Percy Moo as Einstein

Percy Moo as Einstein
Dog=Einstein2

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Plebgate; Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodies? Or, My Own Tuppenceworth


Someone I know once voiced, rather sententiously, the none-too-original opinion that anyone who wants to join the police force shouldn’t be allowed to. Obviously, there are many selfless bobbies out there whose vocation is to serve the common weal and who, tragically, lose their lives so doing. There are also many who forget that it is not their person, but their office which demands the respect of the public. Thus it is in all public service. When a court rises as the judge enters, it is to honour the judiciary as a whole and not the individual in the robes and wig.


I AM THE LAW!
And so it should be with the police. Unfortunately, it would seem, many officers demand that the rest of us respect their office while they themselves do not, as the latest Jimmy Savile revelations would appear to demonstrate. The police seem to think that they can act with impunity or worse. they sometimes delude themselves into thinking that they are the Law, like the post-apocolyptic Judge Dredd from the excellent 2000AD comic, and not its servants.

I think that a lot of people are getting tired, even the Prime Minister David Cameron, with the illegitimate interference of the long-cossetted police and the Police Federation in the political life of our country.

The breathaking arrogance of the police is in the news yet again with the treatment of the three Police Federation officers who after a meeting with Andrew Mitchell MP gave a false account of the content of the meeting. Their  reprehensible behaviour has resulted in their being… erm, told they were naughty boys and not to do it again? Here is my own personal experience of certain officer believing that being a copper conferred upon him/her some sort of superiority over the rest of us mere mortals.

Last year, when surfing Twitterdom, I came across a private tweet written by a police officer at the Northampton Police Cells who tweeted about life there. The tweets were written during working hours and gave the impression that they were, at the very least, tweeted with the knowledge of superior officers.  Apparently this was not the case.

I eventually protested to the Northants Police when the tweeter boasted: “Called in to start work early. Bed to office in 25 mins! I impressed myself.” When I asked the officer if s/he had respected the speed limits and traffic lights I got no reply.
The officer also tweeted this picture:
A none-too agreeable mugshot
It looks extremely like a mug, and if so was probably produced in quite large numbers and sold to correspondingly large numbers of police officers. The background wording tells us this is a British, not US, police mug. Don’t you find the message in black arrogant and insulting? I do.

If we speculate that large numbers of this mug were produced and sold, what dear reader does this tell us about our police forces? Nothing good, I fear. 

As a result of my complaint, the officer was told to shut down the twitter account, @NorpolCustody. Apart from that I don’t know if, except for a good talking-to, the officer was in any way disciplined. No rubber hoses or falling down the stairs in this case! 

1 comment:

  1. The "Plebgate" affair is certainly very worrying. Despite the documentary evidence of police mendacity, the officers' respective police forces and the Police Federation continue to act as though it is they who have been slandered by the IPCC. If the police are prepared to continue to lie in public in the face of evidence of their untruth, what might they not do when it comes to providing evidence of the supposed guilt of the people they charge with offences?

    There possibly are good police officers who intend to follow the rules but if the institution is corrupt, these officers will make no headway. Either they will end up compromising or they will be hounded out.

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