[mattw]

This is from the Twitter account @CitizenUddin (“Walking Marky”) about a communication he has received, asking for more detailed verbal descriptions in the Statement, because Magistrates do not always look at the evidential video when doing their initial assessment.

“Received from the @metpoliceuk
today. Until recently, I used to put “Driver using phone” as my witness statement…”

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[Rendel Harris]

This doesn’t make any sense as far as I can see. Magistrates are not involved with reviewing initial video submissions. The police make some of the charging decisions on minor offences, with the CPS making the decision whether to prosecute for more serious matters. Sometimes a matter will be serious enough to go straight to court without the option of accepting an FPN or course offer, other times the driver will have the option of taking the points/fine/course or fighting it in court. In either case magistrates are not involved, and indeed it would go against the principle of an independent judiciary to have those who are presiding over a case make the charging decisions as well. They will only view the complainant’s written statement and any video evidence when it is presented to them in court by the prosecution at trial. There is no “initial hearing stage” where the magistrates would just read the witness statement and then dismiss the charge without viewing the video evidence. So, what’s going on here? It looks to me very like someone from the police or CPS trying to set up a scenario where they can reject video submissions on the grounds that the written evidence is inadequate. “CitizenUddin” is a frequent submitter of bad driving videos and particularly mobile use, he’s a sort of pedestrian equivalent of Cycling Mikey, so it may be that someone’s taken it upon themselves to try and put him off making so many submissions or, as I suggested, is trying to invent reasons not to progress his complaints.

[hawkinspeter]

Seems to me that either they need to train everyone who submits video footage (unlikely and a barrier to people submitting evidence) or they could provide the necessary resource to prepare the statements for magistrates after viewing the footage themselves. Presumably the police have the training and know what the magistrates want/need to hear, so they are the ones that should be preparing the statements.

[mattw]

Link: https://x.com/CitizenUddin/status/2089446243919704100

[mattw]

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