"rail" wrote in message
...
In message
"John Rowland" wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

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.

I believe that was a significant event. In particular, since the Menezes
whitewash I have frequently seen police vehicles pull up at a red light,
wait for ten seconds, get bored, put on the flashing lights, drive
through
the junction and then put the lights off again. I never saw this once in
the years before the Menezes whitewash. It might seem like a little
thing,
but it's highly visible (unlike all the other things they might get up
to)
and it suggests that the Menezes whitewash has changed the police's
mentality from "the law must be obeyed" to "*we* must be obeyed by
*you*".
Once a police car even pulled up behind me in Greenwich town centre and
put the sirens on (at 3am!) causing me to drive through the red light
out
of their way, and then they drove through the lights and put the sirens
off. They really couldn't care less, since Menezes.



Are you aware why they switch the sirens off once they have crossed the
junction?




I am sure the official reason will be that it so they are not heard by the
criminals at the scene they are going to but we all know that they misuse
it all the time. Like the excuse for parking on double-yellow lines is
always that they are investigating a crime when we all know they are
regularly seen leaving the "scene of the crime" with takeaways, burgers,
chips etc presumably all very important evidence?