Anyone who knows me well enough to have heard me talk about the police/the law will know that, slightly unusually for the type of lefty hippy liberal type I am, I am generally disposed to support the police, because, well I grew up with them.
I think it’s extremely important to bear in mind that for every bad apple you hear about, there are plenty of the poor bastards doing a job that is a) completely essential, b) completely thankless, c) extremely hard, d) often dangerous, e) will naturally erode any faith you had in humanity, etc etc. I could go on.
Anyway, I’m generally disposed to look favourably on the police.
So I’m interested in people’s responses to these two posts:
What do they contain that you didn’t already know? Might they influence your reactions if you were ever to find yourself unjustly nicked in these sort of circumstances?
I’m also quite interested in responses to that “If you don’t show up at an agreed time, I’ll come round and nick you at a really inconvenient time” bit. Is it the action of petty sod abusing his authority to make life hard for some all too probably innocent member of the public, or is it a more-or-less reasonable human response of a copper who started out trying to make things easy for the person, only to have it cast up in their face, and thus a load of extra work generated? (Especially since it happens on a pretty routine basis.)
(For the record: I don’t know. I think it’s a human response, and I’d probably do the same thing. Doesn’t make it OK, but I find it hard to condemn someone for doing the same sort of thing I’d probably do in their place. I don’t know if it’s reasonable/sensible to expect the police to behave to a higher standard 24/7.)