Durham volunteers sought to scrutinise police custody processes
Issues identified will be raised with the custody sergeant and included in a report which is sent to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner."Our new cohort of volunteers will play a critical role in driving further improvements in our processes and procedures to ensure Durham not only delivers the very best quality of care to detainees but is held aloft as a beacon of good practice nationally," Allen said.
Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Penny Mordaunt reveals she is a victim of 'humiliating and violent' AI-generated deepfake porn - and says she is not the only politician whose face has been used
Penny Mordaunt has revealed that she has been the victim of 'deliberately humiliating and violent' deepfake porn. The former Leader of the House of Commons made the candid confession in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on Tuesday. She told the BBC Newsnight interviewer that the perpetrators should consider the consequence of their actions and called for tighter controls on social media. The former MP for Portsmouth North also revealed that upsetting instances of abuse such as deepfake porn are a regular occurance. She told the BBC programme: 'Well, not a week has gone by in my parliamentary career when something of this nature hasn't happened.' Non-consensual deepfake pornography is the production of an image using artificial intelligence. The creator combines a photograph and uses AI to remove clothes or create a fake nude photo in the likeness of a real person. Ms Mordaunt explained she had first learned that she had been a victim of a deepfake image following an investigation by Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman who uncovered 250 famous individuals whose likeness had been stolen. She added: 'My face had been used, AI porn generated, deepfake porn. It happened to a number of parliamentarians.' Other victims included Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, former education secretary, Gillian Keegan, and Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, Priti Patel. Following her 'humiliating' experience, the former MP has called for tighter controls on social media and online platforms and raised concerns around access by children to deepfake pornogpraphy. 'I would ask the people behind this, don't they realize the consequences in the real world when they do something like that,' she said, 'because although I haven't seen this myself, it was deliberately humiliating and violent and that plays across into the real world. 'It plays across in to people taking actual real world actions against ourselves and that has happened to me, it's happened to a lot of my colleagues. She added: 'The worry for me is actually more with children and we wouldn't want people to see these things on the walk to school. 'If they did, they'd be in therapy. But we have seemed to be perfectly happy for them to see it online. And so I'm with the Australians on this. We need to go much further, and we need to recognize the real harm this is doing to young people.' Victoria Derbyshire clarified that Ms Mordaunt was referring to the social media ban for under-16s in Australia to which the former Minister for Women and Equalities explained that she wanted the government to do more in tackling the harmful act. Ms Mordaunt even called on X owner Elon Musk to step in and improve age verifications to protect children. She said: 'I would ban certain social media platforms. And I think the government needs to have some courage here in addressing these issues with people like Elon Musk. 'That man is taking the human race to Mars. I'm sure he can figure out age verification and what needs to follow from that.' She ex-parliamentarian added that despite the more difficult sides of being in the public eye, she found that her role in Parliament was still generally positive. The creation of deepfake porn is illegal in the UK following a new Online Safety Act which was brought in last year. It includes the sharing or threatening to share intimate photos of someone without their permission and this includes deepfake images.
