2 
“You’ve got to be… I mean… On my way,” I blurt into my radio, as we’re called to a silent alarm at a warehouse for the third time in a shift.
“What was that?” Syd asks, as he’s biting into something.
“We’re going back to the warehouse again.”
“No kidding.”
“Syd?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s that you’re eating?”
“A Donut.”
“Dude, seriously? Could you do anything more cringeworthy? If the borough commander sees you eating a doughnut, you’re in for some serious trouble, bud.” I say, and furtively glance around, as if the borough commander didn’t have anything better to do than to sneak around, spying whether or not his officers were eating stereotypical food.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Syd said, and immediately lowered his donut to his lap, looking out of the window, spying for brass.
The suspension in the shagged-out Astra we have today couldn’t keep my shaking a secret for long, and Syd’s head snaps back to me, finding me red-faced, dying with laughter.
“You absolute asshole” he says, timed perfectly with a young mother and her 6-year-old daughter strolling by his open window.
At this point, I should be telling him off, but he’s already spotted them, and is hanging out of the window, blundering out some sort of half-stammered apology to them for swearing, and I just can’t get it together – it’s been a long time since I’ve been out on patrol with Syd the special, and whilst he’s a rather fabulous constable, he’s also remarkably gullible and open to some phenomenal practical jokes.
When I finally come to, Syd has started laughing along as well.
“I guess the borough commander has more important things to do, eh?” he says.
“You think?!” I reply.
“So, about this warehouse” he says.
Grumpily, I point the car towards the warehouse again. We’ve been there twice already, and every time there’s no trace of what may be setting off the alarm – but of course, this is also a well-worn trick for burglars: If you can kick a door hard enough to set off the alarm, you only have to do it 4-5 times, before people stop coming to check what is going on. At that point, you can rob the place bare. So, for the third time, we’re going to take a look.
Half-way back to the warehouse, we get a call.
“Mike Delta eighty-four?” my radio blasts at me. I reach for the volume button to turn it down a little.
“Go ahead”, Syd replies.
“Are you at the warehouse yet?”
“Negative, on our way.”
“Okay, spare please.”
Syd looks at me, raises an eyebrow, and switches his MTH-800 to the spare channel.
“Eight-four for Mike Delta?” he asks
“Who’s that?” comes the reply.
“Er? Eight-four?”
“Thanks, the radio ate the start of your transmission. We’ve got a call that someone has made a section 24a arrest. We need you to head over and check it out right away!”
“Okay?”
“We’ll send the details to your MDT now.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Mike Delta out.”
Syd looks at me, as the map for our destination loads up on the Mobile Data Terminal.
“Do you remember what a Section 24a is?”
“A citizen’s arrest, right?”
“Yup.”
“Right.”
“Well, let’s go deal with it, then!”, I said, and pulled into traffic.
When we arrived at the location, it turned out to be a someone’s house. We walked up to knock on the door, but it opened before we even made it up the step.
“Thank god you are here”, a harassed-looking woman said, as she waved us past her, into the house.
“Show time of arrival for eight-four at our last assigned,” Syd blurted into his radio, as we hurried past the woman.
Inside the living room, we found a man, perhaps thirty-five years old. When we walked into the room, he seemed to be sitting on a sofa, but as we entered, we realised that wasn’t quite the case. He was, in fact, sitting on a person who was laying on a sofa. The person was remarkably quiet.
“What’s happening?” Syd said to the man.
“Oh hello, officer. My name is John. My wife Sandra and I came home to find this guy in our house. I clobbered him, and have been sitting on him ever since.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“About an hour ago”, John answered.
“Fourty-five minutes,” Sandra said.
“Okay, let’s call it fifty minutes”, John counter-offered, in a bizarre round of time-bargaining about how long he had been using a burglar as a sofa cushion.
At this point, I was more worried about the burglar than the exact time when this might have occurred, but Syd beat me to it.
“Could you get off of him, please?” Syd said.
“Oh, sorry, of course”, John said, and leapt up.
The burglar was on the sofa, motionless. I caught Syd glancing at me before leaping forward and taking the young man’s pulse. I was a little surprised at this point; At Hendon, we’re not really taught to worry about the pulse, but to instead worry about someone’s breathing instead: If they’re breathing, they have a pulse. If they’re not, then don’t waste time looking for a pulse; try to get them breathing again. Syd gave me the impression that he knew what he was doing, though, and he nodded curtly at me.
