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Search forBullying Cannock clampers' jail time appeal fails
Thursday, November 13, 2008, 00:00
Rebecca Meakin, 27, and Kamren Hayder Khan, 29, received respective sentences of four years and four and a half years in May for conspiracy to blackmail over their 'arrogant, bullying and callous' activities while supervising small car parks in Cannock and Rugeley.
Khan had admitted the conspiracy charge but Meakin was convicted after trial.
Meakin, of Millers Vale, Cannock, and Khan each challenged their sentences for conspiracy to blackmail as 'manifestly excessive'.
The Appeal Court heard Meakin and Khan – her 'trusted lieutenant' – were involved in a legitimate business operating licensed car parks for small businesses and pubs in Rugeley and Cannock.
Meakin, who was the driving force behind the business, was licensed to run the clamping operation and had the owners' permission to do so.
But the tactics they employed were extortionate and at times carried an 'implicit threat', said Mr Justice Maddison.
They charged £95 to remove a clamp and £295 to retrieve a car that had been towed away, said the judge, but the sting of their crime lay in charging the full £295 even before the vehicles had been towed from the scene.
The notices displaying their rates and warnings were often not prominently displayed, the Appeal Court heard.
In one incident, at a car park near a Cannock tattoo studio, a doctor answering an emergency was hit with a £295 on-the-spot cash fine after parking in a restricted space.
The medic had left his car to fetch an 'urgent blood sample' from a 90-year-old woman, but when he explained his predicament to Meakin, and showed her the sample, his plea 'fell on deaf ears'.
Khan, from Whitton, Middlesex, was involved in clamping and towing the targeted vehicles, while Meakin supervised the activities.
In another episode, a woman who momentarily parked her car illegally returned to find Khan and others surrounding her car in an 'intimidating' fashion.
She had to pay the full £295 fee although her vehicle was still in the car park.
Mr Justice Maddison – sitting with Mrs Justice Swift – said a 'deterrent element' had rightly been included in the sentences imposed on Meakin and Khan.
Their sentences were 'severe' but not excessive, the judge concluded.
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