Policemen are not our Enemy
Apr. 19th, 2009 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
After the Late Unpleasantness at Bishopsgate, I've thankfully seen a very sensible attitude towards the police from all my friends-list. A couple of times, though, I've seen commenters talking about "pigs" or "filth", as though the police were some monumental dehumanized bloc. Please, if someone does this on your journal, point them to this.
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Date: 2009-04-19 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-19 04:58 pm (UTC)I think the problem with the police is that while they undoubtedly do a sterling job most of the time, their failures really show up, just as a doctor's few mistakes can have very grave consequences. I'm sure I've had good contacts with the police, but the occasions that stick in my head are when I called the police because a neighbour was having her door beaten down and subsequently being assaulted by her partner, whom the police decided to believe when he said he was "worried about his girlfriend" and let off the hook; or the time when two friends of mine were mugged a five minutes' walk from the police station but it took the police forty minutes to get there, by which point my friends should probably have been at the hospital instead of waiting about after being kicked in the head.
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Date: 2009-04-19 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-19 06:16 pm (UTC)Here people decided that one irresponsible policeman meant they were all *exactly* the same. There is still an (active) group threatening to kill police officers simply for being police officers, they've shot at them, bombed police stations and cars, it's just crazy. And while I understand the reason behind the uproar, I do not agree with the poor excuse it's become to act out and deem the entire police force as filthy scum.
One bad apple does not make the whole orchard rotten.
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Date: 2009-04-19 06:52 pm (UTC)I do believe that this has been precisely the problem during the G20 protests: 90 complaints and counting, and lots of lovely independent video to corroborate something we've known about for years, and both individuals and insitutional structures have been denying.
Turns out--just for example--that some police officers were blacking out their numbers, an accusation that has been made and denies for well over thirty years.
So while I agree with your post about language, I'm not sure I agree with your title.
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Date: 2009-04-19 10:05 pm (UTC)Fundamentally, I think, I just don't want to think of all this in terms of Enemies. I'm sure there are some people who'd see that as a weakness on my part; I know you're not one of them.
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Date: 2009-04-20 07:05 am (UTC)The police really are there to control us, protection is pretty far down the list.
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Date: 2009-04-20 11:39 am (UTC)Speaking of misunderstandings, here's (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8007580.stm) a juicy one -
former shadow home secretary David Davis said the actions of a minority of police officers had undermined the trust and confidence of the public.
"We have a police force in this country, uniquely in the world.... [which] comes from Robert Peel's original proposal the police will be of the public and the public will be of the police. They are indistinguishable, they are the public in uniform. And that trust and confidence is critical."
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Date: 2009-04-20 03:19 pm (UTC)How are you finding the way the media is continuing to cover this? From reading the BBC, I think it's improving, but they still do things like quote the police (or their pals) as saying that the kettling was essential to contain the violence, without mentioning that it wasn't a violent situation and that many believe that kettling, when used in those circumstances, is actually more likely to create hostility.
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Date: 2009-04-20 03:41 pm (UTC)As an aside: Jerry White's NIneteenth Century London argues that the police were deliberately drawn from rural areas, both because of better health and height and precisely because they would have no local loyalties.
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Date: 2009-04-20 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 03:56 pm (UTC)