On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, Mizter T wrote:

On Apr 18, 9:20*am, Jeremy Double wrote:

Tony Polson wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

[snip]

I am really utterly perplexed by how the police maange to get away with
being a bunch of incompetent thugs. Not that there aren't good individual
policemen, but there are certainly some very bad ones, and the
organisation as a whole is a disaster. It just seems that nobody with the
power to do anything about it gives a toss. Or has it just not occurred to
people that things could be any better?

The government is well aware of the problem. *A couple of years ago it
tried to bounce police forces into merging into a much smaller number of
much larger forces. *Unfortunately for the government, the police
rebelled, and so did the local councils whose ineffectual police
authorities may well be at the root of the problem.

I don't pretend to know whether bigger would be better, but the Home
Office seemed to be convinced that it was.

However, it's interesting that most of the complaints come from the
Metropolitan Police area, the same police force that shot an innocent
man on a tube train, and incidentally the biggest police force in the UK.

I don't actually think that basing a critique of the Met on that event
- the killing of de Menezes - is particularly effective at all. Be in
no doubt, it was an abhorrent screw up of the first order, but to
extrapolate from this one very unusual event ideas about how other
more regular day-to-day policing happens in the capital is not a
strong argument at all.

But we don't need to extrapolate to day-to-day policing. The activities of
the specialist central commands like the counter-terrorist guys and the
Territorial Support Group (ie riot police) can be criticised on their own.

Mind you, my experience of day-to-day policing in London is not great,
either. A while ago, i as approached by two guys in a car who asked me if
i wanted to buy a laptop, waving one at me, and who sped off when i said
no. I phoned the police to report the sale of stolen goods, giving the
plate number of the car, and the officer who took my call said he was
going to record it, but that basically, nothing would be done.

And yet they can still seem to find dozens of officers to police entirely
harmless Critical Mass rides (up until a few months ago, at least), and
enough to fill a quarter-mile line of vans for Arsenal matches. It's
almost as if the police saw public order as their job, with the prevention
and detection of crime as a sideline.

tom

--
There are lousy reviews, and then there's empirical ****ness. -- pikelet