The Clown Prosecution Service.
This is 18 year old Connor Jones wearing his Halloween outfit.
It is unlikely to be a custom made outfit, which means that somewhere a manufacturer has made several such outfits and hopefully sold them.
Wearing it, and standing with a group of fellow teenagers has just cost Connor £90 and a criminal record.
He was waiting for his cousin to come out of school in Caerphilly.
“I didn’t say anything to anyone or chase anyone, I was just waiting. It was around 3pm and the school kids came out.”
Not holding a baseball bat; nor a chainsaw; nor threatening anyone.
Just wearing a ready made Halloween costume.
Chief Inspector Paul Staniforth said: “Gwent Police will not tolerate such behaviour and anyone seeking to cause distress and potential harm to anyone will be dealt with.
In this case, not only is this man out of pocket, he will now have a criminal record which will impact his future including any job opportunities.
In 2000, crime figures showed that Caerphilly was ‘the most violent town in Wales‘.
caerphilly-cf83-2bb-wales-_-110-crimes-in-july-2016
Now you know how they arrive at those useful figures showing that they need more funding from central government to police their streets.
Now Ms Raccoon can get on with the post she was supposed to be writing for today…thought you might like this to be getting on with….
- Tommy K
October 12, 2016 at 10:05 am -
And he wasn’t even brandishing a plastic knife!
It’s another indication that we have far too many cops and far too many authoritarian zealots egging them on. In what way can it possibly be in the public interest to give this young man a criminal record?
- The Last Furlong
October 12, 2016 at 10:22 am -
Clowns are OUT! Perhaps we could set up a very profitable “Anti-Clown Industry” with WHO headquarters and a vision of a clown-free world? And profitable anti-clown charities to lobby Government on our taxes. The template is already set up, yes? We could socially engineer society to believe that coming face-to-face, nay – anywhere NEAR a clown, will trigger our immune system to fail with fear, and let all sorts of dread deseases in. And, then, we could also invest in “Safe Zones” with pretty bubbles, soft cuddlies, and quiet music, so that those who have been triggered by seeing a clown, could go to recover themselves.
Clowns are horrid, creepy, terrifying things. And no one can recognise it’s a costime with a person underneath. But that absence of intelligence could become VERY profitable – especially over Halloween! We must be taught that clowns are OUT. The person in the costume could be a dangerous terrorist, a burglar, or worse, a paedophile!
- Ho Hum
October 12, 2016 at 10:37 am -
I’m terrified of people in suits. I saw this clown dressed up in one the other day. Arrest all suits…
- Don Cox
October 12, 2016 at 11:21 am
- Don Cox
- Bandini
October 12, 2016 at 10:42 am -
“Forces vowed to prosecute all pranksters as numbers of sinister sightings continued to soar… … Senior officers warned the trend, which started in the US, was wasting police resources…”
Er… er… sod it, no words.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/11/killer-clown-craze-teen-landed-with-criminal-record-while-police/- Bandini
October 12, 2016 at 10:44 am -
“In another incident, George Birkbeck said he spotted a sinister figure holding a hammer in a Tesco car park in Plymouth on Friday. He brandished a beer bottle at the apparent prankster…”
Gotta love those vigilantes!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/10/killer-clowns-with-machete-pictured-peering-into-terrified-drive/
- Bandini
- Ed P
October 12, 2016 at 11:01 am -
I’m frightened by full-face coverings – please arrest all these nutcases.
- The Last Furlong
October 12, 2016 at 11:04 am -
- Bandini
October 12, 2016 at 11:20 am -
I can understand the initial shock at seeing someone jump out from behind a bush or whatever, but all these cases seem to involve a ‘victim’ running away (and you can’t be chased if you’re not trying to flee).
Maybe those senior police could offer some advice to the public at large: don’t run away, remember there is a spotty youth behind the cheap plastic mask, tut & shake head in a withering manner & tell Bozo to grow up.