Daily Mail
29 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Pictured: Mother arrested in Mauritius with her son, six, after being 'coerced' into carrying suitcase full of cannabis
A British mother-of-two has been arrested in Mauritius accused of trying to smuggle cannabis inside her six-year-old son's suitcase. Natashia Artug, 35, was detained alongside seven other people accused of carrying more than 161 kilograms of the drug - worth £1.6 million - in their luggage. The boy's luggage alone is said to have had 24 packages of drugs wrapped in clear cellophane inside weighing 14kg. Natashia from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, who is 'vulnerable' was coerced into travelling to Mauritius by people involved in the drug trade who threatened her and her family, Justice Abroad has said. She also did not know the bags contained cannabis, the nonprofit added. Natashia's partner Florian Lisman, a 38-year-old Romanian, was also arrested and said to be carrying 32 drug packages, an i-Phone and £260 pounds. The other Brits detained were Patrick Lee Wilsdon, 22, Lily Watson, 20, Shannon Ellen Josie Holness 29, Laura Amy Kappen 28, and Shona Campbell, 32, who each had between 30 and 32 packages, according to local newspaper Le Mauricien. They were all on the same British Airways flight from London Gatwick to Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam airport last month. The suspects have all been charged with drug trafficking and remain in custody. Each suspect carried Apple AirTags, which can be fixed to an item to track its location, and up to £900 in cash. The trackers - around the size of a 50p piece - are thought to be used by international drug trafficking gangs to help smugglers keep tabs on their shipments. Mauritian authorities described the use of the child's luggage to transport the drugs as 'outrageous and inhumane', adding 'this is one of the most revolting cases we have encountered in recent years'. The boy, who was unaware of the contents of his bag, has reportedly already flown back to the UK and is staying with his father. Justice Abroad has launched a Crowd Justice fundraising campaign to raise £5,000 towards her legal defence. The organisers write: 'Natashia is a single mother of two, who suffers from Fibromyalgia but who attends university and is working to give her children a better future. 'She was coerced into travelling to Mauritius with her young son, and to carry the luggage which she did not know contained cannabis, by individuals involved in the drugs trade who took advantage of her vulnerability and made threats to cause serious violence to her and her family if she refused to obey their orders. 'This case raises serious concerns about the exploitation of a young mother by a criminal gang. She now faces criminal trial in Mauritius separated from her children and without the resources to mount an adequate defence and to put together the evidence of the duress and exploitation which resulted in her being involved in.' A Foreign Office spokesman told MailOnline: 'We are supporting a British national detained in Mauritius and are in contact with the local authorities.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Supreme Court to rule on cases of traders jailed over rate-rigging
Two former financial market traders jailed over interest rate benchmark manipulation are set to find out if their Supreme Court bids to clear their names have been successful. Tom Hayes, a former Citigroup and UBS trader, was found guilty of multiple counts of conspiracy to defraud over manipulating the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor) between 2006 and 2010. He is challenging his conviction, as is Carlo Palombo, an ex-vice president of euro rates at Barclays bank, who was found guilty of conspiring with others to submit false or misleading Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) submissions between 2005 and 2009. The Court of Appeal dismissed appeals from both men in March last year. They then took their cases to the Supreme Court. The panel of five justices was also asked to look at whether the cheapest rate needs to be submitted, or if it can be one selected from a range of potential borrowing rates. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) opposed the appeals. Supreme Court president Lord Reed, Lords Hodge, Lloyd-Jones and Leggatt, and Lady Simler are expected to hand down their judgment at 9.30am on Wednesday. At a hearing in March, lawyers for the men said the trial judge had wrongly directed the jury, and injected 'confusion' into their cases. Adrian Darbishire KC, for Hayes, told the court that there was a 'marked failure to respect the limits of the role of a judge in a jury trial', adding that 'part of the point of juries is that they are not judges – they are representative of society', and their views are sought in 'preference' to that of a judge. In written submissions, Tim Owen KC, for Palombo, said the trial judge's directions to the jury 'failed to identify the correct issue for the jury' and 'injected confusion into the terms of the indictment'. Mr Owen said dishonesty was a 'question of fact for the jury to assess', and not 'a matter to be shaped by legal directions'. In written submissions Sir James Eadie KC, representing the SFO, said the issues identified in Hayes's case go 'far beyond the issues arising from the certified questions', and that his case 'repeatedly mischaracterises the indicted offence'. He said: 'If as a matter of law the Libor definition does not permit trading advantage to be taken into account, it is still necessary for the prosecution to prove and the jury to find that the defendant acted dishonestly in making the submission. 'In this case it is clear that the issue of dishonesty was left to the jury.' The Libor rate was previously used as a reference point around the world for setting millions of pounds worth of financial deals, including car loans and mortgages. It was an interest rate average calculated from figures submitted by a panel of leading banks in London, with each one reporting what it would be charged were it to borrow from other institutions. Hayes, who has maintained his innocence, spent five and a half years in prison and was released in January 2021. Palombo had denied acting dishonestly but was jailed for four years in April 2019 after a retrial.
