non-Met Police ****ery

[Imrael]

I've been reflecting on how differently the police treat me in different contexts. I wonder if anyone else has similar experiences. When I'm at court for work, looking vaguely professional and it's clear who (or rather what), the police are an absolute delight. Friendly and helpful and go out of their way to help if I need anything. Which is nice. Except they're totally different when I see them approaching or arresting people. And they are cold and slightly intimidating if I'm say, at a protest (I know much worse for others). When I did a brief stint of police station representation it was a bit variable, I would say largely professional but with a hint of 'I'm being this way because I have to'. When I was at a demo yesterday (in Scotland) they were fine because they knew we were no trouble as it was all nice middle class middle aged people.

Obviously the police across the UK consists of many many individuals, but the fact that I'm treated with much more respect (almost bordering on deference) in some contexts and borderline contempt in others, even though I'm not committing an offence, gives me the creeps a bit.

I'm not saying this for it to be about me though, I've never to date had any actual problems with them, just felt like commenting on it.

Also this is the Met so wrong thread but Señor von Laté is currently in London and on one street they have live facial recognition cameras set up. There is a sign saying you don't have to walk down the street if you don't want to...

I've never had any real issues either. Stop-and-searched a few times as a long haired student in the late 70's - I used to help with student theatre and often travel home late at night with something that looked like a tool bag, so probably looked like a burglar.

My guess is that police are worse to deal with the more of them are present, partly because of the situations when they are grouped together, and partly because it encourages an "us and them" mentality. Oddly, the few traffic stops I've had were extremel;y polite.

I do remember a random breath test of all members leaving a car club christmas dinner. Being a car club we were all very fond of our licences, which made for a very unproductive evening. Policeman was obviously a bit bored by my turn.

[monkey]

Police getting a drumming in the media today for forcefully stripping naked a female in a young offenders institute by a group of all male officers.

Apparently she was trying to kill herself with her clothing and so the decision was taken to remove her clothing. The group that oversaw this were all male because there were no female officer(s) available (reports are there was a female officer on the rosta but she wasn't available having been assaulted earlier by an offender). If they had respected the offenders modesty and she'd hanged herself wouldn't that be worse? I'm assuming they didn't have the staffing levels to keep her clothes on and have an officer stand watch on her cell.

Honestly I'm not sure what they could have done differently given the situation they were in. And we're certainly not going to get better quality of policing and care of offenders with the reported cut in NI and service provisions expected to happen in the budget.

Not police! Prison officers.

Still non-met and fuckery though. Seems adequate staffing of female officers is/was the problem to me.

[jimbob]

Police getting a drumming in the media today for forcefully stripping naked a female in a young offenders institute by a group of all male officers.

Apparently she was trying to kill herself with her clothing and so the decision was taken to remove her clothing. The group that oversaw this were all male because there were no female officer(s) available (reports are there was a female officer on the rosta but she wasn't available having been assaulted earlier by an offender). If they had respected the offenders modesty and she'd hanged herself wouldn't that be worse? I'm assuming they didn't have the staffing levels to keep her clothes on and have an officer stand watch on her cell.

Honestly I'm not sure what they could have done differently given the situation they were in. And we're certainly not going to get better quality of policing and care of offenders with the reported cut in NI and service provisions expected to happen in the budget.

The chief inspector of prisons explained it in the Today programme yesterday.

It happened twice and was entirely predictable (his words).

Once would have been unfortunate (paraphrase of his words) but it was the fact they'd not done anything since the first time that was why he was so critical of it.

[TopBadger]

Thing is, even if you know its going to happen again that doesn't guarantee you can do anything differently next time.

I was speaking to a friend of a friend at a wedding last summer, he's a prison governor. The picture he painted was grim... they don't have the manpower to do the job properly because they don't have the funding. Telling the prison service to simply "do better" doesn't address the shortage of resources and so nothing will change.

It's the same thing with the ambulance service... repeatedly in the news we are told that someone in a critical condition passed away because an ambulance couldn't be dispatched, because there simply weren't enough of them.

Yet we're about to see a budget with f.cking tax cuts. It makes my blood boil.

[Grumble]

Thing is, even if you know its going to happen again that doesn't guarantee you can do anything differently next time.

I was speaking to a friend of a friend at a wedding last summer, he's a prison governor. The picture he painted was grim... they don't have the manpower to do the job properly because they don't have the funding. Telling the prison service to simply "do better" doesn't address the shortage of resources and so nothing will change.

It's the same thing with the ambulance service... repeatedly in the news we are told that someone in a critical condition passed away because an ambulance couldn't be dispatched, because there simply weren't enough of them.

Yet we're about to see a budget with f.cking tax cuts. It makes my blood boil.

If we’re seeing a budget with tax cuts why are taxes at their highest since 1948? Is it all because of Kwasi Kwarteng f.cking the economy?

[monkey]

If we’re seeing a budget with tax cuts why are taxes at their highest since 1948? Is it all because of Kwasi Kwarteng f.cking the economy?

That'll happen when you've got high inflation and wages going up but GDP doesn't.

I'm not sure you can blame that on just Kwarteng, but I don't think he helped.

[nekomatic]

If we’re seeing a budget with tax cuts why are taxes at their highest since 1948? Is it all because of Kwasi Kwarteng f.cking the economy?

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2024/0 ... y.html?m=1 addresses this

[jimbob]

https://www.internationalskeptics.com/f ... st14274462

Angiolini: "Good police officers work alongside those who abuse their powers, behave inappropriately with their colleagues and do a disservice to the profession of policing,.."

How can they be considered "good police officers"? Their entire justification is to prevent such behaviour - in everyone - not just non-police officers.

I was one of those good cops, who worked with bad cops. In retirement, I have talked with my cops friends, who were also good cops as to why we did not see those bad cop behaviours and the reason was that the bad cops behaved themselves when they were in the company of a majority of good cops. We all experienced situations where we knew we were being excluded from what was going on, which will have been the bad cops doing bad things. I remember being suddenly sent out of the office to go on patrol and I knew something was up, but I was happy to go as I did not want to be involved.

Whatsapp etc only came in at the end of my career, but I was never invited to join any private group.

I was told on numerous occasions by female cops how much they enjoyed working with me. I just thought they were being nice, I now know it was because I never hassled any of them. I was also told later in my career, when I bumped into a cop I had been a training college with, that at the time, I was singled out by the female cops as the only trustworthy male.

That is how good cops work alongside bad cops.

Interesting take on this

[discovolante]

I'm not blaming that good cop, but I assume the female cops generally knew who the 'bad cops' were, even if they hadn't experienced their behaviour directly, but he didn't.

[jimbob]

I'm not blaming that good cop, but I assume the female cops generally knew who the 'bad cops' were, even if they hadn't experienced their behaviour directly, but he didn't.

The first reply to that was also interesting

[shpalman]

Lincolnshire Police officer stole colleague's jacket and turned up at the station wearing it days later