- Bandini
- windsock
October 12, 2016 at 11:08 am -
What would Obnoxio say? He’s got away with it for years.
- Hadleigh Fan
October 12, 2016 at 11:08 am -
I’m very tempted to send him a donation.
Anyone have an address?
I personally find policemen scary, particularly when I’m wearing a joke Brazilian electrician suit – you can get them at lots of shops.
What a bunch of queynts. Surely the magistrates should have sent them packing with a flea each in the ear? So it isn’t just the Heddlu (it is Wales).
- David
October 12, 2016 at 11:13 am -
These clowns have been terrorising people for decades. Even the real ones are creepy, ie Cocoa the Clown was evil. This lad is lucky he lives in the UK, otherwise, he might have been charged with terrorism. https://www.rt.com/usa/360176-clowns-threats-terrorist-arrest/
- David
October 12, 2016 at 11:16 am -
Coco before another clown corrects me!
- Keith Walters
October 13, 2016 at 11:46 pm -
Wasn’t it “Koko”?
As in:
”Out of the inkwell,
“Comes Koko the Clown….”That’s probably the reason inkwells are no longer used in schools; too many traumatized kids terrified a clown is going to leap out at them and leave little clown footprints over their homework….
- Keith Walters
- David
- richard
October 12, 2016 at 11:17 am -
I must try to avoid arrest by carving a happy face on my hallowe’en turnip this year. I’ll add a policeman’s helmet for good measure because a vegetable in a hat about sums up the arresting officer in this case.
“Gwent Police will not tolerate such behaviour and anyone seeking to cause distress and potential harm to anyone will be dealt with.
In this case, not only is this man out of pocket, he will now have a criminal record which will impact his future including any job opportunities.”
ie the police have tolerated themselves causing distress and potential harm. The clowns.- Mudplugger
October 12, 2016 at 1:59 pm -
That’s high risk – a turnip with a helmet on could easily be confused for the real thing, so you’d risk being done for convincingly impersonating a police officer.
- JuliaM
October 13, 2016 at 6:45 am -
“Gwent Police will not tolerate such behaviour …”
Strange, because police forces everywhere seem powerless to halt this behaviour when the culprits refuse to dress up first:
http://thylacosmilus.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/not-all-terrorists-pray-to-allah.html
- Mudplugger
- The Jannie
October 12, 2016 at 11:18 am -
They really must have 4call better to do. One of my favourite asides, when seeing a fuzzmobile bluelighting is “Oops, someone’s posted a rude comment on Farcebox again”. I may have to change it to “Clown patrol”. Now I’ve written it, it has a certain fit about it . . .
- The Blocked Dwarf
October 12, 2016 at 12:18 pm -
Gwent Police will not tolerate such behaviour
Too bloody right! Clowns is NASTY. Anyone sick enough to be dressing up as one in public should be deported or locked up in Rampton. We must stamp out this menace. Will no one think of the children?
- Tommy K
October 12, 2016 at 2:29 pm -
I’d rather stamp out this menace:
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/11BAB/production/_86091627_policegetty.jpg
Much scarier than any clown
- Tommy K
- Lizzie Cornish
October 12, 2016 at 12:32 pm -
I can’t get the video to play, but have looked up the photos of his clown costume. I have to say it would frighten the beejaysus out of me, as a child, or an elderly person…and even today I’d hate to see someone dressed like this. I see in pictures (perhaps we all do?) so such images never go away. I’ve been deeply concerned about many of these Halloween Costumes in recent years, which are getting more and more scary and violent. I think it ends up desensitizing people, as many have to become this way to cope with all the violent and horrific images surrounding us all these days. There are many who aren’t troubled in the slightest by such things, but there are also many who are…
Should he have been fined? Well, I think a quiet word would have been better in the first instance, but perhaps he was used by the police to try to stop this recent craze of scary clowns scaring the whatsit out of people which has come over from America, as has all the awful Halloween stuff now too.
