INCORRECT TO IDENTIFY TROUBLEMAKERS

A plan to photograph teenagers branded as troublemakers by security guards at a popular shopping center in Antioch is alarming civil libertarians who say the plan stomps all over the youths' civil rights. The proposal, endorsed by many patrons and businesses at Deer Valley Plaza on Lone Tree Way, would see guards with Peace Keepers Security snapping pictures of youths who repeatedly intimidate shoppers or cause mischief.

Because many of the students likely to be singled out attend nearby Deer Valley High School, security could hand over the photos to school officials for them to identify, said school Principal Jo Ella Allen.

Youths who commit crimes could receive a citation, while those who repeatedly ignore warnings not to loiter at the plaza could be added to a police database, and possibly arrested the next time they're seen. "Thus, if an officer makes a subsequent contact with the individual and runs the individual's name through the (police) system, he or she will know the individual has been warned and will then affect an arrest for trespassing, " according to the plan.

Maya Harris, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, denounced the proposal as excessive and intrusive, and said such problems are perhaps best left to the school to handle.....

Police would not take any of the photographs, Moczulski stressed. Security guards would snap pictures only of those youths suspected of wrongdoing and would not take wholesale generic shots of patrons, he said. ...

Gary Agopian, a member of the Antioch Unified School District board, said naysayers haven't visited the plaza to witness the problems firsthand. "I've actually been a recipient of this behavior," Agopian said. "All they're asking for is respectful behavior from the kids or anybody who uses the plaza." He noted that there are other elements of the plan, including assigning undercover officers to monitor the area, teaming up the police officer assigned to the school with campus staff and providing additional officers at the plaza after school lets out.

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LAWLESS BRITAIN

It's only hard for the innocent

Confusion about the law on householders' right to self-defence remains rife among the police, despite the Government's claims to have clarified the situation, a Telegraph investigation has demonstrated.

A wealth of contradictory advice was last week given to a reporter posing as a member of the public, who contacted forces around the country to ask for information. The reporter asked if she would fall foul of the law for keeping a baseball bat by her bedside and using it in self-defence, if confronted by an aggressive intruder.

Of the 43 police forces in England and Wales, 31 said that such action could or would be acceptable. Ten said that it would not. The remaining two forces supplied a variety of verdicts.

Such findings, which create the impression of a "postcode lottery", suggest that the police are as bewildered as everyone else. "If you understand what `reasonable force' is, you must be the only one who does," said a police officer in Wiltshire. A Gloucestershire colleague confessed: "We are in the dark."

The Sunday Telegraph rang each force's central telephone number for non-emergency calls. Many calls were bounced between departments, and advice sought from senior officers when appropriate, before answers were provided. The reporter spoke to various representatives, including duty sergeants, "helpdesk" operators and crime prevention officers.

All of those who gave advice were patient, friendly and helpful. Less consistent, however, was what they said. Some stated that so long as the baseball bat was not wielded with wild and unrelenting abandon, it would make an appropriate weapon with which a lone female could fend off a violent intruder.

Others disagreed, explaining that the very possession of a bat by somebody who was evidently not a baseball player was proof of "pre-meditation" and "intent to harm". This, they warned, was enough to justify arrest and prosecution.

Bedfordshire Police provides two non-emergency contact numbers, for those living in the north and the south areas of the county. The officer in the north said: "A baseball bat by your bed for the sole purpose of whacking someone with it, if they come into your bedroom? That's dodgy."

His colleague in the south gave a different answer. "You're all right with your baseball bat. I mean, I've got an ice axe in my wardrobe."

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