“He’s asleep”, Syd concluded.
“Asleep?”
“Yeah. Or whatever. He’s breathing, and his heart is beating just fine.”
“So what happened?” I asked John.
It turned out that John had come home from shopping, and found our sleeping beauty blundering around the living room. As a response, he clunked the young man in the head with the aluminium water-bottle he happened to have in his hand (I’ve got to admit, aluminium Sigg water bottles never made sense to me, but I can see how a full one would make a rather hefty weapon), and when he went down, John lifted him into the sofa, and literally sat on him for the best part of an hour.
“Right…” I said, looking at our sleeping burglar. I started rooting through my Metvest for an Evidence and Action Book. “Syd, get on the blower to LAS and get them to come here on the hurry-up.”
“Aye-aye”, he said, and got on the radio to get London Ambulance Service to send an ambulance to our current location.
When you grow up, you’re probably thinking that police can do pretty much anything they like. They have hitting sticks, little canisters of mace, and there are more than a few stories about the friendly neighbourhood constable giving unruly boys a clip around the ear to sort them out. Reality is quite dramatically different: Sure, you do hear stories bout police violence from time to time, and I won’t try to say that there aren’t a few bad apples among us, but in reality, use of force is the most-drilled part of policing. We’re shipped off to Officer Safety Training (OST) every six months or so, which includes endless repetition of the laws and guidelines about use of force.
The main reminding factor for uses of force is, perhaps surprisingly, article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, from a policing perspective, can be distilled into the mnemonic ‘PLAN’. Basically, all use of force has to be proportional, legal, accountable, and necessary. I could write a 2000-word essay on each of those key elements, but to keep this relatively brief, as soon as John explained to me what had happened, I realised that he might be at odds with both the ‘necessary’ and the ‘proportional’ elements of ECHR article 2.
“Did it look like he might attack you?” I asked John.
“No, he seemed really out of it. Like he didn’t even really see me. Maybe he was on drugs or something.” he said.
I looked over at Syd, who was in the process of moving the sleeping beauty to the floor, and placing him in the recovery position, all the while checking whether he was still breathing.
“What do you think would have happened if you had just pushed him?”
“He would probably have fallen over”, John said, and laughed nervously.
“So really, do you think there was any need to hit him in the head with a heavy metal object, and then sit on him for an hour?” I asked.
“Don’t answer that”, Sandra snapped.
“What?” John said.
“It’s a trick. They are tricking you.”
“??”
“Can’t you see what’s happening? He’s making it sound as if this guy was completely innocent, and that you attacked him! This is outrageous!”, she was working herself into a hysteria.
“Sandra!” Syd said. She looked down at him. “Please, we’re not here to arrest you or to cause problems”, he said. “We just need to find out exactly what happened. That’s our job, and unfortunately, part of doing our job is asking some uncomfortable questions.”
I looked at Syd. Then at John. Then at Sandra. I nodded.
“Right”, I said. “We aren’t here to arrest you. We are here to arrest that fellow.” I said, pointing at our unconscious burglar. “Which reminds me, I don’t think we have actually arrested him yet. I know it feels weird, when he’s obviously out cold, but would you do the honours, Syd?”
All three of us stood by patiently whilst Syd went through the motions of arresting and searching a passed-out man on the floor. As he completed his search, he found a recently used injection needle that had rolled under the sofa, and a fresh injection mark in the man’s arm.
I won’t lie: I felt a wave of relief. Sure, it might still be that John had done permanent damage to the man by assaulting him, but at least there was a chance that the man was unconscious because of the drugs rather than the blow to the head.
When the ambulance arrived, they didn’t spend a lot of time on ceremony; a quick check, on the carrier, and straight out to the ambulance he went; straight on blues-and-twos, and go-straight-to-the-hospital-do-not-pass-go. Syd had to go with his prisoner in the ambulance, but I stayed behind briefly to ensure I got all of John and Sandra’s details and checked their ID’s, to make sure I was talking to the people I thought I was.
