LibUK Articles
The Police Need Watching |
| Posted by Administrator (admin) on Dec 04 2007 at 7:21 AM |
| LibUK Articles >> Law & Order |
Jackart argues that the police have become an arm of the state, rather than the impartial upholders of the law that they were intended to be.
I was talking to a Police officer at the weekend (in a social rather than professional capacity for once). I told him that the police had become an arm of the state, driven by political concerns rather than the needs of the communities they serve. My assertion seems to be backed up by the news today that according to the police federation, arrests are being made for trivial offences to the detriment of investigations into more serious crimes, and that targets from the home office are the drive behind this.
Whilst the police federation represents the thin blue line of rank and file who are disillusioned by this culture, there is little they can do whilst those who lead them are selected by national politicians on who can deliver the best sounding statistics. Need "Sanction / detections" up? Arrest a man for being in "possession of an egg with intent to throw". Or a public order offence arrest for a child who threw a slice of cucumber at another. Another tick in the box for the arrest under firearms legislation for a child with a toy gun, another criminal damage arrest for a Grandmother who cuts a neighbours hedge too aggressively. Some free publicity is obtained when TV\'s Chris Tarrant waved a spoon at someone in a curry house and got himself arrested for assault.
This is frivolous.
But if a home secretary says "Get the rape arrests up" or "why are your racially motivated incident arrests down?", you have a recipe for miscarriages of justice. This is evident with the apparent failure of operation Ore to properly check the database of credit cards for cloned data, leading to what appears to be the wrongful arrest of hundreds, if not thousands of men for child porn offences. I imagine there was some serious pressure to secure convictions in that squad. Peoples lives and livelihood are ruined by an arrest for these types of crime. Ore has led to a number of suicides.
North Wales, led by a lunatic tried to get officers measured by the blunt instrument of number of arrests. Imagine two doctors, one dealing with common colds and one dealing with lung cancer. Who\'s going to have the most patients die? Is the copper who prevents petty vandalism by being in the right spot at the right time to say "what you doin\' \'ere sunshine, shouldn\'t you be at \'ome?" better than the one who kicks in the same kid\'s door a couple of hours later to make an arrest? In the first scenario there are no victims and in the second there\'s two.
My police officer friend is well meaning, but couldn\'t see why I cannot trust the police under these circumstances. He believed that ID cards were OK because "you carry ID anyway" and not having anything with your name and address on was "inherently suspicious", suggesting that if I popped out to buy milk from the corner shop, and was stopped for my papers, it would be reasonable for a policeman to require me to return to my house to fetch them. He couldn\'t see that this arrangement would fundamentally alter the relationship between the subject and the state from one where the state must prove wrong doing to one where the citizen must account for his actions. The assets recovery agency makes the same change - you must demonstrate your Ferrari was acquired legally, if the state merely accuses you of wrong doing on the balance of probability. Which indicates that the culture of authoritarian enforcement of the law according to targets, with priorites set by the red tops and without regard for the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" has pervaded the Police service, and the entire state from top to bottom. The police now serve the government, not the community which they are supposed to protect. That is a police state in the making. Only directly elected sherriffs for all forces can restore the balance.
It\'s Labour\'s fault. Just one more good thing they have broken in Britain with their tinkering.
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