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Britain: Police State?

...the more the police try to control things, the worse crime will get. It is a lose-lose situation.

However, my use of the word "sick" above was deliberate. By that I mean that I think those who commit crimes should not be treated as criminals. Instead I think they should be treated as if they are sick and shown a little more humanity i.e. not automatically banged up in prison where all sorts of abuses are perpetrated.

I would suggest that the police are allowed to spend more time walking the beat as they used to and with a more friendly face i.e. less intimidating.

My father and I spotted a policeman some distance away. The machine was making so much noise that we could not shout to attract his attention. My father gave a piercing whistle which the policeman did hear. And the look on his face when he approached was thunderous. That is the only word for it. With hardly a word to us, he managed to switch off the vehicle, and then he turned away and walked off. he didn't even thank us for being responsible citizens.

My sister had an experience with the police where she had found a wallet with some money in it and took it to a police station to hand it in. Again, instead of a "thank you", my sister said that she was treated with great suspicion and made to feel that she had stolen the wallet, rather than being honest and handing it in. She has said that she would never, now, do such a thing again given how unpleasant that experience was. So, the police do need to work on their behaviour and show a more friendly face to ordinary citizens.

In addition to walking the beat, I suggest that the government severely cut-back on the amount of beaurocracy police have to contend with - ...The amount of paperwork police have to contend with must leave them no time to do the really important stuff.

...the police seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on "cold cases". Perhaps police energies would be better spent on the contemporary, not the historical.

Finally, as to "grassing", I think there is a danger of looking at this from too simplistic a point of view. Living in a society where citizens are invited to grass on each other, where no one can trust anyone else, will lead, I suggest, to severe even worse mental health problems than there currently are. And, of course, mental health is a big issue right now and mental health is going from bad to worse. I suggest that perhaps a little undetected crime will be less damaging to people's minds, will be a smaller price to pay, than living in a state where neighbour informs on neighbour, child informs on parent, siblings inform on siblings, pupils inform on teachers, students inform on lecturers etc, etc.

Whew! Where to begin...

At least you and I agree on two things:

a) Bureaucracy and paperwork are the curse of the job, and;

b) It would be great to have the luxury of time and resources to have officers walking beats. (Even though beat walking is 99.9% reassurance, and is a very poor use of officers' time in terms of catching criminals. The statistic I saw published in one of our in-house magazines is that an officer could only expect to happen on a crime in progress on average once every seven years. My experience roughly confirms this).

You suggest that police intervention causes crime. I'd be fascinated to hear how you think that the police investigating murder, rape or burglary, for example, causes more murder, rape and burglary; also, what you think the alternative should be. (Not investigating murder, rape and burglary?)

You seem to think that imprisonment is a common, automatic response to crime. It isn't. As I've stated before, on average a criminal has been been through the court system nine times before he's finally sent to prison. Factor in the warnings, reprimands, cautions etc. he'll have received previously, it transpires that you have to work long and diligently in order to be sent to prison.

Treat all criminals as though they were sick, and not just dishonest or violent? In the same way that the NHS now regards obesity and drug addiction as "diseases", and not as I believe, lifestyle choices? We'll have to agree to differ on that one.

"...of course, mental health is a big issue right now and mental health is going from bad to worse." Again, I disagree. It's fashionable to "medicalise" all unconventional behaviour. In my opinion, this is just a way to allow criminals to get away with it: "I can't help beating people up: I have Oppositional Confrontational Disorder, and there isn't a pill for it on the NHS, so I'm the victim here!"

You present two anecdotes of alleged incivility; one first-hand, one second-hand. Out of the ~125,000 police officers in the UK, multiplied by the length of your lifetime, even if both anecdotes are 100% correct, I'd call that a pretty good performance. I would, however, like to hear the stories of the officers concerned... I know that if a member of the public tried to attract my attention by whistling at me, l would probably have ignored him completely until he learned some manners.

maximus otter
 
...the cop pulled out his pistol and shot him in the leg. Damned good shot.

