We have been touch with Nigel and Sheila Jacklin since 2018, when they were issued with an order banning them from going to their local beach. The police have pursued cases against the Jacklins for the past 8 years, including two prosecutions alleging that Sheila’s gestures of Hindu prayer were ‘rude’ hand gestures. This must be one of the worst cases of police corruption that we have come across, in terms of the repeated and petty targeting of people over such a long time for their everyday actions. Here is an account by Nigel of the events of the past 8 years….
“We bought our seaside home in 1992. Our daily routine included a 30-metre walk to the beach, past a workshop which was in between our house and the sea. My wife is a Hindu; she would sit and meditate and pray on a log on the beach.
In 2013, the owner of the workshop put it up for private sale. The new owners, a couple from London, applied for permission to turn it into a weekend home. Permission was rejected by the planning department but granted by the planning committee. We experienced problems with the new owners from day one, with the council taking enforcement action following repeated problems with building noise out of hours. When Sussex Police suggested we take a civil action for harassment we found a lawyer who started working on the case.
In October 2017, while waiting for Sussex Police to respond to a Subject Access Request, there was an incident with another couple who had recently moved to the village. This incident changed the direction of our case. The man threatened my wife in the car park in front of our house. She reported him to Sussex Police. He made counter allegations and was then a co-complainant with the weekenders in the action that led to us getting a Community Protection Warning Letter (CPWL).
The CPWL imposed an exclusion zone preventing us from going to the beach near our house in perpetuity. It also prohibited us from being perceived to be looking into any property in the bay. Other aspects related to false allegations made by the man in the car park. We were devastated.
CPWLs were new at the time. They were not covered in legal text books; our harassment lawyer advised us to comply with it. As there was no means of challenging it, this meant we would never be able to go to the beach near our house again!
After some time we found and contacted Josie Appleton from the Manifesto Club. Josie had compiled a file of ‘bonkers’ CPWL cases and we agreed to be filmed for the BBC ‘Victoria Derbyshire Show’. A two-man crew came down and filmed us ‘on location’. After it was broadcast all the national newspapers carried our story. A BBC South East News crew also came to film. As they were about to go live the ‘car park man’ came up to them in a threatening manner. We watched from our house and then saw the report go ahead on live TV. While the crew had been preparing we had received a phone call. Someone had seen the photograph of our weekender neighbours in The Times and recognised them. The caller said the weekender neighbours had done the same thing to them, trying to get an ASBO on their adult children. We passed their details to Sussex Police. We also found out that the car park couple were both police employees, one working in Sussex, the other a notorious Met cop.
We decided to do a legal challenge to the CPWL, taking Sussex Police and our local council to the High Court using a Judicial Review. The initial legal responses to this established that CPWLs ‘have no legal standing’ (they are merely a preparatory step to a Community Protection Notice) and ‘can be ignored providing the recipient is not engaging in anti-social behaviour’. This was not at all clear from the draconian CPWL letter we had received, which was not signed by the Council and came on plain paper. The Manifesto Club established that thousands of these letters were being issued, none of which could be appealed. Some had clearly involved abuse of power by those in authority.
Following a second police interview in August 2018, Sussex Police acknowledged that our daily walks to the beach did not constitute anti-social behaviour. The investigating officer immediately recognised that Sheila had the right to pray in public. He also noted that the complainants were looking for, rather than experiencing harassment, for example by complaining I had filmed their CCTV late at night whilst they were most likely asleep at home in London. We were now genuinely free to go to the beach near our house as we had done for over 25 years. The Judicial Review became academic (and so came to an end). When Sussex Police and the local council applied for costs, the judge rejected their claims, saying he ‘would have been minded to grant permission’ for the case to go ahead if he had been asked to decide on it.
This did not turn out to be the end of our problems, however. Sussex Police acted on the same complaints in 2019 and 2023, with two court cases against us resulting in ‘not guilty’ outcomes. Both of these involved allegations that my wife was making ‘rude’ hand gestures, which was actually a gesture in Hindu prayer.
After we made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police about the notorious Met cop, we had a raid on our house in 2020, based on false allegations by him. Our laptops, phones and evidence bundles were seized and returned after 14 months with no action taken against us. In the six years since October 2017 we have been investigated 12 times by Sussex Police, with no action taken against us. As I write, a review is in progress which will hopefully bring this to an end.”