As much as I see where she could have been coming from based on what’s been reported to date, I’m inclined to agree.
Unless you know the entire supply chain, you can’t really claim this.
/devils advocate
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Always the smart thing.
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The trial isn’t over, so there’s obviously going to be points of law to be discussed and more evidence than what we got today. But let’s think about this in reverse. Instead of asking if Kerr’s words could reasonably have construed racially aggravated harassment, which is the charge - would it be reasonable for her to believe her claim that the driver had kidnapped her wasn’t taken seriously by the police officers present because of her race and gender?
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It’s a distinct possibility.
The supposed harm here is to society. It’s has to deal with the I’ll effects of drug addiction etc
I certainly agree that some laws go too far, for sure. Not all laws are good laws. But there is a rationale.
The way I see it (and we’re getting way more jurisprudential than is really germane to the conversation here) is that the “crime” here is assault. The punching thing. The harm is someone being punched. The fact that, in this case ( and I’ll admit I don’t know about assault specifically) someone might be unsuccessful in actually landing the punch, but they took material steps towards doing so, might mean they are guilty of the attempted crime.
Proving that there may or may not be a crime where no individual was harmed doesn’t prove, to me, that there shouldn’t be or isn’t an element of harm here (it’s right there in the legislation).
The only way this could (in my mind) be at all relevant is if you accept that there is a crime whereby someone harasses a victim and it’s is aggravated by racism; the harm is the alarm or distress caused to the victim (all of which I thought was uncontroversial - but apparently not); and you assume that perp intentionally committed the above crime, and took the material steps to commit it - but fails. In that case, yes I can imagine her guilty of a crime.
I think all of that is total nonsense and I don’t quite know why y’all would be so keen to point it out.
The actual point is that if this cop couldn’t (and I mean literally couldn’t) give a fuck about being called a white bastard (which I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume) then why would anyone try to convict someone of a crime over it? It’s ridiculous. The cop doesn’t care about being called a white bastard - at least not in a way that involves experiencing racism.
At best theyre probably upset at a perceived injustice similar to Trash’s - this totally unfounded hand wringing that there’s some double standard that exists where black people can be racist to white people but the other way around isn’t allowed, despite hundreds of years of material evidence to the contrary.
At worst they are leveraging the exact power structures that the laws in question are meant to protect against for no reason other than a frivolous power trip.
If nothing else, reading SFCU does wonders for one’s expansion of their vocabulary.
What a great word to just casually drop in.
TIL
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Interesting some of the details that have come out and how it shifts the context.
So she’s had too much to drink, and acted like an idiot, vomiting and refused to take responsibility, despite having the bank balance for it. How many cab drivers would drive you to a station over it though? Seems a pretty odd story.
Would’ve been pretty scary for 2 girls to be locked in and driven somewhere against their will. Explains the broken window to an extent.
Then obviously she feels hard done by, gets frustrated, based on previous experience she attributes it to her race and gender and lashes out in kind.
Seems pretty stupid and wrong but you can see how it got there.
Still can’t believe it got this far. This must happen absolutely all the time and whilst it’s not great for the cop, you’d think it’s be water off a ducks back. surely their court system has better things to do than this. It’s not hard to come to a conclusion she’s only in court cos she’s female and brown but has the (over)confidence and money of a pro athlete to give it back when she’s had too much to drink. I mean if you want to talk racism, I’d love to see the stats on the proportion of white people facing charges of this nature.
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AIl I was pointing out was that your comment that harm had to be done for there to be a crime was bullshit.
Sorry you don’t understand the need for equal application of the law. As I keep pointing out, and you keep pretending that it somehow matters, the fee-fees of the cop in question are irrelevant because (thank fuck) that’s not how the law works.
Your personal opinion on how things should be, while interesting, doesn’t change facts.
And what if there’s testimony that no 999 call was made as the cop already said in the recording?