Interesting fact: After the Hitler era, the German authorities were so keen to be seen as 101% supporters of human rights, that the official German police target featured a picture of a man with the bullseye on the left knee, rather than centre mass.

As you say, excellent shot under operational conditions.

maximus otter
 
I think it will be better if I do not engage with you in discussions as I feel it will lead to me feeling the wrath of the Moderators if I answer you honestly; which is the only way I work.

Thank you for stating your position so clearly. Such statements are not, I find, common practice in forums or elsewhere, and it is therefore all the more appreciated.

I may be wrong, but I assume that my opinions make you angry and that this is why you feel you cannot trust yourself to refrain from breaking forum rules when engaging in any further discussions with me. Please know that it is NEVER my intention to cause anger. I explain my intentions below.

Many people have grave misgivings about the state of the world today, so much so that they are frightened about their own future or their children’s future etc. etc. However, it is clear to me that most people will not speak out, this, I believe, because although they know there is something seriously wrong, they cannot identify from amidst the chaos exactly what the real problem is. (For example, people want war to stop but unless one knows what precisely it is in human behavior that causes conflict, then how can the problem ever be successfully dealt with?) Then there are others who say: “For god’s sake just stop bothering me and leave me alone to die in peace.” To me, that attitude is a terrible indictment of the state of this society. So, as I said, my intention is never to generate anger – I will leave that to the politicians, to business, to the neighbours who will not stop their dogs from barking incessantly or who play their music too loudly, to the deliberately careless road user, to the child who delights in tormenting its parents etc, etc.. My intention is, in fact, to raise awareness of what is wrong with the world, to try to make sense of the chaos and, most importantly, to talk about it. To talk about it because too few people do, and few will unless others make the first move. That, then, is my intention.

So, thank you again, INT21.

PS: If it were up to me, you would be able to say to me exactly what you wanted to say on this or any forum. This because I believe that freedom of speech – genuine freedom of speech – is a vital, an essential, component of a healthy society. For example, my sister once received death threats on a forum. She made friends with the issuer of these threats and, of course, the threats stopped.
 
You seem to think that imprisonment is a common, automatic response to crime. It isn't. As I've stated before, on average a criminal has been been through the court system nine times before he's finally sent to prison. Factor in the warnings, reprimands, cautions etc. he'll have received previously, it transpires that you have to work long and diligently in order to be sent to prison..

Nonetheless, one does hear in the news stories about prison overcrowding. So, people are being sent to prison. If, as I think you are you suggesting, prison is almost used as a last resort, then perhaps it is for no other reason than that prisons are overcrowded. That said, this long drawn out process of warnings, reprimands and so on is, in my opinion, nothing less than a minor version of Death Row where prisoners wait decades for the outcomes of appeals etc. To my mind there is only one word for this process: torture.

However, my objections to prisons are also about prisons themselves. They are inhumane and cruel. In addition, that one person or a group of human beings should pass judgement on another is monstrous. I think the Russians have a more realistic viewpoint. When a tv journalist interviewed a former gulag prisoner, he wanted to know how this ex-prisoner could bear to have, as his neighbor, a former gulag guard. The ex-prisoner replied “There but for the grace of god go I.” Exactly. There but for the grace of god go us all. (Of course, I realise that that attitude does not stop Russia having its own penal system. Nonetheless, the Russians seem to have a bit more common sense, have a better grasp of reality, than is common in this country.)

In addition, I was once called upon to serve in a jury. To my eyes the “crime” was petty: possession of a tiny quantity of some drug. However, I was appalled at the theatre that is the court system. The way the defendant is brought in alone and made to stand, alone, facing judge with jury on-looking from the side and spectators filling the seats behind. It seemed to me nothing less than the psychological equivalent of, say, a bear-bating pit. I also got a glimpse of the holding cells at the back of the court but only from outside. I’m not sure my sanity would withstand being detained in those cells, let alone a prison.

