.

Pollycat wrote: »

But I have to say that I feel sorry for your poor Mum in all this.

She's had 3 adults 'giving her grief'!

!!!!!!, she answered the phone twice "in the early hours of the morning"!

I guess the offence for which your brother was tagged didn't give her grief, then?

Shame on the 3 of you!

Shame on YOU for thinking you know the situation well enough to JUDGE!! Who are YOU to judge? I'm just asking for advice here, not a lecture from someone who knows nothing about the situation they're preaching about. I'll point out to you that >I< have done no wrong, so don't lecture me!!!

My mother almost put my brother inside for 3 months by her stupid decision making.
Yes, my brother has done wrong - he admits 1 of the allegations put against him (but denies the others), so he will be dealt with accordingly (& that's for the REAL judge to decide on as well as the jury, not YOU).
However, the legal pack that came with the tag, that my mum admitted she hadn't read, states that if they call, he is to answer, no question.
It doesn't matter whether he's asleep - wake him up. They're not interested in him sleeping. He gave up his right for an uninterrupted sleep the moment he put himself in the position to require a tag.

Yes unfortunately she's having to endure her son being tagged & potentially facing a prison term, but she made a very serious poor judgement herself by telling them he was not available to talk as he was asleep. Various points on the legal pack addressed this very issue.
Not to mention the solicitor said my mum can face court herself for her actions - so legally speaking, she was in the WRONG.

If he's to go inside, it should be from his own actions, which will be fair enough. He doesn't want or need to go inside because his mum didn't want to wake him!!

So don't come judging me!!