As I left the house and climbed into the panda to go to the hospital and find Syd, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would have done in the same situation; what would I have done if I had found a semi-comatose drug addict in my house? But then I realised, it wasn’t a fair comparison. I have years of practice of dealing with people with various amounts of alcohol and drugs in their system; I have years and years of martial arts, and I’ve been in more brawls whilst in uniform than I care to remember. All in all, I’d like to think that I would be able to read the situation correctly, an confront John in a way
I remember thinking that John might very well find himself in hot water; Was his use of force legal? Undoubtedly: He was defending his wife, himself, and his property. Was it proportionate or necessary? I guess that wasn’t up to me to decide; If I had smashed an already-mostly-out-of-it burglar across the noggin with a steel cylinder, it would almost certainly not be a proportionate use of force. For John, however, it would be entirely dependent on how much experience he has in self defence, and the general state of mind he was in.
As I pulled into the hospital car park, I realised that Syd had spoken the truth when he said that we weren’t there to arrest John… But I was also nearly completely certain that at some point in the next 48 hours or so, another pair of officers would come a-knocking to arrest John, to effectuate a prompt and effective investigation into an instance of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
On the one hand, it’s easy to say that John should have the right to defend his property – and I completely agree with that. But on the other; where is the line? Would it be OK to bludgeon every burglar to death if you find someone in your house? Is it OK if you merely maim them for life? Should you shoo them on their way? Or perhaps there is a happy medium?
“Hey, it’s not my job to judge”, I said to Syd, as we were both sipping at cups of the satan’s scrotum-juice that passes for coffee in NHS hospitals, “and I’m bloody happy I’m a police officer and not on the bench, because cases like this would be really, really hard to decide either way.”
Syd nodded, scrunched his face up, and took my cup of ‘coffee’ away from me.
“You wait here,” he said. “I’m going to get us a couple of cups of real coffee from Costas, just up the road.
***
Matt Delito is a pseudonym for a policeman working for the Metropolitan Police. All Notes from the Frontline are not entirely “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” due to the sensitive nature of the business, but are all based on actual events. These days, he’s on Facebook and Twitter as well.
Matt has a book based on his Notes from the Front Line column out now – you can get it from Amazon, in paperback or on Kindle.
If you missed his previous columns on Giz UK, check them out over here.
Image credit: Police image from Shutterstock.
”
Notes From the Frontline: The Password
Notes From the Frontline: Knocking
Notes From the Frontline: Stopping and Searching
Mmmm… Donuts….
It’s doughnuts – we’ve not been like totally Merikanized yet!
Matt and I are using the official Met Home Office Standard Operation Procedure spelling of “Donut”.
That must be the TP SOP then – here at SC&O we eat doughnuts
Ohhh – you posh SC&O boys with all your fancy “doughnuts”. How the other half live, eh? You probably have pain au chocolat too and pronounce them all French like…
Not hard to judge, a burglar in your home has committed a criminal offence and breached your human right to your home being a burglar free environment.
Bash ‘em and let God (or whoever) be the final judge!
(Was it proportionate or necessary? absolutely!)
So someone breaks into your house, thinking no one is home and just looking for a warm place to sleep that night. You think it’s ok to bash their heads in and possibly cause them permanent damage or death?
(Why did I know you’d be on the opposite side of this?)
To answer your question: YES.
If I break into a bank thinking security is not there just looking for some cash to spend that night I’ll still be committing an offence.
Haha because I like playing Devil’s Advocate
That’s the thing though. If they are in your house, but they make no threats towards you and try and run out the back door, are you still allowed to shoot them (or whatever if you don’t have a gun)? Where do you draw the line..
Personally if they’re running out the door then I let them run… if they make one move towards me or my loved ones (even if they later claim to have been trying to leave) then they get both barrels.
(Watch this one come back to bite me in the ass in the future).
If you shoot them while they’re running away then no, you aren’t allowed to do that. That was the issue with the case a few years ago where the farmer shot those two young lads. It wasn’t that he’d used a gun on them, it was that he’d used a gun while they were running away.
The reasonable force (according to the law) had been exacted when they’d caught sight of the gun. He went above this and used it on them, shooting one in the back.
If they are coming at you then I think all force is reasonable up to the point of death. You don’t know what extent they’ll go to to escape, they may well kill. It’s not an organised fight, with rules and refs, you don’t know how far they’ll go.