.
Treat all criminals as though they were sick, and not just dishonest or violent? In the same way that the NHS now regards obesity and drug addiction as "diseases", and not as I believe, lifestyle choices? We'll have to agree to differ on that one..


Obesity and drug addiction are mostly not symptoms of disease, but of mental ill-health, possibly the effects of over-emotionalism. And as for turning to drugs or drink, then what other recourse is there for people in this cruel and inhumane society? Especially those at the bottom of the heap. As I know all too well myself, those at the bottom of the heap have little else to turn to. And if alcohol and drugs are denied people, particularly the lesser of those two drugs, alcohol, then the powers that be are just asking for serious trouble. Most mental health problems can be put down to excessive emotionalism. By discouraging alcohol and pricing it out of the market for poor folks (as is happening in Scotland and England too seems to be showing an interest), then the government is setting up an explosive situation, such an explosion – a Krakatoa-like eruption - of anger as will cause catastrophic damage to people’s mental health. Yet while the British government is already expressing concern about the levels of anger in this country, it unfortunately does not understand the causes of this anger, let alone have the ability to deal with the problem. In other words, it thinks alcohol fuels anger rather than providing a psychological outlet for the desperate.


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You present two anecdotes of alleged incivility; one first-hand, one second-hand. Out of the ~125,000 police officers in the UK, multiplied by the length of your lifetime, even if both anecdotes are 100% correct, I'd call that a pretty good performance. I would, however, like to hear the stories of the officers concerned... I know that if a member of the public tried to attract my attention by whistling at me, l would probably have ignored him completely until he learned some manners.


Firstly, I suggest that your FIRST response as a police officer would be to ascertain what exactly the problem is. Only after dealing with the problem, and only then, should any genuine incivility by the public be dealt with. (Fortunately for my father, we were “only” trying to deal with an out-of-control piece of heavy machinery which was causing damage and, more importantly, was a danger to the public – and incidentally, he was potentially putting himself in danger by doing so. However, in an even worse scenario, there could have been an injured person lying near the machine that neither of us felt we could leave. What, then, should we have done in that situation? Further endanger the injured person by leaving them lying beside the out-of-control machinery? Go and ask the officer very, very politely – I’m thinking of Sgt Wilson in Dad’s Army here - that if it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience would he mind very much helping us with the situation? No. The situation my father and I found ourselves in was perfectly plausible and so, therefore, was my father’s method of attracting the officer’s attention. As an aside, my father, when he retired to Canada, was also of help to the Canadian police – if I remember correctly he apprehended a thief - anyway, whatever service it was he performed for them, the police saw fit to award him some sort of “good citizen” medal for his troubles. He was immensely proud of that medal.)


Secondly, as to the statistics you quote, I have only described 1 interaction that I have had with the British police. As it happens, I have not had much to do with them. However, of those interactions I have had, about 80% of them have left me fearful of the police and losing respect for them. Your quoted paragraph above has just added another few percentage points to that 80%.


Finally, that policeman my father and I encountered was badly behaved. This would only have served to have damaged my father’s respect for the police, as it did mine. Also, one does not get respect by demanding respect. In that case all one will get is simulated respect. The only way to get genuine respect is to EARN it. That policeman my father and I encountered was of the type who DEMANDS respect.

In addition, as to getting the officer’s side of these stories, any officer who thought s/he might be in trouble for, say, misconduct, may not be willing to give an accurate account of their side of the story. I believe that there is in existence a police anti-corruption unit which was, itself, investigated for corruption in 2018. And, of course, from time to time news stories do emerge about police corruption. Just like the church has been forced to do after many allegations of abuse, the police should not see themselves as being above suspicion either.