I do get the bit about how this could make him become angry and bitter, which is why a word in the ear would have been far more appropriate.
I still can’t watch Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ by the way….and drove my kids a little crazy as I’d not have violent videos or scary stuff in the house..
There used to be a young lass whose family owned the local pub in our village on Dartmoor, when I lived there, whose parents let her watch all her brother’s 18+ horror movies. She was around 10 at the time…because it kept her quiet and they were busy in the pub. She became hooked on them..and I’m talking SERIOUSLY violent horror stuff here, and would bring them out for her friends to watch when they went round. It affected quite a few of the children, my daughter included, and in the end, we had to talk to the parents, to explain that we’d not let our kids come round any longer due to what was going on. She stood in the kitchen with me once telling me her most favourite gory film, which was one with Clint Eastwood in, as she *loved* the way all his skin melted off his arms. I had to put my hands up and say “That’s enough, Sweetheart” and changed the subject fast….When she was with us, she watched lovely films, played in the garden, etc..and I tried to give her a refuge from The Bad Stuff…
The ‘Scream’ masks are also really foul..and when kids go knocking on doors at Halloween, I think they can terrify older folks who might open the door without thinking, finding horror facing them….
Anyway, enough moaning from Mary Poppins Me lol :0)
- David
October 12, 2016 at 12:39 pm -
Living on Dartmoor sounds scary enough, all those escaped felons turning up late at night in the fog. And the siren going off at the prison every time there was an escape !!
- Lord T
October 12, 2016 at 1:05 pm -
I can’t see any evidence so I doubt this went to court. He must have accepted the paperwork.
If they had to take this to court and in front of a jury they may have changed their mind.
- Bandini
October 12, 2016 at 1:20 pm -
“He claims he was told by police at the time that if he paid the fine immediately he would not have a criminal record.”
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/man-who-fined-dressing-up-12008833
But who’s going to take the word of a dangerous criminal with a record?
- Bandini
- Penseivat
October 12, 2016 at 1:22 pm -
These poor, innocent, young things are not doing any harm, even the ones with real chainsaws, clubs and machetes. Personally, I fancy standing outside a jewellers wearing black trousers, a red and black striped jersey, a flat cap, a mask across my eyes, carrying a large sack marked ‘SWAG’. However, I won’t do it because I’m not an idiot, unlike the clown cretins who are fully aware of the effect they will have on people.
- Joe Public
October 12, 2016 at 1:43 pm -
What’s the difference between a head-to-toe clown outfit and a multi-coloured burqua printed with a similar design?
- Ed P
October 12, 2016 at 2:01 pm -
A multi-coloured burka wouldn’t be as scary as the usual plain black ones, but hopefully both would incur fines in Wales.
- Ed P
- Ho Hum
October 12, 2016 at 2:25 pm -
Having read up on the rest of the background, and even taking the media stories with a pinch of salt, the more reasonable local paper reports don’t seem to portray him as being entirely ‘innocent’ and without a little streak of devillment in this
But the key issue, or at least what I think is the primary problem Anna is pointing out is, does this merit a criminal conviction, kept on one’s ‘record’, in what is a Western liberal democracy? This sort of punishment for a bit of teenage idiocy smacks more of the sort of stuff that you would have expected to find applied to miscreant citizens behind the Iron Curtain in the mid to early late 20th century, or the more illiberal regimes to be found East of Suez than in the modern western world.
Don’t get me wrong, he may well deserve some form of clip round the ear for being daft, but a life damaging criminality?
