COVID-19 Police state

[Pucksoppet]

The police should certainly be allowed to stop people when they have a suspicion that the law is being broken - only that they cannot do so solely to prevent people being irresponsible or anti-social in ways which are not illegal.

I don't know about that: The Public Order Acts give them wide powers, including against (threatening and abusive) anti-social behaviour.

This briefing on “Insulting words or behaviour”: Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 is worth a read for background.

[FlammableFlower]

God, some of them can be daft. Last night MrsFF saw a Q&A on TV that had the head plod of Wiltshire. When asked, "we're allowed to go to our allotment, but is it ok to drive there?"

He replied, "yes, but you should only be going to collect vegetables and you can't stay longer than 1 hour."

Right. He doesn't know much about growing veg then, what with this bring known as the Hungry Gap as last year's veg has all finished and you're only now preparing the ground and sowing for the following year. Funnily enough, there's nothing to harvest. Besides, you arrive at the allotment it doesn't matter how long you're there, you're not near anyone else.

[Woodchopper]

The police should certainly be allowed to stop people when they have a suspicion that the law is being broken - only that they cannot do so solely to prevent people being irresponsible or anti-social in ways which are not illegal.

I don't know about that: The Public Order Acts give them wide powers, including against (threatening and abusive) anti-social behaviour.

This briefing on “Insulting words or behaviour”: Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 is worth a read for background.

It’s much wider than that. Ever since Peel core police roles have always included public safety and crime prevention. For example a police officer can direct people to stop or move elsewhere in order to reduce the likelihood of injury or damage to property- for example as part of crowd control in order to reduce the risk that someone else might be crushed.

[OneOffDave]

What people don't seem to realise is that the more they bitch about this rather than smiling, nodding and not acting like a dick, the more likely it becomes that the police will be given wider powers to enforce a stricter lock down. The other weekend when people showed they couldn't do social distancing and all piled into the national parks and the seaside brought the current measures on faster.

[FlammableFlower]

Heh, if you're going to do it properly, try following Turkmenistan:

Turkmenistan banned the media from using the word “coronavirus”. An international media freedom watchdog says the autocratic ex-Soviet nation of Turkmenistan has banned the media from using the word “coronavirus”, AP reports.

It can't hurt you if it doesn't exist...

[discovolante]

I did get quite annoyed during my brief stint in criminal defence at how many people got arrested and sometimes charged for pretty much not much more than 'acting like a dick', usually under the public order act. It got worse with public space protection orders.

So i guess this is now just a taster for the rest of us of what it's like for a lot of people who get hassled by the police on a regular basis *strokes chin*.

[Grumble]

What people don't seem to realise is that the more they bitch about this rather than smiling, nodding and not acting like a dick, the more likely it becomes that the police will be given wider powers to enforce a stricter lock down. The other weekend when people showed they couldn't do social distancing and all piled into the national parks and the seaside brought the current measures on faster.

Not acting like a dick doesn’t mean giving the police carte blanche. Anyway, the opposite seems to have actually happened, with police being told to follow the law and not the guidelines/ministerial statements.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... SApp_Other

[Woodchopper]

What people don't seem to realise is that the more they bitch about this rather than smiling, nodding and not acting like a dick, the more likely it becomes that the police will be given wider powers to enforce a stricter lock down. The other weekend when people showed they couldn't do social distancing and all piled into the national parks and the seaside brought the current measures on faster.

Not acting like a dick doesn’t mean giving the police carte blanche. Anyway, the opposite seems to have actually happened, with police being told to follow the law and not the guidelines/ministerial statements.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... SApp_Other

Good that’s been clarified.

[lpm]

I don't think Britain can ever become a police state - we only spent a few seconds being outraged by their overreach and moved on to taking the piss, which is a more effective approach. Using a drone to try and find isolated walkers will forever be an amusing symbol of this brief interlude.

[Bird on a Fire]

I don't think Britain can ever become a police state - we only spent a few seconds being outraged by their overreach and moved on to taking the piss, which is a more effective approach. Using a drone to try and find isolated walkers will forever be an amusing symbol of this brief interlude.

A while ago I read Blueprint for Revolution by Srđa Popović, an activist against the Milošević regime in Serbia who now runs a kind of consultancy for potential revolutionaries. One of his main pieces of advice for resisting regimes is to take the piss and make other people laugh, as the joke only becomes funnier when the authoritarians get angry and try to stomp down on it.

