Sorry Steve but I've got to 100% disagree with you on this one. Firstly outside of London you'll very rarley find and big, intimidating, scary police-quite often you'll get a 20 years old women in a car on her own or a spotty 19 year old fresh out of training. Secondly the majority of "police" in the UK now are Community Saftey Wardens without powers of arrest/CS spray etc.Originally Posted by dcfcsteve
The police normally come from miles away (Surrey police force is shortly to be run from Kent) and have no knowledge of locals/situations they are walking into.
Also very few police officers on the ground have any idea of legislation.
I was recently involed ina peaceful protest outside a Total petrol station on the International day of Action Against Total. Two police arrived, bullied protestors into giving their names (Which turned out to be illegal and all names were remvoed from record), and trying to move on the prostestors by telling them than the cars beeping their horns in support were causing a breach of the peaace (on a main road!) and every driver who beeped could be find £200! Needless to say the country police force was v. emabressed to hear about this behaviour! Furthermore the police didn't have a clue what the protest was about and had to ask me to explain-it would have taken 2 minutes when they got the call ("the is a protest at the Total station") to phone their buddies in the Met up the road ("any idea about protests at Total petrol stations?") and get the answer ("yea it's the international day of action-big protests at the HQ up here") and then go in on level footing knowing what the protest was about, that it was an international event and being able to talk to the protestors rather than spending the first 20 mintues unsure whether it was a human rights or animal rights protest (despite the mssive "Free Burma" banner!)
Frankl-at groudn level the police force in England are pretty pathetic. MAybe living in London you've got a better view as they obviously have best officers/bestequipment/best organisation-but outside the capital it's a different story. The police here have very little respect and just make it worse by their mis-handling of situation which looses the confidence of those of us who previously held an open mind.
The police round here lsot enough respect when two of them raped a suspect
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