Ok, the U.K. has probably never been much of a liberal democracy, but it really took a big downturn when, in the decade from 2000, beginning pretty much with RIPA and accelerating from then on in with more and more draconian laws Labour took it on themselves to redefine liberalism more or less as something that you will have, but on their terms, and you will like it, or else
This lad is just another one suffering from a minor part of the ‘or else’ bit. I suppose it makes a change from the other issues covered here, in that it demonstrates how that affects both great and small, given that the usual cases Anna deals with tend to be those at the bigger, blunter, end of the baton
- Tommy K
October 12, 2016 at 2:40 pm -
I am told that more laws have been passed since Labour came to office in 1997 than in the entire previous history of English law. (Perhaps somebody can verify that?). It has certainly become a matter of social control, particularly in conjunction with the rise of CRB checks, almost all of which seem to be of the “enhanced” variety.
The only good news is that so many people are now being criminalised that having a record is losing its social stigma. Or is that bad news?
- Peter Raite
October 14, 2016 at 12:20 pm -
I am told that more laws have been passed since Labour came to office in 1997 than in the entire previous history of English law.
There was a story doing the rounds that Labour had been responsible for an excess of new legislation, which stemmed from this 2008 report from Sweet & Maxwell:
https://www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/about-us/press-releases/260607.pdf
The title of this report is no less than “Blair: 54% more new laws every year than Thatcher.” The devil, though, is in the detail. It shows that on average Thatcher’s government introduced 1,724 new laws per year, while with Blair it was 2,663 per year and that is indeed 54.45%. But what about Major? It seems that his average was… 2,402 per year. So, yes, Blair was 54.45% more than Thatcher, but Major was 39.3% more than Thatcher, and Blair only 10.8% more than Major.
In terms of absolute numbers the report says:
“In total Tony Blair’s administration was the most prolific, introducing a total of 26,849 new laws over his entire premiership. Margaret Thatcher introduced a total of 19,827 new laws during her time in power whilst John Major introduced 15,212 new laws during his much shorter regime.”
2008 – 2,148
2009 – 2,492
2010 – 1,788Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13569604
I can’t find a figure for the number of law introduced in the second half of 2007 under Brown, although the report below says that for his full year (so June 2007 to June 2008) it was 2,823 so a pro rata split would be around 1,411 (although that might be a bit high given that it would leave the other half as two-thirds of the 2,148 for all of 2008).
https://www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/about-us/press-releases/230608.pdf
This gives us around 7,839 for Brown and 34,688 for Labour as a whole over thirteen years, compared to 35,039 for Thatcher and Major combined over 18 years.
Subsequently:
2011 – 1,355
2012 – 1,466Source: https://www.sweetandmaxwell.co.uk/about-us/press-releases/new_UK_laws_introduced_rises_2012.pdf
So that gives us around 4,539 post-Brown, making a total of 39,227 post-Major. So, yes, that is a bit more than under Thatcher and Major, but clearly it can’t possibly be higher than “the entire previous history of English law” before 1997.
Phew! I should turn that into a blog post….
- Tommy K
October 14, 2016 at 5:02 pm -
Thank you for research: it’s enlightening. Perhaps I should have been told 1979 rather than 1997…
It demonstrates that legislative diarrhoea is a disease affecting all parties. The question is, what’s the cure?
- Tommy K
- Peter Raite
- Bandini
October 12, 2016 at 3:26 pm -
Nope, they don’t hold back in revealing the true depth of his wickedness:
“Dressed as a creepy clown, Jones had stood on the pedestrian bridge outside Hendre Infants School and St Cenydd School in Trecenydd at around 3pm on Friday, October 7.
School staff were so concerned they issued a warning to parents vis [sic] its messaging app.”Do teachers these days share this childish fear of ‘creepy clowns’? If not, rather than stoke irrational fear (via a blasted ‘app’) they might have thought to step outside the fortified stronghold and simply ask him to pack it in (as there are kids who’d be a bit scared seeing him dressed like that, and at which point he’d probably have felt like a bit of a shit and trundled off home).
