Community Protection Warning
A Community Protection Warning (CPW) warns you that if you do something, even if it isn't legally enforceable not to do it, if you do it again you can then be served with a Community Protection Notice (CPN). Doing the "something" will then be breaking the law as a criminal offence. You have no right of appeal against a Community Protection Warning but you do with a Community Protection Notice.
Both a CPW and the more serious CPN are served under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. They share the same underlying statutory threshold of evidence: the issuing authority must have reasonable grounds to believe that the conduct (the "something") is unreasonable and has a persistent detrimental effect on the community. A CPW acts as an informal or semi-formal warning and is a mandatory prerequisite before the more serious, legally enforceable CPN can be served.
The offending conduct must be a 'course of conduct'. Doing something once is not a course of conduct; doing something twice is, and the first conduct doesn't need to be identical to the second as long as the alleged effect on the community is the same. The 'community' can be one person in the community, not the whole community.
The issuing authority can be the police or the local authority. The police is 'The State' but the local authority (your local council) is not. It's interesting how a local authority Community Safety Officer has the same powers as a police officer to issue a warning. Although you have no formal right to appeal a Community Protection Warning, if you believe the behaviour is something you didn't do and the council served it on you, you can ask the council to withdraw the warning. You can with the police but if they refuse to withdraw it, you can only put your case to the Professional Standards Branch for an independent review of the actions of your local Community Policing Team.
But the principle is the same. The issuing authority says "What you are doing is not illegal but if you do it again – or anything similar – we can make it illegal." A presumption is made by the issuing authority – perhaps unfairly – that you may do it again, even if you promise you won't.
An alternative process would be "Might you do it again?" and if your answer is "No", you sign a piece of paper promising not to. Then if you do it again, a Community Protection Notice (CPN) is served on you. If your answer is "I might" and you refuse to promise not to, then the same: a Community Protection Notice (CPN) is served on you. This would be fairer in my opinion, because your fate has been put entirely in your own hands with no presumption of repeat behaviour by the issuing authority.
That is because, in a sense, a CPW may be felt as punishment for something that isn't illegal and which you haven't yet done to make it so. It may be a useful practical measure for the community (in most cases) but doesn't seem logical.
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