Reply to: Police State

[expat]

Orders come from the 'top' and that is probably HMG. With a change of government we hopefully will see respect return for the police.

You obviously weren't watching (probably deliberately) when much that is now wrong with the police was first tried out for the Thatcher government.

Indeed, on of the prime things that Labour and Conservative politicians ahre is a tendency to discover once in power that some of the things their predecessors did that seemed so evil at the time actually have their uses now that they are in power.

[Ruprect]

Now the police are targetting civil liberties campaigners. This is bad. Freedom of speech is on the way out.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6116023.ece

Police who arrested the Conservative frontbencher Damian Green trawled his private e-mails looking for information on Britain’s leading civil liberties campaigner.

Officers from Scotland Yard’s antiterror squad searched the computer seized from his parliamentary office using the key words “Shami Chakrabarti” – even though the Liberty director had nothing to do with the leaking of Home Office documents that prompted the investigation.

[KentPhilip]

I found my dealings with the police here in Switzerland have.

Been skiing above the speed limit again have we?

[threaded]

FFS - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8004222.stm

What is more that worrying is that TPTB in the UK can now get a pathologist to write utter bollocks, such that even a lay person can spot it, and wonder what depths they will plunge to next.

[minestrone]

oppps

[NotAllThere]

I found my dealings with the police here in Switzerland have been far less confrontational and hostile than those in the UK. Even 20 years ago. Here, they seem much more to understand they are part of the community.

[Wonderstuff]

FFS - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8004222.stm

[Cyberman]

Yes. But if you wish to do something that you as a citizen have a legal right to do (e.g. protest) and the nice copper is given orders as part of his job to do something that conflicts with that, and as a result he can hardly avoid feeling that you are not showing respect, then he may not respond in kind.

That doesn't, or should not, take away the citizen's legal rights. One of which is the right not always to do what a policeman wants you to do, if this wish of his is not backed up by law.

Orders come from the 'top' and that is probably HMG. With a change of government we hopefully will see respect return for the police.

[contractor79]

well if you vote for communists this is what you get, don't complain it's your fault

[Platypus]

unwilling obedience through fear

Nicely put and exactly right

[expat]

Respect has to be earned. Not so long ago (40+ years), the police were automatically respected, now they are not. They have lost the respect they had due to being knobs, beating people to death, lying, etc.

I believe that by and large that is true. I don't want to exaggerate the Dixon of Dock Green fairytale, but I do think that at one time the British police in general thought of respect in those terms. Now they, or some at least, seem to see it in the American cops' sense of unwilling obedience through fear.

This may indeed be more the fault of the society that they deal with than their own; and the fault of the government(s) that they work for.

[expat]

If people treated the police with respect, the police may respond in kind. I have a mate who is a firearms copper and you couldn't meet a nicer guy.

Yes. But if you wish to do something that you as a citizen have a legal right to do (e.g. protest) and the nice copper is given orders as part of his job to do something that conflicts with that, and as a result he can hardly avoid feeling that you are not showing respect, then he may not respond in kind.

That doesn't, or should not, take away the citizen's legal rights. One of which is the right not always to do what a policeman wants you to do, if this wish of his is not backed up by law.

[Platypus]

If people treated the police with respect, the police may respond in kind. I have a mate who is a firearms copper and you couldn't meet a nicer guy.

Respect has to be earned. Not so long ago (40+ years), the police were automatically respected, now they are not. They have lost the respect they had due to being knobs, beating people to death, lying, etc.

[Cyberman]

Ditto. My neighbour is a PC and the son of the neighbour across from us is also a cop. Both pretty nice fellow. The guys that "walk the beats" are usually nice fellow there to help us out.

Though, I think they don't know the laws themselves and have been trained to invoke the Antiterrorism Act at the drop of a hat.

Yeah indeed. I read an article by David Davis last week in which he ridiculed that Quick copper over his lack of knowledge of the law. Davis had pulled him up many times in previous discussions when Quick had preached a law to him that was incorrect.

[lilelvis2000]

If people treated the police with respect, the police may respond in kind. I have a mate who is a firearms copper and you couldn't meet a nicer guy.

Ditto. My neighbour is a PC and the son of the neighbour across from us is also a cop. Both pretty nice fellow. The guys that "walk the beats" are usually nice fellow there to help us out.

Though, I think they don't know the laws themselves and have been trained to invoke the Antiterrorism Act at the drop of a hat.