Orwell noted the British inability to take things too seriously in The Lion and the Unicorn and proposed it as one of the reasons fascism didn't fully take root in Britain in the 1930s. What struck me most with that essay was how little has changed in terms of the British national character and the nature of its politics.

[raven]

Orwell noted the British inability to take things too seriously in The Lion and the Unicorn

Yep, we're still an irreverant bunch. Hence all those tweets of Mecca bingo halls directed at that chap on Fox News who said Birmingham was a muslim-only city.

Russia is passing laws to give up to 7 years in prison for breaking quarantine and 5 years for spreading false information about Covid-19. The UK coronavirus bill will just, according to gov.uk's description:

"....enable the police and immigration officers to detain a person, for a limited period, who is, or may be, infectious and to take them to a suitable place to enable screening and assessment."

[Cardinal Fang]

Russia is passing laws to give up to 7 years in prison for breaking quarantine and 5 years for spreading false information about Covid-19. The UK coronavirus bill will just, according to gov.uk's description:

"....enable the police and immigration officers to detain a person, for a limited period, who is, or may be, infectious and to take them to a suitable place to enable screening and assessment."

So someone like me who is NHS, but not frontline (so not eligable for testing yet), but who has extremely vulnerable family who they'd like to see but can't because it's too risky - if I went near some coppers and started coughing (obviously not too near as to risk infevting anyone), do you think they'd take me away and test me? Then I'd know if I was okay to see family or not

CF

[Pucksoppet]

What people don't seem to realise is that the more they bitch about this rather than smiling, nodding and not acting like a dick, the more likely it becomes that the police will be given wider powers to enforce a stricter lock down. The other weekend when people showed they couldn't do social distancing and all piled into the national parks and the seaside brought the current measures on faster.

Hi OOD. Hope the work isn't getting you down.

The key point is 'not acting like a dick'.

The cases we are discussing are where it looks like the people acting like dicks are the police, not the members of the general public.

Most intelligent people 'get' physical distancing, and will decry the crowding at beauty spots. Hopping in a car and driving somewhere where you are less likely to meet people, and keeping a physical distance of more than 2 metres is easy, doesn't look dickish. Being told not to by someone with an arguably incorrect understanding of the law, but who has the power to make your life difficult doesn't make the general public think the 'powers that be' are being sensible (in both senses of the word).

Doing things like requiring people to park in every other parking space, sitting in every other seat on public transport and in public seating, and instituting one-way systems for walking in popular spots would be sensible. Sending up drones to target isolated walkers: not sensible. Telling people they can only spend an hour on their allotment: not sensible.

The general public are pig-headed, and if they think they are being bossed about for no good reason, they will kick up at it. There is a fine line to be walked to maintain the good will and cooperation of the general public, because if you lose it, it is very hard to get back.

[raven]

So someone like me who is NHS, but not frontline (so not eligable for testing yet), but who has extremely vulnerable family who they'd like to see but can't because it's too risky - if I went near some coppers and started coughing (obviously not too near as to risk infevting anyone), do you think they'd take me away and test me? Then I'd know if I was okay to see family or not

CF

And isn't that a sad comment on our testing regime. Although, I'd want to know what the false positive/false negative rate was before I risked visiting based on the result.

And you'd probably get 10 weeks for the coughing on police bit. (Someone in Oxfordshire did: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18346 ... cers-face/)

@Pucksoppet - Those are some really sensible ideas. I'd say suggest them to someone in authority, but I don't think you need to. Last week I noticed people were parking in alternate spaces at the local shops instead of in the closest space to the door like they usually do. People aren't stupid.

[bagpuss]

@Pucksoppet - Those are some really sensible ideas. I'd say suggest them to someone in authority, but I don't think you need to. Last week I noticed people were parking in alternate spaces at the local shops instead of in the closest space to the door like they usually do. People aren't stupid.

Except when they are.

I went to the dentist this morning (urgent treatment needed, not just for a checkup, I'm not mad and nor are they). I parked in the quieter of the 2 local car parks. It's a fair sized car park, 100-150 ish spaces. There were 7 cars parked in it when I arrived. Three of them were parked in adjacent spaces - the first spaces in front of you as you drive in. They're not even the nearest spaces to anywhere, other spaces are closer to the edge of the car park, but they're the quickest and easiest ones to park in, by a tiny amount that probably saves a second or two at most.

People can be very stupid.

