Rehumanising and engaging with the police - is it possible?
- Thread starter Wolveryeti
- Start date
free spirit
more tea vicar?
problem with engaging with the police is that if you do find a sensible pragmatic copper to engage with, and spend time building up a level of trust etc then another high ranking copper (or same rank, but different force) will soon be along to over-rule him and go back on everything he's promised.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
I really don't see how you can humanise people who do something like this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/11/g20-protest-witnesses-police-actions
Reading this really did disturb me, I actually find this more shocking than the push on Ian Tomlinson and more shocking than anything else i've seen and read about what happened that day.
The above quote is not just a tale of physical violence, it's the psychological sadism that disturbs me the most. Taunting someone by saying "We're gonna break your wrists" while they have you in a wrist lock. Then saying "What shall we do with her" I mean that's the most disturbing line of all, two men saying that to a woman has all sorts of connotations connected to it.
I've always maintained some level of respect for the old bill because of the daily job they do. Even during the De Menezes case I tried to see their point of view, it was a failure of intelligence, he didn't stop etc. Even after the lies in that case came out I still maintained a modicum of respect for them, although it had somewhat dipped. Now, however, my feelings are very different, after all this with Tomlinson and reading that above witness statement I have nothing left for them. When reading posts on plod forums saying "He was just doing his job" speaks volumes about just how institutionally rotten the met police are.
Louise Broadbent said:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/11/g20-protest-witnesses-police-actions
Reading this really did disturb me, I actually find this more shocking than the push on Ian Tomlinson and more shocking than anything else i've seen and read about what happened that day.
The above quote is not just a tale of physical violence, it's the psychological sadism that disturbs me the most. Taunting someone by saying "We're gonna break your wrists" while they have you in a wrist lock. Then saying "What shall we do with her" I mean that's the most disturbing line of all, two men saying that to a woman has all sorts of connotations connected to it.
I've always maintained some level of respect for the old bill because of the daily job they do. Even during the De Menezes case I tried to see their point of view, it was a failure of intelligence, he didn't stop etc. Even after the lies in that case came out I still maintained a modicum of respect for them, although it had somewhat dipped. Now, however, my feelings are very different, after all this with Tomlinson and reading that above witness statement I have nothing left for them. When reading posts on plod forums saying "He was just doing his job" speaks volumes about just how institutionally rotten the met police are.
nopassaran
nihilistic sumbody
I really do not think you understand the enormity of the issues involved here. The Police are supposedly an accountable arm of the state, and yet act with impunity when it comes to the policing of political protests as was made plainly apparent from the G20 protests. People were seriously hurt and brutalised by the Police (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/11/g20-ian-tomlinson-death), and we are yet to see whether one person was actually killed as a consequence. To therefore think that the Police are somehow impartial when it comes to the policing of political protest is therefore extremely naive and ill-informed, as history has repeatedly shown.
It's not that I don't sympathise with your sentiments, I just think you need to understand that the severity of this problem demands both a legal and political solution as opposed to one of informal arbitration that you seem to be suggesting.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
fucking sick, that article ...
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
totally agree.
Brother Mouzone
Ⓐnarcho-Cynicism
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
They're in deep shit. Loads of people have come forward since the video, and they have some very determined lawyers taking the cases. Lots of broken bones, and shed-loads of photographic and video evidence. The government may be forced to grant them legal aid on grounds of public interest. And there'll be a huge public outcry from many on the right as well as the left if they don't get charged or the trials somehow collapse.
We might actually win this one.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/11/g20-ian-tomlinson-death
We might actually win this one.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/11/g20-ian-tomlinson-death
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
There is a limit to what the enforcement units of the state are prepared to do though. Many revolutions have succeeded precisely because the army or the police force was unwilling to do the bidding of the state and crush them with violence.
I suppose what I'm asking is a much wider question - can anything be done outside of a legal, institutional framework to persuade the police that they are better off on the side of the demonstrators than the government.
Prince Rhyus
Spokesman of King Antonio
Have a look at http://www.oldham.gov.uk/ndc-home.htm and the "Peace and Quiet" agreement that the community and police came up with. (near the bottom of the page).
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
When the government can no longer afford to cover their pay cheques.
Quote:
Originally Posted by plod forum user Maverick22
I have no time for these G20 demonstrators, they can spray them all with petrol as far as I am concerned, and throw in a match, most are people just out for a fight with the police.
Can anyone tell me if this post is still on Police Oracle? This is very important. I can't seem to find it using the search tool. Has it been removed? This is a news story.
Originally Posted by plod forum user Maverick22
I have no time for these G20 demonstrators, they can spray them all with petrol as far as I am concerned, and throw in a match, most are people just out for a fight with the police.
