bobby47 Posted November 13, 2012 Report Share Posted November 13, 2012 During the past few years I've noticed a worrying increase in the use of children by the Police and the Local Authority, who are recruiting kids, giving them money and tasking them to enter a licensed premises store and purchase alcohol in order to gain evidence to support either a Licence being revoked or a criminal prosecution. These Test Purchases are conducted under the control of the Police and the Trading Standards and at some point following a successful Test Purchase of alcohol, these kids must presumably provide witness statements and their personal details or false names must be incorporated into a file of evidence that will support a criminal prosecution. For all intents and purposes these kids become Covert Intelligence Sources and I suppose, must be filed and logged as Police Informants. Now I ain't no expert on any of this but I do ask myself, 'is this entirely necessary' given that the Police and Trading Standards could quite easily carry out a successful prosecution by simply carrying out observations on the shop and catching a few kids who have purchased alcohol from the Licencee. My worry is that to save the Police and Council a lot of man hours doing these observations, they are taking the easy option and using children. My personal view is that we shouldn't be exploiting children in this way. I accept that some would say the kids are volunteers but when they are that age, do they really know and understand what is being asked of them? I felt this for a long time and I'd bet anybody that one day the wheel is going to come off and this will become a major Policing issue and will be something that we will, with hindsight regret ever doing. I say, leave the kids out of it and get your evidence in another way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Posted November 14, 2012 Report Share Posted November 14, 2012 You would not get away with this is some countries, it's called "Entrapment" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts