Police repeatedly stress no crime was committed in Coppull incident
What happens when the police say no crime has been committed and local councillors refuse to accept it?
Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.
We held off reporting on happenings in Coppull this week - wanting to speak to everyone we possibly could in an effort to approach the incident responsibly.
For those who haven’t seen - a pub posted to social media about a ‘scary incident’ involving three men allegedly following two women and a young boy on Sunday. Police investigated and concluded no crime had been committed and that they were not following.
But the clear suggestion is that these three men were immigrants - and the pub described them as ‘black - and so the response from some (Reform UK included) was one of disbelief.
This is a challenging issue to cover from my perspective.
On one hand - and most importantly - we have an instance of three people feeling genuinely unsafe in a public space when the sun is up. Their concerns have to be taken seriously.
On the other, we have seen a loud refusal to accept that no crime has been committed (by lots of people that are not the women in question) despite those assertions from police. As Reform UK themselves pointed out in publicly criticising the police response, this leads to the danger of vigilante response against three people police are convinced have done nothing wrong.
We’ve done our best to unpack what’s happened in Coppull this week as police have gone back and forth with local Reform UK councillors and the public.
Lancashire briefing
🌳 Preston’s main shopping street will once again see its trees lit up after final funding was approved to replace a display that went dark after developing a series of faults.
The £234k project, which has been given the go-ahead by Preston City Council’s cabinet, will see new lighting installed in the 56 trees that line Fishergate and the southern section of Corporation Street.
They were planted as part of the ‘shared space’ scheme that transformed the main thoroughfare – by widening its pavements and and restricting vehicular access to buses and taxis – back in 2014/15. Prior to that, Fishergate and Corporation Street were a tree-free zone. The lights were introduced shortly after the revamp was completed.
According to a report presented to cabinet members, the lighting arrangement acts as an additional public protection measure during the evening and overnight.
The document states that the lights had to be disconnected due to “several faults”, while the infrastructure supporting it had “deteriorated due to lack of maintenance”.
During a feasibility study undertaken last year, it was discovered that the existing electrics from the previous installation was “faulty, not up to current regulation and needed several upgrades, before the lights could be replaced”. Following a subsequent testing survey, plans were drawn up to create “a fully maintainable system”.
🔎 An investigation has uncovered links between a community volunteer organisation in East Lancashire and a proscribed neo-Nazi group.
In recent months, social media pages for Great Harwood have been awash with discussions about a new “crime-prevention group” in the town that promises to patrol problem areas and organise self defence classes.
Called the Guardians of Great Harwood, the group was founded at the start of June by Mickii Edwards, a former Rugby League player who is a well-known face in the town for his charitable work.
But while this group has rushed to get its patrollers DBS-checked, concerning past links between the Guardians’ self-defence coach, simply named Jimmy, and a banned racist group have been detailed in an investigation released today.
On the volunteer group’s website, the Guardians’ describe these classes as: “Free self-defence sessions taught by Jimmy, a local coach who has trained world-class MMA fighters for the UFC.
“We are starting with women and children, with more sessions to follow.”
However, the anti-extremist organisation Hope Not Hate’s investigation into the group found that this man is actually Jimmy Hey, whose previous self defence experience was training the militant members of National Action at the same gym in Great Harwood.
The Guardians of Great Harwood have said in a statement that they are not affiliated with Hey, with leader Mickii Edwards saying that he is personally ‘not political’ and had never heard of National Action before.
🗳️ The government is being urged to speed up the process that will officially cancel a set of abandoned local elections in Lancashire – so councils can focus on organising the polls that will be held in their place.
On the current electoral calendar, 13 of the county’s local authorities are scheduled to stage votes in May 2027.
However, a government-ordered shake-up means that all 15 Lancashire councils – Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Burnley, Chorley, Fylde, Hyndburn, Lancaster, Pendle, Preston, Ribble Valley, Rossendale ,South Ribble, West Lancashire, Wyre and Lancashire County Council – are to be scrapped less than 12 months later and replaced with just four new authorities covering the whole of the county between them.
As part of the overhaul, elections to so-called ‘shadow’ versions of the successor councils are to be held next May instead of votes for the authorities whose days are numbered.
However, that change to the voting arrangements will be officially confirmed only once legislation enacting the transition arrangements – known as a structural changes order (SCO) – completes its passage through Parliament.
Police repeatedly stress no crime was committed in Coppull incident
By Luke Beardsworth
Police were forced to repeatedly insist that no crime had been committed after an incident in Coppull this week.
Three people, understood to be a grandmother, mother and son, entered The Wheatsheaf pub on Sunday evening (9 August) after being left feeling frightened by the presence and alleged behaviour of three men outside the pub.
The pub posted a warning to social media - now deleted on police advice but seen by The Lancashire Lead - that spoke of a “scary incident” where women had been followed by “three black men” and finished with a warning of “be careful!”.
This sparked a significant volume of concern in the local community that would not be tempered by Lancashire Constabulary investigating and insisting that no crime had been committed.
Police say that they spoke with the men who said that they were in the area looking for a friend’s address. They said they also spoke with that friend who verified that version of events.
Supt Martyn Holt, of Lancashire Constabulary, said: “We spoke to the men identified, who told us they were on that street looking for a friend’s address, who they were intending on meeting up with that evening.
“We have also spoken to the friend who the men were looking for, who confirmed that this was the case. The CCTV shows the men stopping on the street, looking for that address, and doesn’t show them interacting with anyone else on the street. They do not enter the pub at any point.”
Not present in the Lancashire Constabulary statement is the detail from the CCTV that the men in question never crossed to the same side of the road as the two women who entered the pub.
The mother who entered the pub told The Lancashire Lead that she did feel uncomfortable and intimidated by the incident but that the response has been ridiculous and she would like people to move on from it.
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