Obviously, it would be different if you were trained in non lethal methods or detaining someone (where Matt’s point comes in) as you’d be expected to employ those methods. I remember when I was about 12 I took up karate, and was warned that if you got into a fight and did any damage then they’d try and prove you were a lethal weapon as you knew martial arts. I never actually knew if there was any truth in that.
Those “two young lads” were also recidivist thieves. The guy who shot and killed one of them did the local community, and the local police, a huge favour there.
I understand that, but they were also two young lads.
And the gun he used was illegal, which is never going to help his cause.
The key is ‘Reasonable Force’. But what Reasonable is, changes depending on the situation..
Unfortunately the law and common sense are not the same thing and god isn’t returning anyone’s calls.
Sorry. If you are in my house when I return with my family and I feel the LEST bit threatened then I am going to do EVERYTHING I can to completely immobolize and disable you until I can make sure my family are safe.
If you happen to be seriouisly injured or killed in that confrontation then that was the risk you took when you broke into my home.
To me this is a no brainer. Hesitate in a situation like this and horrible, unspeakable things could happen to both you and your family. I’d rather be in jail than have to live with that.
Someone has broken in. They are out of it. You have no idea how they may react, whether they are armed, whether they may get violent, whether they have a nice kettle of water boiled just in case you come home unexpectedly?
I’m horrified that there was even a suggestion of an arrest here. That’s instantly on your record for life. Probably excludes you from all sorts of jobs, stops you travelling to the US for example. Unbelievable.
Don’t think the arrest stops you from doing anything, only if you’re charged.
But have to agree with all sentiments that you don’t know what the person might do, so reasonable force is using whatever you can to make sure that the person cannot harm you in our own house. After all, they’re not in your house doing a good deed, they’re in there to commit an illegal offence.
“Don’t think the arrest stops you from doing anything, only if you’re charged.”
Nope, an a single example, you’re no longer eligible for the visa waiver scheme for the US if you’ve ever been arrested, charged or not.
the only problem is that you are assuming the intruder is in a sound state of mind and took a conscious decision to enter your property. If they’re under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol and got “confused”, be it on your conscience what happens to them.
Plenty of stories about people coming home drunk from the pub and trying to get into the wrong house….
And this is why it’s “reasonable force”. If you came in to find a drugged up or drunk guy in your home I figure you can make a solid case that you had no idea what they might do, so you hit them with something you had to hand to render them unconscious, that’s reasonable. if you then tie them up, on the grounds that you aren’t sure they will be unconscious long enough for the police to get there and may threaten you when they awake, thats’s also reasonable. if you throw cold walter on them and then lay into them with a baseball bat because they broke into your home and you are angry and upset about it, that’s NOT reasonable.
The best thing to say to the police and the judge and anyone else is “I feared for the safety of myself and my family and took what I thought to be reasonable precautions to ensure their safety”, so long as this did not entail cutting the guys toes off with a bolt cutter you should be ok legally.
Why do I now have a mental image of Darrell as Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs?
Well I’m certainly not a guy you’d want to get stuck in the middle of anything with.
Another great article Matt.
A great one for discussion and a highlights where police draw the line and the courts take over.
As as Joe Public, I would totally be in my right to defend my household against intruders using “reasonable force” (and the law does support that).
But as a police officer, whether it breached human rights, proportionate or excessive force, etc; we would gather the best evidence we can, present them to the court, then take a step back.
As a police officer, it’s reasonable to expect that you’re in a position to think rationally about a situation like that.
As Joe Public, just getting home to discover somebody else in your place of residence, it’s reasonable to expect that adrenaline and fear will cloud your judgement, and that you’re not in a position to make a rational decision about what is “reasonable force”.
To be fair though, I think the courts would take into account as part of being “reasonable” that yes, you’re human and yes, you’re bound to have an adrenaline dump and grab the first thing as part of a “fight or flight” response.
My point about police officers is how the matter is investigated, not how they should act when facing the same situation (sorry that wasn’t clear).
Though at the end of the day, we’re all human no matter how well trained we are.
In all honesty I find it hard to be on the side of someone who is breaking into someone’s home. Obviously this guy was high so it could be he thought it was his house and didn’t have a clue why someone had switched TV’s on him.
Personally, I’d be a little, shall we say, standoffish if I found someone like that in my home. However, if I found someone who was entirely compos mentis in my home all bets are off. One of us is going to get fucked up, and I know where to find everything sharp and heavy.
