War memorial wreaths thrown into river
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Update 11.22am, 31 August
The 58-year-old man charged in connection with the wreath incident pleaded guilty to the offence at court today.
In total he accepted responsibility for three counts of criminal damage - one relating to the wraths, and two relating to damaging police property - and two public order offences. One of these was the racially aggravated public order offence from 29 August, and a further public order offence yesterday.
He has been given an 18 month conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £100 compensation to the victim of the racially aggravated public order offence, and £100 compensation to Lincolnshire Police which had property damaged.
Update 9.53am, 31 August
We have charged a 58-year-old man with criminal damage following an incident where war memorial wreaths were thrown into the River Witham.
He was arrested on Tuesday evening in connection with the incident on 15 August, and charged yesterday afternoon (30 August).
He was also charged in connection with a number of unrelated incidents, including criminal damage to Birchwood Police station on 25 August, criminal damage to police property on 30 August, and a racially aggravated public order offence on 29 August where he was reported to have been verbally abusive to several people.
He has been remanded into custody and is due to appear at Lincoln Magistrates’ Court today.
Update 17 August
We have identified a person we wished to speak with in connection with this incident and would like to help the public for their assistance.
Our investigation continues and we will update in due course.
Original release:
We are appealing for witnesses after all of the wreaths laid at the war memorial in Lincoln City Centre were thrown into the River Witham at around 4am this morning (15 August).
We received a report from the City of Lincoln CCTV team than a man had walked up to the memorial and collected several circular poppy wreaths, walked a short distance to High Bridge, and dropped them in the water.
He then returned to the memorial and repeated this multiple times until more than 20 wreaths had been dumped into the water.
This is both criminal damage and a public order offence, and we are investigating the incident as such.
The City of Lincoln Council have recovered them from further down the river, cleaned them off, and returned them to the memorial.
Officers are following a number of lines of enquiry to establish who is responsible for this offence, and we are asking for anyone with information to come forward.
If you can help, please email the Lincoln city centre Neighbourhood Policing Team on [email protected] and quote crime number 23000505215.