Reid, who had nine previous convictions, including car theft and obstructing police, was detained for 13 months.The remaining gang members – Marcus Downie, 18, Marlon Brown, 16, Michael Gaynor and Aaron Reddicks, both aged 15 – were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months’ detention. The two younger robbers were sentenced to two-year supervision orders.The court was told that the gang’s victims, who were all attacked last year, had ranged from three schoolboys robbed of just £1 at knifepoint to two men with learning difficulties whose mobile phones were taken. Such was the frequency of their assaults, often in broad daylight along the busy Wood Green High Road, that street crime in the area fell by 33 per cent after their arrests.The “mob” chose their victims at random, often as they were using a mobile phone. Most were either schoolchildren or lone youths.The assaults were carried out with casual ruthlessness. Security camera footage of one attack showed the group surrounding a 19-year-old man. One robber placed his arm around the victim’s neck in an apparently friendly gesture before tightening his grip and dragging the man into an alleyway.The victim was only released after he had surrendered his Nokia mobile phone, worth £250, and his wallet. Another 17-year-old boy was threatened with being “sliced” before being punched in the face.The court was told that most of the gang had been excluded from school, leaving them to roam the streets unchecked.They were caught when detectives from the London Crime Squad used CCTV cameras to track the gang over three months, taking more than 1,000 images of their activities.The detectives used facial recognition technology to pick out the suspects from 1,300 hours of footage, allowing the suspects to be prosecuted without the need for testimony from their victims.After the sentencing, Detective Inspector Matt Butterworth, who led the investigation, said he was delighted with the outcome..

A gynaecologist with more than 20 years’ experience was yesterday spared prison, despite being convicted of indecently assaulting two patients. Both women – a 48-year-old midwife and a 34-year-old who is now a stockbroker – were asked to place themselves on all fours so Vinall could carry out the examinations, conducted in 1991 and 1995. Experts told the court that such a position was unheard of in accepted gynaecological practice.The 34-year-old woman, who was heavily pregnant at the time, had already been examined when Vinall asked her to get on her hands and knees. She was naked when the assault was carried out.Vinall will automatically be struck off the General Medical Council’s register for a minimum of five years, in effect ending his career, the court heard. Mr Justice Crane said: “This was a very serious breach of the trust that these patients had in you. There was no guilty plea and they had to relive their experiences.”The judge added that he was suspending the sentence due to Vinall’s health problems, which include a long-standing heart condition and clinical depression..

The furore over the state of the criminal justice system continued yesterday when a barristers’ leader warned that the country could become a “police state” if legal protections were undermined. It’s time to inject some balance into the debate.”None of us want a police state, where the knee-jerk response to crime is to ’round up the usual suspects’ We’ve seen too many miscarriages of justice for that. But if we did unbalance the scales of justice we would, before long, be on the slippery slope to a police state.” Addressing students at Portsmouth University, he added: “My members prosecute and defend in equal measure. They want a system that convicts the guilty and acquits the innocent We’d like to see changes. Simple cases need to be brought to trial more quickly, so there’s less need for bail.”There are challenges for the police too, not least to investigate crime better, so the prosecution has reliable evidence to put before the court.”In his speech on Wednesday, Sir John had said: “The fact is that, all too often, the criminal trial is simply an uneven game of tactics played out by lawyers in front of an uninformed jury with the disillusioned victims and a bemused defendant looking on.”His comments are part of a campaign by police chiefs to influence the Home Office, which is drawing up a White Paper to reform the criminal justice system. It is also a backlash against David Blunkett, who has criticised the police for low detection rates. The Association of Chief Police Officers is further angered at proposed new laws to allow the Home Secretary the power to sack underperforming chief constables and to take over police divisions.In his speech, Mr Bean, 48, said: “Blaming the lawyers is not a sensible answer to the Home Secretary’s cause for reform of the working practices of the police.”He rejected Sir John’s argument that cases frequently collapsed because of witness intimidation, citing the experience in two Crown Courts in London where one in five cases were delayed because of failures on the prosecution side.