If you think you were justified, NEVER accept a police caution!

Jim McCullough of Manchester in England, must be ruing the day he accepted a police caution. Jim was a football coach and community worker who spent his life working with children. After a family row with his 13 year old daughter, Jess, who had been upsetting neighbours by banging on their windows and generally behaving like a lout, she swore at him and he slapped her - once - across the face.

The child, who now admits (rather too late) that she deserved what she got, immediately decided to be bitchy and phoned the police. Mr McCullough was arrested and given the choice of being taken to court or accepting a police caution. As any decent man would do in such circumstances he was grateful for the caution.



What he didn't appreciate was that the caution counts as a non prosecuted acceptance of guilt. Consequently he is recorded on the national police computer as having recorded a violent offence against a child and can no longer work with children - an area to which he has devoted his life.

This is clearly ridiculous, but it's not the fault of the police who follow their instructions, it's the fault of our society and an overprotective law which allows the vindictive reaction of a lippy little cow to supercede common sense. I have long said that common sense has been driven out of the British legal system in favour of mandatory Home Office dictats and the impersonality of the computer.

The lesson to be learned, though, is that even though you may be feeling upset, shocked and pressurised and thus grateful to be given the chance of not being taken to court, then think twice.

If you feel your actions were justified and you have a clear conscience, elect for a trial by jury and seek total exoneration. The experience of Mr McCullough should be a warning to every parent in the land just how crazy our system has become.