What does that do to the narrative that they were afraid they were being kidnapped when they smashed the window.
I guess we’ll see.
And for the nth million time, the law acts on intent not actual harm when deciding whether to prosecute, the cops feelings are irrelevant to whether its a crime. They will be relevant at sentencing if there’s a conviction.
Whoever they called, whatever the driver said to them, I think being locked in a car and driven somewhere would be scary enough to put someone off their normal behaviour, whether they “deserved” it or not.
Also, I’m not questioning whether its a crime or not. Happy to say it is (or could be if proven etc). More that there would be countless crimes every day similar to this or different that the police/prosecutors/whoever decide not to proceed with. People mouth of at cops all the time. More interesting to think about why this crime has ended up taking 4 days of a courts crime.
Maybe it’s the fact that there was a broken window involved so there’s a financial cost, but they paid it before they left eventually I believe. So how has it not been dropped before now?
I don’t know why you insist on this when it’s in the legislation.
What are alarm and distress if not feelings?
There is an element of intent, you’re right about that. It’s the intent to cause a feeling.
I’m genuinely confused.
I recommend this well referenced Wikipedia page:
The guts of it are:
'In life one has to put up with a certain amount of annoyance. but 'To cross the boundary from the regrettable to the unacceptable, the gravity of the misconduct must be of an order which would sustain criminal liability under section 2. Under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, Section 7(2) ‘References to harassing a person include alarming the person or causing the person distress.’
It’s the same in Australia. Mere annoyance doesn’t cut it. And no harm at all certainly doesn’t cut it. There has to be an actual harm (in this case the alarm or distress).
This is the civil law definition of harrassment, the definition I’m sure will be the same in crime (because it’s in the legislation you quoted - and the criminal legislation is referenced in the common law decision above), but that burden of proof will be higher in a criminal context.
So we’d have to be certain beyond all reasonable doubt that she intended to create those feelings of alarm or distress. I reckon it’s unlikely.
I’ve been wrong before.
All black cabs door lock when they are in motion. They weren’t “locked in”. The driver called the cops (of which there is record) who said to come to the station - one can only assume they were being beligerant in the back but I am sure that’ll come out.
There is no record of either of the passengers calling the cops. From what I have seen I imagine Kerr would’ve been given it the large that she was playing for Chelsea and he was going to get crushed by their lawyers etc.
Anyway, what I find extraordinary and puts real context to the whole thing is the copper changed his statement 11 months later to bring the charges.
So he arrests her for said offence, forgets about it and then nearly a year later decides that it has impacted him. That very fucking odd.
I would say she is guilty of criminal damage to the cab, of being a fuck wit and needs to wind her neck in…
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Cheers that’s good context. Mess all round really…
She supposedly apologised the next day, they dropped it and then he felt humiliated 6 months later.
Is humiliation harm? 6 months after the fact?
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In that statement he said being called “stupid and white” made him feel “shocked, upset and leaving me feel humiliated” adding, “they were too far and I took great offence to them”.
The CPS then authorised police to charge Ms Kerr on December 12, 2023
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Setting aside the argument about intent v harm, which I seem to have lost comprehensively, lots of bad looks for everyone involved.
They did call 999 and were hung up on.
Sam Kerr conveniently can’t remember repeatedly making the comments and skulks around whether they might be racist.
Given her detailed recollection of the taxi ride and everything the driver said and did, it’s not a good look.
The irony that Kristie Mewis, her girlfriend, is about as white as you can get, seems to be lost on everyone.
I mean considering he’s up for cleaning it himself, as well as not being able to work for the rest of the night, he’d be looking at what he’s going to lose. If he’s renting out the cab from the owner, could be even worse. I don’t think calling the cops when someone is being abusive and vomiting in your cab is the wrong way to go about it.
It’s also worth pointing out that they were so pissed that they had no understanding that the reason why they were being driven around, was because they refused to pay for cleaning. That in itself is pretty fucked.