Can anyone tell me if this post is still on Police Oracle? This is very important. I can't seem to find it using the search tool. Has it been removed? This is a news story.
ToothlessFerret
Well-Known Member
Latest post in the Oracle thread:
Then there is the shield incident. My advice to the young man on the receiving end is that if you want to stand at the front of a baying mob of 'peaceful protestors' then you should work on your ducking. You were very lucky that it wasn't me with that shield as I would have angled it to 45 degrees before striking.Brian. Moderator group.
I sometimes think that some of the posters here are juvenile, but then I check the Police forum and realise that the conversation here is relatively intelligent, open, and .... reasonable.
Then there is the shield incident. My advice to the young man on the receiving end is that if you want to stand at the front of a baying mob of 'peaceful protestors' then you should work on your ducking. You were very lucky that it wasn't me with that shield as I would have angled it to 45 degrees before striking.Brian. Moderator group.
I sometimes think that some of the posters here are juvenile, but then I check the Police forum and realise that the conversation here is relatively intelligent, open, and .... reasonable.
Mooncat
Hug me - I'm vaccinated
Struwwelpeter
Earthling
It would be interesting to hear if there are any anecdotes of reasonable policing on 1 April after the kettles had started brewing. Any tales of compassion, consideration or just plain professional behaviour?
/Holds breath
/On second thoughts, goes back to breathing.
/Holds breath
/On second thoughts, goes back to breathing.
The police have always had two roles, that of crime prevention and that of social control. This is talking about the police as we know them today, whose origins in the UK could perhaps best be dated to the Glasgow Police Act of 1800. While the police retain their dual role I can't see how the institution can be reformed into something that is not ultimately oppressive.
Engaging with indiviual police officers is another matter, as they are citizens and civilians first and foremost. It's no easy job though, because people adopt the attitudes and beliefs of the institutions to which they belong - witness the difficulty of deprogramming cult members etc.
Engaging with indiviual police officers is another matter, as they are citizens and civilians first and foremost. It's no easy job though, because people adopt the attitudes and beliefs of the institutions to which they belong - witness the difficulty of deprogramming cult members etc.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
^ This is spot on.
And the last point is important. The riot coppers at G20 or the coppers at Hillsborough no doubt went home to their families and kissed their children. But they are trained to dehumanise the people they are told to control in exactly the same way that soldiers are trained to dehumanise the people they are told to kill. A copper on an operation will only recognise fellow coppers as fully human. Until they ditch the social control role, there can be no real engagement. It is for the police to rehumanise their victims, not the other way round.
Agreed.
consumer135
Member
you can hug them all you like you'll still get kettled.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Because it makes you the same as them.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
This hasn't always been so. Yes, police have always been ordered into situations that threaten the state; what's changed is the extent of this role. Institutional "modernization" is to blame. Forty years of centralization and bureaucracy has changed the police from a locally-controlled institution that patrolled on foot and deterred crime to a gendarmerie that's holed up in cars and stationhouses and responds fire-brigage style to 999 calls.
Problem is, lots of the things that would reverse the situation won't be too popular amongst the left. The repeal of PACE and return of discretion to officers is dismissed with allegations that officers are racist brutes who would run wild if given freedom to exercise their own judgment.
Likewise, Tony McNulty's demented assertion that the public should "jump up and down" if they witnessed an old lady being beaten was ridiculed, but its underlying cause was ignored. Intervention by the public is forbidden, and is likely to land the "have-a-go hero" in the cells. Why should the police have a monopoly on lawful force?
They didn't used to. The old ideal was that the police were the public and the public were the police. Constables were citizens in uniform. What's made them a special corps? Special powers. If the police are citizens in uniform, they shouldn't have a monopoly on carrying defensive weapons. Why can't law-abiding citizens carry ASPs, cans of gas, billy-clubs and Tasers? Why do "offensive weapons" become OK when a constable has them clipped to his or her utility belt?
These questions are simply not asked. They challenge all sorts of received wisdoms.
The answer is that the state despises the public. It despises the police as well, and only trusts them with "lawful authority" to use force after PACE bureaucracy has stripped them of discretion and turned them into automatons.
Will any of this change? Only if there's pressure for it to, from both left and right.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
We'd all be better off, and safer, if the police abandoned its putative preventative role altogether and became simply an authority to which complaints of law-breaking are made, which are then investigated.