Lastly, I wonder if the police have enough awareness of their own behaviour and its effect on people to give an accurate account of it themselves? I’m thinking of the military here and how US military – and, I assume, the UK military – are taught to behave. They are taught to be very aggressive and very intimidating. So aggressive and intimidating that even in a civilian context i.e. my local supermarket, the uniformed soldiers I saw there exuded that aggressive and intimidating behaviour when there only to stock up on groceries. I have had a few other interactions with the military, and as with the police, they too can be very intimidating, just like they were in that supermarket.
 
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Apologies if this subject has been covered before. During the UK Miners strike in the 1980’s I witnessed a number of incidents that have affected my view of the police ever since. I was around 14 years old and during the school holidays went to stay with my auntie and uncle in Yorkshire for a period while the strike was going. My uncle was on strike and times were very very tough for many folks. One day my uncle and I were heading out and we walked past the gates of the pit. What we saw was a classic stand off with a large group of police on one side of the road and maybe a hundred or so miners on the other side. There was definite tension in the air and as we went by we kept our heads well down. My uncle was telling me the rumour going around at the time of how the government had not only sent up Police from London to ‘bring the miners under control’ but also members of the armed services dressed as police. He said that you could tell the ‘outsiders’ as they wore white shirts as part of their uniform while local police wore blue. These police were to be avoided at all times as there were all sorts of stories of police brutality.

With that I saw, with my own eyes, a policeman wonder over to me and my uncle and wave a large wad of money right in his face! He then said something like “my kids will be getting cracking presents for Christmas this year thanks to you boys. Looks like your boy will be lucky to get a bowl of soup!”. His pals all began laughing and then a few other began goading the miners. It was clear they were trying to get a reaction from them and sure enough they did. A Stone was thrown towards the police and this gave them the excuse they needed. They ran straight into the miners and began arresting (and hitting) anyone in their way. Utterly outrageous.

Many years later I was on holiday and we met a Scottish family. The man of family told me that a friend of his was in the army during this period and he confirmed that they were ‘working with the police’ during the strike and policing the picket lines.
 
That sounds like a nasty scene, right enough.
To be fair to the police, they did conduct an investigation into police conduct during the miners' strike. I was a student in 1983-1984 and living in the *cough* luxurious, *cough* iconic Park Hill flats in Sheffield.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place...7f5af06b078!8m2!3d53.381129!4d-1.470085?hl=en

One day, I heard a great commotion outside while I was revising for my finals. I looked out of the window and saw a huge crowd of people being faced off by a wall of policemen. I didn't watch for long as nothing was happening and I had my exams to occupy my attention.
A couple of weeks later (or was it less?) - a plain-clothes policeman came round and spoke to my flatmate and myself, asking if we'd seen anything bad happening at the demo (he was from police internal affairs apparently). I pointed out that I wasn't a good witness, as I had been so busy and didn't see anything. My friend remarked that the police had been 'mob-handed' and a bit 'unnecessary' in their behaviour.
All of this was duly noted down, presumably for some kind of investigation.
 
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My uncle was telling me the rumour going around at the time of how the government had not only sent up Police from London to ‘bring the miners under control’ but also members of the armed services dressed as police. He said that you could tell the ‘outsiders’ as they wore white shirts as part of their uniform while local police wore blue. These police were to be avoided at all times as there were all sorts of stories of police brutality.
That probably says more about the government of the day's hostility to organised labor than it does about the actual police. When, in a civil democracy, a government needs to hire sociopaths to act as strike-breakers, something has gone very wrong with the system, and there needs to be a new government.
 
That probably says more about the government of the day's hostility to organised labor than it does about the actual police. When, in a civil democracy, a government needs to hire sociopaths to act as strike-breakers, something has gone very wrong with the system, and there needs to be a new government.
At the time, the country had been brought to a standstill by strikes - which had ruined the UK economy.
The government of the day didn't have the luxury of an endless pile of money to help the country to coast along while nobody was working.
 
