Ok the girl in the following video was taunting the policeman, but what happened to policing by consent? When did it become legal for the police to administer instant corporal punishment?
Something has to change and pretty quickly, before the police alienate us all in the way the politicians have. If respect for the police finally breaks down completely, the consequences will be truly and frighteningly disastrous.
6 comments:
I'm in 2 minds on this one.
One the one hand, we don't want the police to be a form of protected thugs.
However, we're only seeing a short clip of what happened. We don't know what kind of provocation the protestor was giving the policeman in the build up to this.
Plus, she's (presumably) a tree-hugging hippie so............Hehehehe
Dear me young chap.....but I do get your point.
Assuming she was a gobby little sod, which is what I concluded when I first saw it, why not just nick her and charge her under Section 10 of the public order act?
Batons should only be used in self-defence and I don't think a great big cop like that felt really in danger from a little green veggie nerd like her.
Now if she'd been eating duck, lamb and foie gras for the last 20 years, who knows how strong she would be?
Think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one old boy ;-)
The police today are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand you get people saying they're too soft on crime, focusing more on paperwork and catching people who put too much rubbish in their bins, or speeding motorists etc.
Then on the other hand, when they show their teeth a bit they get jumped on for police brutality.
On the day of the protests, the police would have been pretty jumpy anyway, knowing what the hardcore element of these protestors were like and having seen previous anti-capitalist protests descend into all out riots at various times around the globe.
I don't sympathise with any of the protestors on this particular day, especially the ones who may have been rapped with a baton. They will have been warned, they will have been asked to move on, they will have been asked to stop hurling abuse and swearing at the officer (which is in itself an offence, I believe).
I look at this more as a case of tough love, if you will. Hopefully she'll learn her lesson and be more careful when trying to wind up the police in an already tense situation, in the future.
The police may have been jumpey but should be trained enough, and self-disciplined enough, to diffuse a situation like that.
If a parent or teacher smacks a child they will be in trouble. Why not the police?
If somebody persistently gobs off at me am I OK to give them a slap on the back of the legs with a stick?
Yes, when demos become violent then due force to preserve order. But this is becoming first rather than last resort.
By the way, I think teachers and parents should be allowed to smack their kids, as a last resort.
But a line has to be drawn somewhere. The police can't just stand there and put up with abuse and threats. I was at an anti-BNP rally (not as a supporter of the BNP I hasten to add, as a nosy bystander wondering wtf was going on) when Nick Griffin met Jean-Marie Le Pen at a hotel in Altrincham.
The police there were tasked to protect Griffin's car as it was driven away with the 2 Nazi's in the back. I'm sure most of the police officers there weren't happy about it and find Griffin and his party as abhorrent as the rest of us, but it's their job and they had to do it. There was a cordon of about 15 policemen around the car, whilst a load of protestors tried to get at it.
It all started to get heated, things being thrown etc etc and when the dust had settled, I'll never forget some anti-BNP protestor with dreadlocks bragging to his mate about smacking a policeman in the face and watching his 'nose explode across his face'.
These are the kinds of people the police have to deal with. People are quick to assume that it's only football hooligans or far-right skinheads capable of violence, when the far-left are just as bad.
I believe the police are well trained, and will only resort to force when they have no other alternative.
That is vile and I agree, it is invariably the left who goad the police, and often attack them as on 1st May so often.
But they need to behave in the disciplined way you mention all the time. As with anything I think it is the minority of cops who let the majority down, as with many things.
I still support tougher penalties for those who attack or murder the police, as a deterrent but also because they represent and protect us, that's what I mean by policing by consent. But the minority of thugs in the police need weeding out as do the nutters on the streets.
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