[Gfamily]

@Pucksoppet - Those are some really sensible ideas. I'd say suggest them to someone in authority, but I don't think you need to. Last week I noticed people were parking in alternate spaces at the local shops instead of in the closest space to the door like they usually do. People aren't stupid.

Except when they are.

I went to the dentist this morning (urgent treatment needed, not just for a checkup, I'm not mad and nor are they). I parked in the quieter of the 2 local car parks. It's a fair sized car park, 100-150 ish spaces. There were 7 cars parked in it when I arrived. Three of them were parked in adjacent spaces - the first spaces in front of you as you drive in. They're not even the nearest spaces to anywhere, other spaces are closer to the edge of the car park, but they're the quickest and easiest ones to park in, by a tiny amount that probably saves a second or two at most.

People can be very stupid.

To be honest, it only takes 1 person to result in 3 cars being in adjacent spaces.

[lpm]

I didn't realise cars could get infected.

[bagpuss]

I didn't realise cars could get infected.

Easy to accidentally touch a car that's very close to yours, thus leaving the virus on it if you're infected, or potentially acquiring the virus if someone else has already splatted it all over said car. Or if you happen to arrive back at the same time as the other driver, then you're potentially going to be nearer than necessary.

I mean, it's hardly a major risk, I agree, but in a car park of well over 100 spaces with a mere handful of cars parked, why take even the tiny risk when you could just park a few spaces further over - and nearer to wherever you're going to be going on foot when you get out?

[bagpuss]

@Pucksoppet - Those are some really sensible ideas. I'd say suggest them to someone in authority, but I don't think you need to. Last week I noticed people were parking in alternate spaces at the local shops instead of in the closest space to the door like they usually do. People aren't stupid.

Except when they are.

I went to the dentist this morning (urgent treatment needed, not just for a checkup, I'm not mad and nor are they). I parked in the quieter of the 2 local car parks. It's a fair sized car park, 100-150 ish spaces. There were 7 cars parked in it when I arrived. Three of them were parked in adjacent spaces - the first spaces in front of you as you drive in. They're not even the nearest spaces to anywhere, other spaces are closer to the edge of the car park, but they're the quickest and easiest ones to park in, by a tiny amount that probably saves a second or two at most.

People can be very stupid.

To be honest, it only takes 1 person to result in 3 cars being in adjacent spaces.

Indeed, I'm not saying otherwise.

[lpm]

For the time being I've stopped my hobby of licking random cars in multi-storey carparks. I think that's sufficient to reduce my risk to the nano probability level.

[bagpuss]

For the time being I've stopped my hobby of licking random cars in multi-storey carparks. I think that's sufficient to reduce my risk to the nano probability level.

I hope you cope with the lifestyle change.

[lpm]

Believe me, we're all pretty distraught over on our forum, lickable.science. The debates we have. Some people say cars all taste the same, except for the orange ones. Others claim they can identify makes and colours blindford. Oh, the taste of a silver Rav4 on a summers day! And wow, a light blue Honda Jazz in winter when they're gritting the roads - the added salty tang! And the rare old classics - if you ever see a Talbot Alpine at a classic cars show do not miss your chance.

[JQH]

I don't think Britain can ever become a police state - we only spent a few seconds being outraged by their overreach and moved on to taking the piss, which is a more effective approach. Using a drone to try and find isolated walkers will forever be an amusing symbol of this brief interlude.

One could certainly argue that playing with a drone in the peak district is not an essential use of police time. I'm sure it was more fun than dispersing crowds in town centres.

[veravista]

Just seen this on our local Faecebook group, Derbyshire (as always) again..

“I've just been stopped by the police on my way back from the supermarket! I was asked to open my boot to show I had actually been shopping. My reg has been taken & if I get stopped again & my journey is not essential I'll be fined. Be careful - Derbyshire Police are all over it”.

Not sure if that's strictly legal. (May not even be true, but I can believe it from the person who it came from)

[Bird on a Fire]

Believe me, we're all pretty distraught over on our forum, lickable.science. The debates we have. Some people say cars all taste the same, except for the orange ones. Others claim they can identify makes and colours blindford. Oh, the taste of a silver Rav4 on a summers day! And wow, a light blue Honda Jazz in winter when they're gritting the roads - the added salty tang! And the rare old classics - if you ever see a Talbot Alpine at a classic cars show do not miss your chance.

I super lolled at this.