At the time, the country had been brought to a standstill by strikes - which had ruined the UK economy. The government of the day didn't have the luxury of an endless pile of money to help the country to coast along while nobody was working.
That is a very jaundiced reading of the political and economic situation at the time. Few economists worth their salt would argue that monetarism, austerity, and a cut to social services is anything other than a recipe for top heavy economics. Considering how much richer the richest 1% of Brits got at the expense of the rest of the country at the time, it is pretty clear that the entire era was a catastrophe for British civil society. There were street parties across the country when Thatcher died, remember that?
 
That is a very jaundiced reading of the political and economic situation at the time. Few economists worth their salt would argue that monetarism, austerity, and a cut to social services is anything other than a recipe for top heavy economics. Considering how much richer the richest 1% of Brits got at the expense of the rest of the country at the time, it is pretty clear that the entire era was a catastrophe for British civil society. There were street parties across the country when Thatcher died, remember that?
I was there at the time!
Most people had got tired of the endless strikes. Some of those people were the miners themselves.
 
I was also there at the time.

Imagine living in a twelve story tower block, all electric, no lifts, no heat, no cooker, no hot water.

Not very nice, particularly for the older people who had been moved into these tower blocks when their old areas were demolished.

Damn good job Corbyn didn't get in or we would see it all again.
 
Yes, I agree. Politics is weird at the moment, but we need much weirder to fuel our interest ... Betelgeuse dimming for example!
 
Apologies. I didn’t mean to turn this into a political debate. I just thought I’d share what I saw as part of the discussion. Whatever side of the political fence you’re on, it was a pretty horrible time for many people for a variety of different reasons.
 
...members of the armed services dressed as police. He said that you could tell the ‘outsiders’ as they wore white shirts as part of their uniform while local police wore blue.

Minor point: Shirt colour for different forces wasn’t standardised back then, so the wearing of white shirts wasn’t some sinister earmarking of paramilitaries/mercenaries/KGB/MIB, it was just tradition.

maximus otter
 
Minor point: Shirt colour for different forces wasn’t standardised back then, so the wearing of white shirts wasn’t some sinister earmarking of paramilitaries/mercenaries/KGB/MIB, it was just tradition.

maximus otter
It was treated as accepted fact in Bradford - which wasn't exactly in the midst of the strike - that squaddies had been given police uniforms and tasked with boosting law enforcement numbers. And speaking of numbers, the giveaway was supposed to have been that these uniforms didn't have numbers, whereas - so we were told - a genuine constable had to display his number while on duty.

Max, is there any truth in that claim about the number having to be displayed? And did you ever hear any rumours - or anything more concrete - about the police ranks being swelled in this way?

(Apologies, mods, if this errs too far into politics. Do delete if need be. My hope and intention is to skirt that and address the conspiracy theory side. There's an argument that a rule-bending culture emerged in South Yorkshire Police during the strike which went unchecked, and ultimately contributed to the Hillsborough tragedy.)
 
a) ...is there any truth in that claim about the number having to be displayed?

b) And did you ever hear any rumours - or anything more concrete - about the police ranks being swelled in this way?

a) Yes: numbers must be displayed, even on PSU kit. Such kit also displayed the two-character code assigned to each UK police force, so that a witness could identify not only an officer’s number, but his home force.

b) No, this is the first l’ve heard of that rumour. (l didn’t take part in the policing of the miners’ strike, being one of the ones who stayed behind in-force to do all of the work and earn none of the overtime, but l’m not bitter...)

The idea that the thousands of officers who were actively involved could/would be aware of military involvement, and the beans remain unspilled for over three decades is - to put it mildly - implausible.

l know that officers involved did taunt miners by displaying wads of the cash they were earning. Considering the rancour and violence involved in the strike it was unprofessional, but hardly surprising.

maximus otter
 
At the time, the country had been brought to a standstill by strikes - which had ruined the UK economy.
The government of the day didn't have the luxury of an endless pile of money to help the country to coast along while nobody was working.

