Published on 12, July, 2020
Recently in another thread, a few of us started talking about our experiences at the hands of our police force, in the "Autistic son" thread and the discussion took an unexpected turn, where a number of people stepped up including myself, to pass comment.
Subsequently, an organised assault was made on several of people's accounts, where our complaints and refusal to accept the reframing of truth offered by the pro-police faction was said to be "abuse". I've since spent a fair bit of time talking to my mostly NT friends and acquaintances about their experiences, with our modern police force, and it seems my experiences are not so unique.
Most people I know have very little involvement with the police, and generally are complimentary UNTIL they DO need some help and find out how it really works. Here of course, we are more likely to have interactions with them directly, so there is a greater pool of experience available.
SO PLEASE:
Down vote me. if you believe they serve us well, and up vote me if your think they serve someone or something else who isn't us, the paying public.
If you have any stories (good or bad) which you wish to share, feel free to do that, below.
Tried to do a POLL as requested & got an incomprehensible error message and today is not a day where I feel like struggling with someone else's software. (Having used & administrated forums by https://www.phpbb.com/ mostly, I'm not finding this one easy to work with at all).
Just up or down vote my OP using teh little up down arrows. Be careful though, once you've clicked on up or down, your vote is in and can be changed, but not undone.
It's a yes no question, and both the scores and voters are transparent to the audience.
I'll have to sit on the fence, I'm afraid.
I'll confess, I'm an ex police trainer, specialising thing equality and diversity amongst other things. My colleagues and I fought the good fight...Shall I say I worked with some great coppers who were compassionate and wanted only to serve the community well, and then there were the others... enough said. Made the news enough of late with poor attitude toward race, eh? And to anyone who has had an adverse experience, I believe you.
All I can say is I know which ones I want to knock on my door if my house were robbed. What I'm saying is as individuals there are good coppers and bad coppers...
The real debate in my view is about police leadership. The tone of their officers' comportment is set at the top, as are the policies which govern police behaviour.
It is important, I think to do what you are doing, keep raising the concerns when things go wrong and get these issues to the leadership's ear.
Ultimately police with bad tendencies will only curb them if they believe they will get into trouble if they don’t. Does the average Sargent or inspector really know what his subordinates get upto on patrol? This is why mandatory body cams for all police is a good idea. Footage which complaints should have an automatic right to a copy of when they lodge a complaint. Because let’s be blunt, the cps doesn’t like to bring criminal prosicutions against the police unless beaten around the head with a preponderance of evidence that realistically complainants will have to collect themselves.
its been recommended to the government tons of times and yet still they drag their heals.