When you go into someone’s home you’re breaking the law, not just the law of the land, but the laws of nature. No animal will tolerate trespass into their domain – why should I?
Agreed. Someone’s in your home, they’re gonna get hit in the head until they’re on the floor. Because for all you know, it’s you or them. No EU or other pencil-pushing wanker is gonna change that.
Very interesting debate that could ensue from this! I do believe you have the right to defend your property and family, and this, invariably, will involve some sort of physical contact! John would have had little time to react, and using (I assume), whatever he had in his hand to “defend” his property would probably have been my reaction too. Just my two-pence! Enjoy reading your blogs Matt….keep it up please!
If it did go to court, I’d say that the fact that he used something he had in his hands straight off, without any thought would serve in his favour. It would have been better to drop it and use an open palm, but you could argue that he didn’t have the time to think and that therefore there was no pre-meditation.
if i was to walk into my kitchen and see someone standing there who shouldn’t be, id probably reach straight for the knife on the counter and lunge at them.. by the time ive checked how much of a threat they are it might be too late. Someone in your home could pull anything on you and when they do you wanna make sure you’re the first one to draw.
How can you make certain how much of a threat they pose until the threat is already imminent? Its a silly law, the way i see it is all the time hes on my property i can beat him. If I was to chase him down the road and batter him, thats different. However, while they are there, have a ass kicking.
Fuck that are you trying to increase your chances of getting murdered? just slam the door on the fucker/run and call the pigs. Insurance will cover your belongings but not your actual life.
Interesting read! What are your thoughts on the case recently when Andy Ferrie was cleared of criminal charges for using his legally owned shotgun to defend his home against burglars?
From what I read, they had at least some reason to believe they were in danger, as one of the burglars looked like he was going to root around in a drawer that held knives, but admit that he probably didn’t know they were in there.
The judge’s response that the burglars were taking the chance, and paid the consequences, was a very good point, and I agree with it
But its a bit of a sticky one, because assuming they were following the letter of the law, the gun would have had to be securely stored and they would have had to go and fetch it from their safe or whatever before seeing the burglars, making it a bit premeditated rather than a self defense reflex.
For anyone who hasnt read anything about it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9568247/Burglars-took-the-chance-when-they-broke-into-shotgun-holders-home-judge.html
Not necessarily, as far as we know, he took the gun out earlier that night to go shoot some foxes that had been terrorising his chickens (pure conjecture on my part here, just providing a possible scenario in which having the gun out would be legal).
For the record I think if you’re breaking into someone’s home you’re taking a risk that they’ll be armed. They’re lucky not to have been killed.
The article says they were sleeping and were woken up by the noise, so the gun really should have been stowed away.
And yes, also for the record I agree with you. People breaking into houses expecting the owners wont be able to defend themselves or their homes deserve what they get, and I think the law should always be on the homeowners side in instances like this.
I just thought the decision was interesting given the circumstances
Also, after thinking about it for a bit, I suppose if you hear people in your house, its not really unreasonable to think you may need to use force to defend yourself, so taking the precaution of getting the gun out doesn’t sound too unreasonable
Yeah, there’s nothing to say the cabinet can’t be in their room. They could easily have grabbed it quickly.
Of course, we’ll never really know the full details as they sure aren’t going to talk about it!
Agreed, and there were three of these guys as well. I couldn’t prove it in court but I reckon that is what the Americans used to call a home invasion, they knew the residents were there – they just didn’t care because they were more numerous and more adept at physical violence.
Do you have to keep your gun and bullets locked up and stored in separate places in this country?
You have to keep the gun locked up, and keep the cartridges separate, but as far as I’m aware they don’t have to be kept in their own cabinet.
The only time the gun should be out is for use, cleaning or transport. If it’s being cleaned or transported then ideally it would be dismantled.
This is a tough one. I agree with MD about the use of force and knowledge of combat. I am expereinced in combat and am a big guy.
But like John if I found someone in my house I’m not going to push him over and pin him down. I’m gonna fuck him up. If I had the option of
A) tackling him to the floor and possibly getting hurt when he pulls a potential weapon
B) Grabbing a aluminium bottle and duffing him across the head….
Its going to be B every time.