In 1984? That just isn't true. Yes there were some egregious Trade Union despots but the destruction of the Unions has allowed zero hours contracts and the dangerous nature of employment in the UK. BTW never get a delivery from IKEA.
 
Eh? Why?
I've had deliveries from IKEA in the past.
I worked for their delivery partners as a temp. When I moved to employee I could happily put no convictions on the form; the hr guy effectively said 'no need to disclose'. One colleague had done 5 years for being part of a gang that tortured a rival dealer's brother and sister in law for stealing their stash.

Another time a youngster said that if customers knew what crimes many employees had committed....'and not just silly stuff'. I have worked on the railways and many driving jobs. It's the only company I have encountered where there was no adherence to drugs and alcohol policy. There were never any random tests because the management would have failed them. I worked 29 hours over 2 days more than once.

Of course there was no Union......
 
a) Yes: numbers must be displayed, even on PSU kit. Such kit also displayed the two-character code assigned to each UK police force, so that a witness could identify not only an officer’s number, but his home force.

b) No, this is the first l’ve heard of that rumour. (l didn’t take part in the policing of the miners’ strike, being one of the ones who stayed behind in-force to do all of the work and earn none of the overtime, but l’m not bitter...)

The idea that the thousands of officers who were actively involved could/would be aware of military involvement, and the beans remain unspilled for over three decades is - to put it mildly - implausible.

l know that officers involved did taunt miners by displaying wads of the cash they were earning. Considering the rancour and violence involved in the strike it was unprofessional, but hardly surprising.

maximus otter
Thanks, Max. I tend to agree about it being implausible that any such secret would remain so for so long. Could the rumours have arisen from garbled reports of officers being drafted in from other forces?
 
Thanks, Max. I tend to agree about it being implausible that any such secret would remain so for so long. Could the rumours have arisen from garbled reports of officers being drafted in from other forces?

l would suspect that you are correct, although a macho “The local Old Bill couldn’t control us, so they had to bring in the SAS/Paras/Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Space Marines to do the job”, may well have played a part.

maximus otter
 
I was there at the time! Most people had got tired of the endless strikes. Some of those people were the miners themselves.
I was in country for some of it too, albeit in my teens. Have you never heard the saying that "you can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half"? You may be right about the facts of what some people did, but I think you're wrong about the morality and the underlying social narrative of what happened.
 
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I was in country for some of it too, albeit in my teens. Have you never heard the saying that "you can always pay one half of the poor to kill the other half"? You may be right about the facts of what some people did, but I think you're wrong about the morality and the underlying social narrative of what happened.

Morality is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.

We can't go into the details here. no way of avoiding the politics.

But let's just say I hate unions with a passion you can only dream of.

They are the most elitist organisations you can think of.
 
There are some worries about Dominic Cummings' job advertisement:
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=11537

He also wants “Super-talented weirdos”, with examples given from William Gibson novels, such as “that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB.”

The remarkable things to me about this long document are what it doesn’t contain. In particular I see nothing at all about any specific policy goals. Usually a new government would recruit people by appealing to their desire to make the world a better place in some specific way, but there’s nothing about that here. The goal is to control the government and what the British population believes, but to what end?

In addition, a more conventional hiring process would be asking for candidates of high ethical values, with some devotion to telling the truth. Cummings seems to be asking for exactly the opposite: best if your background is “from a crime family hired by the KGB.”



Big majorities are boring, they said. Not so much. Dominic Cummings is hiring scientists and “weirdos”. This is a direct challenge to the civil service, the lobby and just about everyone in govt. Its also the only readable job advert ever written
https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01...ect-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/
 
[Ears perk up][Dunning-Kruger Effect kicks in]
I'm a super-talented weirdo... a top job awaits me...

^ Delusions of grandeur ^
 
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