POLICE. Do they serve us well? - POLL!

for every 1 bad police experience you see there are 1000 great experiences you dont hear about. police helping kids get home going to communities and being a positive experience. there is a guy who has a facebook page and he is a really respected officer in his community. 

not to forget most of the time the bad experiences with police context is always missing. some of them you see the camera footage and the police cross the line for no reason but other times the person provokes and doesnt listen which makes police feel they are hiding something.

every experience ive had with the police has been fine. stopped and searched many times and not once have they been forceful or aggressive i comply and they do their job appropriately then i go home safe. if you have nothing to hide just comply. if someone breaks into your house or comes to attack you you can call the police they come to your aid.

a lot of these times people have let social media warp their perspective on police or they have not been compliant with police which creates a hostile atmosphere. also its good to know your rights just dont be disrespectful about it.

Vesters, thank you for your input. I am glad you feel you have had good experiences interacting with the police, although you only actually describe being "stopped and searched", which I'll grant you can be an amusing experience, if you get the right copper, but generally, I've had some pretty disgusting interactions with the police mostly as a victim of crime.

Some good ones, when I've been a "useful & intelligent bystander", and some truly awful ones back when I was a "minority of interest" A motorcyclist in the seventies / eighties. Oddly enough, on the very few times I have been caught doing something properly naughty, the police have treated me like "one of their own" almost., which confuses the hell out of me.

I personally hold that the "venn diagram of society" consists of three separate groups; Consisting of the Police, the criminals & US the prey. A Chief Inspector, who fell prey to me presenting this view to him at a social occasion, blamed "Home Office Guidelines" rather than choosing to attack the validity of my model... 

What about that?    

what do i make about it? stop and searches might be amusing experiences to you until someone feels they are being violated then we end up with a police officer being forced into a lose lose situation because someone is getting irate and disregarding the officer. 

people who are victims are in a vulnerable situation so i don't blame them for feeling like the police haven't done enough but there is only so much the police can do with their resources

i don't know if you are talking solely about 30 or 40 years ago but police now get held to account especially with all the cameras etc, the majority of them care about justice and doing the right thing. maybe there was more corruption but like the police chief said they are just doing what they are told to do. i couldn't walk into your business or workplace and tell you to operate out of the intended guild lines or you'd get fired. even if it was more moral or right.

I try to see things from that perspective and judge an individual on an individuals action.

I started with a rude word. let's be more constructive.

Here's what I did. I immediatey as required, ceased all drone activity, and clearly advised the policeman that I had done so whilst apologising for my activites causing him an issue. When the CAA clarified the law last Christmas, my small toy drone activities no longer became a hazerd to aviation, which was the original reason given for asking me to stop flying in my back garden.

This impediment to my micro aviation aspirations removed, I wrote to him again to ask him if he felt there was any reason I should not resume my activities, which were now no longer held to be a breach of the law or health and safety. 

I have not enjoyed the courtesy of a reply, unlike the Civil Aviation Authority who were very quick to respond and assure me twice, that my proposed acivities are in full compliance.

Now, here's the thing. My only actual offence ever committed in six years of drone flying over my own back garden occurred the day I exceeded my usual very small flying area. It was the day I finally mastered the flying and spacial perception issues I'd been having well enough to fly a big figure of eight high up in the sky instead of the usual timourous hovering. ON a previous attempt I'd lost the same model to a gust of wind and inconvenient high tree, but having replaced teh copter and practiced a lot more this was my big day, where I could fly a bit further away and retain control. So I did. Briefly.

A couple of days later I had at my partners front door a policeman asking me a lot of questions which eventually boiled down to "someone thinks you are using your copter to spy on their kids". After getting shot of him and his stupidity, I screwed up my courage, and went door to door wth a questionaire/agreement form and canvassed my neighbours both who I already had informal agreements with, and a whole slew of new ones, and won myself an "agreed flying area" in some cases with "land away permissions" and "Photography" permissions, so as my competence and capabilty improved, I had places to do that stuff. I found that everyone was very positive about my drones, some were perfectly happy for me to get "nosy" if my proposed casual FPV flying showed backyard intruders. In practice what very little photograhy or vieiwing I have manged has been astoundingly good at NOT observing people or anything thing else in great detail, which is exactly how I like it. So. I've got my flying area sorted, peopel haev been unexpectively supportive, my little drones apparently aren't bothersome, more of a curiousity it seems. So I keep on flying like I told the policeman I would.

Until I make the foolish mistake a year later of calling my local Airfield. Now, I've both worked at that airfield as an aircraft engineer and flown in an out of it as a private pilot, and I'm not in it's zoen of influence legally speaking and I fly my little drones cautiously about a kilometer off set from the extended centre line of the runway, and we'ev co-existed wthout any incident for 4 years or so, but I want to test fly a bigger one, (which back then I could, legally) It's like a bright orange small football with the arms sticking out and I know it could be seen in the distance from the air to one side of a departing aircraft. There were already people flying drones irresponsibly, just starting to make the news, and although completely within my rights as tehy were at the time to make these flights without asking anyone for permission, it seemed almost a proffessional courstesy to make myself known to the airfield and ask if they'd like to be notified when  flew anything "visible" so that if soem timorous pilot in teh circuit made a rperot they coudl reassure him! (I really did, as a (lapsed) pilot that was the right thing to do... They responded by misquoting the law I already had researched and checked and told me to cease and desist immediately. I put them right, backed up by the CAA, won my right to fly then the "Gatwick drone incident" occurred. 

