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Political police.

  • 6th Oct, 2008 at 6:53 PM
legiron2

Police chiefs are to seek assurances from politicians - of all parties - that they will not interfere in police work.

An excellent sentiment. One I agree with entirely, as, I'm sure, would most people. It's eleven years too late, but it's surfaced at last. This has come about because of the removal of that paragon of the PC, Iain Blair. The rest of the chief constables are concerned that they might be next. So they want politicians to promise not to meddle in police affairs. I mean, it's not as if the police would ever use politican-style weasel words and spin, is it?

Where have all you Chief Constables been? Hiding away among the technicoloured landscape of PC-land? The politicians already control your forces. Where do you think those insane target-driven mechanisms come from? The new way of policing that makes the criminal the victim, and the victim the criminal? Do you think your officers took it upon themselves to make up new laws on the spot? To stop and search the obviously innocent so that they can tick the right boxes and prove they aren't 'profiling' (ie. looking for actual criminals)?

Political correctness is politics. It is enforced by politics. The police have been overrun by, and are controlled entirely by, politicians and politically correct subversives. The politicians can easily promise, with hands on that place where real people have hearts, that they will not interfere further. They have no need. Their agents are already in place.

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that senior officers were extremely concerned that Sir Ian Blair’s sudden departure from Scotland Yard had “fundamentally altered the perception of policing independence”.

No, I'm afraid it didn't even cause one raised eyebrow among the public. We already knew that politics ran the police. Everyone - except, apparently, these senior officers - was fully aware of it.

Another senior police chief said: “There is a line that the politicians must not cross — they must not start telling chief constables how to do their job. Operational independence is critical. If they cross that line, chiefs will walk away from the job.”

They must not start? They started a long time ago. Did you miss it? That fine line was erased years ago. The police now work for the Government, not the people. We can't trust them now, and they make it clear that they don't trust us. Politicians likewise.

Speaking at the Conservative conference this week, David Cameron signalled that he was uncomfortable with Mr Johnson’s idea of stripping the Met of its national responsibility for terrorism in order to give the Mayor greater control over the force.

Why does the Met have national responsibility for terrorism? There are other police forces - are they to ignore terrorists and leave it all to Scotland Yard? Besides, the councils all have anti-terrorist powers and are putting them to good use against people who might put a tin in the glass bin, who might add one bag too many to that bin, who might be sending their child to the wrong school, who might have a visitor without filling in the proper forms.

The Mayor is an elected official. All chiefs of police should be. If Boris makes a mess of policing, he'll be out at the next election. Can the same be said of any Chief Constable?

Mr Cameron asked: “Is change, is that big upheaval, the right thing to do when we are facing a terrorist threat?”

We, the public, don't feel all that threatened by terrorists, to be honest. We are more scared when taking photos in the street, of having a quiet smoke or a drink, of being in a park where children are playing, of being arrested in possession of a map and some photos, than we are of being blown to bits by some bearded loon in Afghanistan. We are not scared of terrorists, Mr. Cameron. We are scared of the police, of the park keeper, the bin collector, the pseudoplods, the undercover Council Stasi. We are scared of being monitored every minute of the day, soon to be extended to every phone call, Email and web page we visit. We are scared of being stopped and searched in the street when we have done nothing wrong, and arrested for walking with a stick.

Terrorists? Don't make me laugh, Mr. Cameron. We are not scared of terrorists.

We are scared of you and your continuation of the Labour Reich once the Gorgon is gone.

Politics and police are the same thing now. The police are simply the militant wing of Westminster. Boris Johnson has started the process of unravelling that. He is not 'politicising the police'. His actions might be the first steps in depoliticising them. Or they might not be. It's too soon to tell.

Politicians no longer work for the people. Neither do the police. It's no use pretending otherwise any more.

Mr. Cameron, this country needs change. It needs a big upheaval, and it will be far less damaging if you do it before it happens by itself. If you learn nothing else from Labour, learn from their biggest mistake of all.

When you say 'I am listening', the next step is to actually shut up and listen.

Give it a try.

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Comments

( 6 comments — Leave a comment )
(Anonymous) wrote:
6th Oct, 2008 19:27 (UTC)
I borrowed it
I hope you don't mind. I've posted it on another site. It was an excellent piece and I have credited it to you. I wish I could write so well.
[info]leg_iron wrote:
6th Oct, 2008 20:06 (UTC)
Re: I borrowed it
No problem. I'd be interested to know where it is.
(Anonymous) wrote:
6th Oct, 2008 19:35 (UTC)
I thought it was just me...
Well, well said. You might have added that the police were more than happy to politicise themselves when they backed-up Thatcher going after the NUM, or anyone who looked as if they might be sympathetic to the NUM. But then, that was plods getting stacks of overtime for giving some Northerners a good kicking.

Nothing to do with that nice, completely different Mr Cameron, obviously. He wasn't even born!
[info]leg_iron wrote:
6th Oct, 2008 20:05 (UTC)
Re: I thought it was just me...
Good point - governments down the ages have made occasional use of the police for political ends. Even so, most of us trusted the ones on the beat. Now we hide our cameras and cigarettes whenever they are around, and we don't make eye contact or do anything to draw attention. Now the political interference is continuous.

It's not a new phenomenon but it's certainly much worse than it was, and that's down to political correctness, targets, box-ticking and human rights for those who don't act human. Individual policemen aren't at fault here. It's the whole wretched system that's broken.

I don't think Cameron is like Thatcher. I think he's more like Blair. And I don't think politicians are born. I think they are grown in vats beneath Westminster, fed on the slops that overflow the trough.

I expect we'll hear more of the 'We are listening' from the Tories but I don't, in all honesty, expect it to be any more true than the Labour line.

I would be delighted to be wrong about that.
(Anonymous) wrote:
7th Oct, 2008 10:00 (UTC)
Delighted to be wrong?
Sadly, there will be a long queue standing alongside you. And we won't be delighted. The only, only thing we can do is stop voting for two increasingly identical "I'm better than the old one because I'm even more of the same thing" parties.

It's sad that the only visible policy is expediency, irrespective of whichever party claims the stated policy. If Rupert Murdoch or the Mail don't back it, it doesn't get mentioned again.

Saddest of all is that we continue to buy the papers and vote for these cartoon characters and go and fight in their nonsensical wars whenever we're asked.
(Anonymous) wrote:
7th Oct, 2008 07:45 (UTC)
I thought it was just me...
Well, well said. You might have added that the police were more than happy to politicise themselves when they backed-up Thatcher going after the NUM, or anyone who looked as if they might be sympathetic to the NUM. But then, that was plods getting stacks of overtime for giving some Northerners a good kicking.

Nothing to do with that nice, completely different Mr Cameron, obviously. He wasn't even born!
( 6 comments — Leave a comment )