I would try and knock them out too, as if the have the nerve to break into your house, they damn well have the nerve to do whatever it takes to escape or get what they want, so the force needs to be enough to debilitate them
Agreed. Your home is your castle. It is one of the few times normal law abiding citizens will break the law without thinking too much.
Especially those with families.
and to add to that, the fact if you notice someone is on drugs, how the hell ar you supposed to tell what drug, as they could be anything from chilled and have the munchies, to all out murderous psychopath.
so wait? I cant bludgeon people in my own house anymore? Can farmers still shoot people for trespassing on their property? I’ve been having problems with this lad Scott Tenorman and ol Mr Denkins doesn’t like trespassers…
you can, but whatever you bludgeon them with, make it look like they brought that item to the fight, then you are just using equal force that they would have used and therefore it is proportionate
however if you use you wedding photo frame this may be hard to do, so i think the answer is to always carry a spare photo frame in your sock photo frame holster
I see….
Looks like I’ll have to cancel plans for my chili con carnival then
“Would it be OK to bludgeon every burglar to death if you find someone in your house?”
Yes. I reckon burglars should be prepared to forfeit all of their nominal legal rights. ***k ‘em.
Is this just for people breaking into others homes? Or does it extend to all other law breaking too? 1mph over the speed limit – Electric chair!
Since you asked, yes, it is just for people breaking into other people’s homes.
In my personal opinion if someone breaks the law on my property I think it is morally ( if not legally ) justified to incapacitate the scumbag. Unfortunately a lot of the law is not moral, in my opinion.
Legally pointless reading rights in that situation ?
If there is a possibility, however small, that they could hear you and you didn’t then anything that happened afterwards would leave room for a clever lawyer to get the case dismissed. Obviously you would need to repeat them when he woke up too.
Bloody hell Matt, looks like you’ve woken up the Daily Mail contingent of Giz on this one!
Bloody euro nazi illegal immigrants ripping off brits!
With AIDS?
Don’t forget the benefits!
To be fair, they did take our jerbs…
My feeling is that the US (some states at least) are doing it better than us as they are closer to their Enlightenment roots: Life, liberty and the pursuit of property.
The last is what we’re debating here (it seems to me) and there is a widespread perception, justified or not, that the legal system is not 100% on our side when it comes to the security of our own homes. This, along with the disastrous War on Drugs which threatens both points two and three, contributes to a widespread feeling of ambiguity towards the police from many of us in the post WW2 generations.
These rights are very alienable indeed.
Gatso cameras haven’t helped either.
Sorry Matt, nothing personal. Some of my best friends are called Matt.
The problem with the USA version of Liberty (The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life.) is that they have forgotten the ‘oppressive’ part.
True true, I don’t want to make out that the US is some utopia.
As always I suspect the answer lies somewhere in mid Atlantic.
Actually my perception of it is that it’s worse. Not all states have a so-called “castle doctrine”, and in those that do, if you defend your property from e.g. burglars, you’d actually be advised to kill them outright as they may file a civil lawsuit against you which could bankrupt you.
Hence my suggestion that getting caught burglarising somewhere = forfeiture of other rights. There’s no real need to kill someone, but you could do what was necessary to incapacitate them without fear of ending up in jail yourself.
I did put “some states at least” in brackets in my original post.
However, yes i agree with you about forfeiting rights, at least the right not to expect to get hurt while an uninvited guest on someone else’s property.
The law should simply be clear that you will never be prosecuted for doing the first thing that comes to mind when you find somebody in your home, be that run away or fight. It sends the wrong message otherwise
It’s situations like this, I’m glad I’m so well trained in martial arts and disarming techniques (thanks to my army trained dad) even I will say this: break into MY home and all bets are off
So if I come home to someone that I don’t know rummaging around my house (posing no immediate threat to me) I’m supposed to stick the kettle on and discuss with him why he is there and what he’s doing?
I think more needs to be done in terms of informing everyday citizens of what they can and can’t do under the law if they are presented with this situation.
If I come home and find somebody that shouldn’t be there dossing about in my living room, I’m doing my best to lay the smackdown. If that person is disadvantaged and in a desperate situation, fuck em’, they’ve made the decision to break/enter into my house. (I realise how pompous that sounds, believe me, I’m not rich, right wing or anything like that. I just like to think that common sense prevails, it obviously doesn’t.)