I agree that we have largely been neutralised as a law-keeping force ourselves. The maintenance of order has been handed over to the authorities. We have been infantilised. Our every move is watched either directly or via CCTV on every street corner – and it is for somebody else to keep us safe. I find the idea that we will be safer if we shove a proportion of ourselves into uniform and charge them and them alone with keeping us safe absurd. It simply reinforces the bystander effect – where we all do nothing as we assume someone else will do something. Keeping the peace should be the concern of everybody.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Exactly, but to do that, decades of legal thinking must be overturned. If anyone happened to dig out the 1929 Royal Commission on Police Powers, they'd be amazed. Not only does it say that British people "jealously guard" the principle that police have no more powers than the ordinary citizen, it questions whether the police even have the power to question prisoners.
It's another world. If we're to return to it, some shibboleths of the left must go. How many people on the left are going to argue for the abolition of PACE and the right of law-abiding people to bear arms?
Likewise, how many on the right are going to argue for the end of "special units" and localisation?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
If you redefined the police's role as one that is essentially reactive – the hand at the end of the long arm of the law – I think many of the issues surrounding PACE would disappear.
Laws would need to change so that there are no longer victimless criminal offences. But I don't see that there would be a need to (re)instate a right to bear arms. I lived in various poor neighbourhoods in the USA for a couple of years and it was suggested to me a couple of times that I should get a gun, but I considered myself safer without one – I suspected that I'd be more likely to be shot myself (either with my own gun or someone else's) if I had a gun. Best not to escalate the potential for violence imo.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
I'm leaving guns out of it for now. What about ASPs and cans of CS gas?. The police feel the need to carry these things. Why shouldn't the public be allowed to? Mr McNulty said the public shouldn't intervene because the criminal could be carrying a knife. The public should be allowed to even the odds a bit.
If it were legal, it would be your choice whether you carry a weapon, but other people shouldn't be stopped from doing so. (And no, I have no desire to carry one either.)
If we want a different sort of police force, one equal to us, specific policies must be removed, namely the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act, 1959, and its successors. There's no good reason why law abiding people shouldn't enjoy the same lawful authority to carry weapons that police officers demand.
If it were legal, it would be your choice whether you carry a weapon, but other people shouldn't be stopped from doing so. (And no, I have no desire to carry one either.)
If we want a different sort of police force, one equal to us, specific policies must be removed, namely the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act, 1959, and its successors. There's no good reason why law abiding people shouldn't enjoy the same lawful authority to carry weapons that police officers demand.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It interests me that a right-wing Tory type like you and a left-wing anarchist type like me are in accord over this issue. We both believe in individual freedom accompanied by a sense of responsibility that is both necessitated and fostered by that freedom.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
OK, this is where we need to be a bit brave. I would not carry a knife for the same reasons I wouldn't carry a gun – the first you'll know that someone has a knife will be when it is pulled on you. If you then pull your knife, the other person is more likely to use theirs. I'm trained in martial arts, but my advice if you have a weapon drawn on you is to retreat if at all possible. If you do want to disarm someone, having a knife yourself won't help much. There will be situations, as there are now, when the violent, armed criminal will prevail. That is where the long arm of the law comes in.
We could all be allowed to carry truncheons.
A simple stick like that is more useful than a short blade when defending yourself anyway.A lot of guff is talked about weapons. An umbrella with a sharp point can be a very dangerous weapon indeed. A simple pencil can be just as effective as a knife.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
To quote The Wire's Omar, "True, that."
I believe liberty and order go hand in hand, and that each is dependent on the other. Conservatives have traditionally mistrusted the idea of a police force, and kept one out of England until the mid-19th century. (Some areas in Scotland, notably Glasgow, had police earlier.) This has been wholly forgotten by the current Conservative Party.
Robert Peel's 19th century solution was ingenious. A police service in drab colours and carrying only a truncheon, with no special powers, and no judicial authority.
On the point of escalation, the alternative is putting yourself at the mercy of an armed criminal, a criminal who can decide to escalate the situation unilaterally and fatally. This is by far the worse evil. The police aren't expected to suffer this threat unarmed, but the public are. This logical inconsistency goes uncommented on, and I believe it gets to the heart of what sort of police force we want. It's striking that the Victorians and Edwardians had an unarmed force policing a public free to carry anything from a revolver to a swordstick. This is forgotten.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I'm not completely averse to the idea that we should permit ourselves to carry certain kinds of weapons. I haven't considered the idea too closely before, so I may need to sleep on it.
I am often to be found walking the streets myself with a sharp Japanese sword on my shoulder – going to or from training, you understand (which is legal). The one and only time a copper has asked me what was in the bag, I replied 'A sword,' he laughed and I walked off. I'm not sure what would have constituted the wrong answer to that question!
I am often to be found walking the streets myself with a sharp Japanese sword on my shoulder – going to or from training, you understand (which is legal). The one and only time a copper has asked me what was in the bag, I replied 'A sword,' he laughed and I walked off. I'm not sure what would have constituted the wrong answer to that question!
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