At 09:00 hours exactly teh day tehri ATZ was extended as a result of that hoax, the airfield wrote to me to say "NOW you really can't fly over your back garden you little oik" and I got into with them until the policeman rang me up to tell me that not only had someone accused me of "voyeurism" but now I'd pissed off the local airfield, and was BREAKING THE LAW and if I flew anything again in my back garden he could come and make entry and seize all my gear!! HE was EMPHATIC that he could and would do this.

Hence me wanting to make sure that now the C.A.A. have clarified that my tiny copters pose no risk to aviation, and hence are not covered by the reguations, I am now legally good to resume my flying. 

BUT if I do, will PC oppressive be back in force to enter my long suffering partners house to seize my gear? It's hard enough keepiing a long term relationship togetehr as an Autist as it is, having the old bill trampling through her house won't make that any easier at all.  

Was that enough clarification?

I started with a rude word. let's be more constructive.

Here's what I did. I immediatey as required, ceased all drone activity, and clearly advised the policeman that I had done so whilst apologising for my activites causing him an issue. When the CAA clarified the law last Christmas, my small toy drone activities no longer became a hazerd to aviation, which was the original reason given for asking me to stop flying in my back garden.

This impediment to my micro aviation aspirations removed, I wrote to him again to ask him if he felt there was any reason I should not resume my activities, which were now no longer held to be a breach of the law or health and safety. 

I have not enjoyed the courtesy of a reply, unlike the Civil Aviation Authority who were very quick to respond and assure me twice, that my proposed acivities are in full compliance.

Now, here's the thing. My only actual offence ever committed in six years of drone flying over my own back garden occurred the day I exceeded my usual very small flying area. It was the day I finally mastered the flying and spacial perception issues I'd been having well enough to fly a big figure of eight high up in the sky instead of the usual timourous hovering. ON a previous attempt I'd lost the same model to a gust of wind and inconvenient high tree, but having replaced teh copter and practiced a lot more this was my big day, where I could fly a bit further away and retain control. So I did. Briefly.

A couple of days later I had at my partners front door a policeman asking me a lot of questions which eventually boiled down to "someone thinks you are using your copter to spy on their kids". After getting shot of him and his stupidity, I screwed up my courage, and went door to door wth a questionaire/agreement form and canvassed my neighbours both who I already had informal agreements with, and a whole slew of new ones, and won myself an "agreed flying area" in some cases with "land away permissions" and "Photography" permissions, so as my competence and capabilty improved, I had places to do that stuff. I found that everyone was very positive about my drones, some were perfectly happy for me to get "nosy" if my proposed casual FPV flying showed backyard intruders. In practice what very little photograhy or vieiwing I have manged has been astoundingly good at NOT observing people or anything thing else in great detail, which is exactly how I like it. So. I've got my flying area sorted, peopel haev been unexpectively supportive, my little drones apparently aren't bothersome, more of a curiousity it seems. So I keep on flying like I told the policeman I would.

Until I make the foolish mistake a year later of calling my local Airfield. Now, I've both worked at that airfield as an aircraft engineer and flown in an out of it as a private pilot, and I'm not in it's zoen of influence legally speaking and I fly my little drones cautiously about a kilometer off set from the extended centre line of the runway, and we'ev co-existed wthout any incident for 4 years or so, but I want to test fly a bigger one, (which back then I could, legally) It's like a bright orange small football with the arms sticking out and I know it could be seen in the distance from the air to one side of a departing aircraft. There were already people flying drones irresponsibly, just starting to make the news, and although completely within my rights as tehy were at the time to make these flights without asking anyone for permission, it seemed almost a proffessional courstesy to make myself known to the airfield and ask if they'd like to be notified when  flew anything "visible" so that if soem timorous pilot in teh circuit made a rperot they coudl reassure him! (I really did, as a (lapsed) pilot that was the right thing to do... They responded by misquoting the law I already had researched and checked and told me to cease and desist immediately. I put them right, backed up by the CAA, won my right to fly then the "Gatwick drone incident" occurred. 

At 09:00 hours exactly teh day tehri ATZ was extended as a result of that hoax, the airfield wrote to me to say "NOW you really can't fly over your back garden you little oik" and I got into with them until the policeman rang me up to tell me that not only had someone accused me of "voyeurism" but now I'd pissed off the local airfield, and was BREAKING THE LAW and if I flew anything again in my back garden he could come and make entry and seize all my gear!! HE was EMPHATIC that he could and would do this.

Hence me wanting to make sure that now the C.A.A. have clarified that my tiny copters pose no risk to aviation, and hence are not covered by the reguations, I am now legally good to resume my flying. 

BUT if I do, will PC oppressive be back in force to enter my long suffering partners house to seize my gear? It's hard enough keepiing a long term relationship togetehr as an Autist as it is, having the old bill trampling through her house won't make that any easier at all.  

Was that enough clarification?