Maybe a full-length mirror installed at both ends of every footbridge in Britain so would-be crossers can check their ‘compliance’ & not risk committing a Slight Nuisance Crime. Whoever next? Scarecrows? They stand around a lot & look a bit sinister…
http://sportreview.net.nz/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Worzel-Gummidge-460_802674c.jpg- Ho Hum
October 12, 2016 at 4:40 pm -
Can’t seem to find it right now, but I did read something this am where he said that he had worn it to see if he could frighten his sister, so that was why I thought his stripes might have been partially self inflicted
But, elsewhere, one set of clowns are asking another set of clowns to vote whether or not clowns should be given a criminal record for clowning around, as inflicted upon them by, possibly, another lot of clowns, all as officially sanctioned by the laws drawn up by the Westminster clowns
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/man-who-fined-dressing-up-12008833
And if the Clown Prosecution Service gets its way, maybe we will see some clowns starting to arrest normal people for posting clown stories on the social media circus, and frightening the audience?
- Peter Raite
October 14, 2016 at 12:25 pm -
Probably not so much the teachers being afraid as knowing some of the kids might be, and so forewarning parents avoids the latter complaining when they aren’t. Mrs R teaches in east London, and it came home after the recent “chainsaw” incident was reported saying that some of the kids were bordering on terrified. Still, apparently it makes a change from some of them wibbling on about “the Illuminati” all the time….
- Peter Raite
October 14, 2016 at 12:26 pm -
Obviously thats hould have read, “and it came home…” A bit of a Trump moment typo there….
- Peter Raite
October 14, 2016 at 12:27 pm -
Arrgh! “and SHE came home…” What is wrong with my fingers today?!
- Peter Raite
- Peter Raite
- Ho Hum
- Tommy K
- Ho Hum
October 12, 2016 at 2:28 pm -
- Ed P
October 12, 2016 at 3:56 pm -
baa!
- Ed P
- Joannie
October 12, 2016 at 2:51 pm -
It sounds like he acted the blackguard a bit, but that shouldn’t be enough to give someone only just old enough to vote a criminal record for life. Way too harsh.
- The Blocked Dwarf
October 12, 2016 at 3:15 pm -
He should be thankful he wasn’t standing outside that ‘school’ thing (they have them in Wales?!) in his ‘clean’ (as Her Maj would say) costume smoking a cigarette or to put it in legal parlance ‘brandishing a lethal weapon’ , he’d still be banged up with Madog Mike and Bubba-Boyo.
- Michael
October 12, 2016 at 9:18 pm -
First they came for the clowns and I didn’t step up because I tripped over my oversized red and yellow shoes…
- Ho Hum
October 12, 2016 at 9:22 pm -
/claps mightily from the edge of the Sawdust Circle
- Bandini
October 12, 2016 at 10:28 pm -
Ho ho! Very good!
Someone has come up with a solution, an ‘educator’ no less:
“Clown Control Act would create database of approved clowns, track whereabouts in real time. Clowns with nothing to hide have nothing to fear”
https://twitter.com/mike_salter/status/786035028895551488?lang=es
Let’s tag ’em all! Ah, but he must be joking, right? Right?!?
- Ho Hum
- Ho Hum
October 12, 2016 at 9:26 pm -
Hell, it’s quite worrying when you have to hope that clowns’ rehabilitation may well rest on the next script offering that features Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky as the good guy, doesn’t it?
- wiggia
October 13, 2016 at 8:51 am -
Late to this, but as with all these things legislation and prevention goes completely over the top, with Halloween approaching what will plod do, and will they waiting outside the Grimaldi church to slap the cuffs on this lot……………
http://theshakespeareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/clown-church-service.jpg
- louisf
October 13, 2016 at 5:43 pm -
Heard on the radio.
What to do if attacked by clowns.
Go for the juggler - tdf
October 14, 2016 at 2:49 pm -
The clowns are innocent!
Ban the cyclists, they’re the real menace. - jaded
October 14, 2016 at 10:47 pm -
#clownlivesmatter
- jaded
October 14, 2016 at 10:48 pm -
Tough on clowns,tough on the causes of clowns
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