Officer who identified doorstep parcel thief may have made honest mistake, judge rules
A SNEAK thief made off with a £120 pair of trainers delivered to a doorstep.
Victim Juanita Hunt watched helplessly on her Ring doorbell video as the culprit, described as a black male with a distinctive gait, brazenly strolled off with the parcel.
A police officer, Thatcham-based PCSO Sherrie Cranstone, later said she could identify the thief as 46-year-old Christopher Prosper.
But, despite her insistence that she was “100 per cent certain” of her identification, it was not enough to persuade a district judge.
Richard Atkins, prosecuting, said Ms Hunt was out visiting a relative when she got a Ring doorbell alert as the parcel was delivered to her doorstep in Westfield Crescent, Thatcham.
But she was dismayed to see, some time later, a second alert accompanied by a video of the thief walking away with her parcel.
PCSO Cranstone later viewed the footage and identified Mr Prosper.
He was duly arrested and answered “no comment” to all questions about his whereabouts and actions on that day.
PCSO Cranstone told Reading Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, November 18: “Mr Prosper used to live in Thatcham.
“I came into contact with him, sporadically, over the years.
“I’d seen him just three weeks before, in the Broadway – I know who he is.
“I’m 100 per cent certain that was him; he has a very distinctive gait; there are no doubts in my mind that it was him – I could categorically identify him.”
Mr Prosper, who now lives in Abbey Gardens, Upper Woolhampton, denied stealing the trainers on August 10 last year.
Michael Phillips, defending, said his client declined to give evidence in his own defence, upon which he could have been cross examined.
Mr Atkins invited the court to draw a negative inference from the fact that Mr Prosper had declined to answer police questions and also declined to give evidence under oath.
But Mr Phillips told the court that it was impossible from the footage shown, which only showed the thief’s face sideways on, for anyone to be sure it was his client.
He said: “I’m not sure how anyone can make an identification from the footage…I say it is impossible for this court to say – beyond a reasonable doubt – that it was Mr Prosper.”
District judge Sundeep Pankhania said: “The evidence in this case has been short.
“It is the officer’s evidence that it was [Mr Prosper] in the video.”
However, he added, it was possible for honest witnesses to be mistaken.
Judge Panhania concluded that he could not be sure, to the standard required by the law, that it was indeed Mr Prosper who was in the footage and he accordingly found him not guilty.