Northumbria Police vs the Met.
What happens if you insult and abuse the Metropolitan Police?
Yes, that’s right. The Metropolitan Police choose to silence dissent by clubbing people with a baton. Argumentative people, yes. Trouble-making people, yes. But non-violent people. Was there a danger of injury to anyone? Not until the policeman attacked the protester.
This was of course a protester at a vigil to mark the death of Ian Tomlinson, who had been attacked with a baton, too. You would maybe have hoped that the police would have learned that violence isn’t necessarily the right answer by that point.
If you shout and scream abuse at the Met, you are being annoying. I have no doubt whatsoever about that. Up until the point where the policeman assaulted the woman, my sympathies were with him. Under pressure for trying to keep order, having people shout at him when he personally might not have done anything worth being shouted at for. What has he done to deserve that, other than trying to do his job? But that is before he attacks someone who has not been violent…
And after that, he’s just another thug using fear and violence to crush dissent. But again the question is how many times did this occur where it wasn’t caught on film? Is the CCTV footage the IPCC previously claimed ‘didn’t exist’ being proactively scrutinised to see if any other officers were being violent? And if not, why not?
There’s policing the right way, and there’s policing the Zanu-PF way. This was the latter. And as long as the Met feel that policing the Zanu-PF way is acceptable, I will feel that the Metropolitan Police, as an organisation, isn’t. [Although again, I'd like to point out that there are no doubt many fine individual officers: it's the command structure and the culture that I feel are the majority of the problem here]
Although, to be fair, a report from this afternoon suggests that the police are responding to some of the issues:
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has asked Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) to review policing tactics [...]
He also said footage of clashes with police will be reviewed to see if any other incidents need to be looked at. Sir Paul also stressed all uniformed officers must wear shoulder identification numbers so they can be easily identifiable by the public.
Let’s hope that they take the review seriously. That they improve things. That they become a police force worthy of the name, who protect the public. Who don’t lash out at innocent civilians, or even argumentative but non-violent protesters. I would also like to know what disciplinary action is deemed appropriate for officers who cover up their identification numbers…
But, until we’ve seen the result of that review, we can only go off their current visibly demonstrated policing methods.
And let’s compare that with what happens to you if you insult and swear at Northumbria Police, including individual officers.
Nothing. Well, if you insult and abuse Northumbria Police on Facebook, and you don’t breach Facebook’s terms of service by being racist or something, nothing happens, except that maybe Northumbria Police will say you are a bit juvenile.
A Facebook group which contains abusive comments about Northumbria Police has been dismissed as childish by the chairman of the Police Federation.[...]
“It is very abusive and written by people who appear not to have grown up very much.” But he added: “It’s a bit of a slippery slope if we start choosing which sites we want to close down. We could end up in a society perhaps we don’t want.
A spokesman for the force said: “Although the content of the group may be considered offensive, Northumbria Police supports the right of individuals to express their views provided they do not break the law.”
That’s not quite the whole story though.
It would appear (at least according to that facebook group) that certain members were arrested and their PCs checked, before later being released without charge. However I do not think that this is unreasonable or disproportionate, given that it is alleged threats were made against police and their families. This is reasonable action taken by Northumbria Police against a perceived threat.
I would also suggest that some of the complaints on the side seem reasonable (or at least reasonably presented, whether or not they are correct), however these are for the most part drowned out by the abusive, insulting majority (and this is not helped by the name of the group, either).
It’s also worth mentioning that despite a newspaper campaign, and despite the fact that the group suggests that the police federation were apparently advised to try to take facebook to court to get the group shut down, the Federation still came out with this response.
Note in particular that last bit: Northumbria supports the right of individuals to express their views provided they do not break the law. Whether intentional or not, this only serves to highlight the difference between Northumbria Police and the Met…
Northumbria Police, I’m proud of you. You are a fine example of how a police force ought to cope with dissent, criticism, and abuse.
Update: Bloody hell. Have you seen this? More footage of the Met. More violence. If this isn’t evidence that it’s not just the occasional ‘bad apple’, it’s a bad institution with a bad culture, then I don’t know what is.
Mike says:
April 16th, 2009 at 1:14 am
I think it’s probably worth pointing out that this isn’t really a problem isolated to the Met (despite your record of dislike for all things London-based! – except maybe your dad.). Even if capital-based events do tend to be the ones most likely to be filmed and reported widely.
I can think of one particular Yorkshire-based copper I know who once told me how much he was looking forward to protests at a nearby military facility, as it gave him the opportunity to ‘smack some hippies around’… What a knob.
JackP says:
April 16th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Maybe it isn’t just the Met; but the Met are the ones doing it at the moment. If anyone else has that attitide, then they should not be policing either.
And it’s not so much London (or Londoners) I dislike, it’s generally the media’s attitude that London is best and more worthy of reporting. [Yes, it is the capital, and more high profile things may happen there, but things of an equivalent profile are given more weight if they happen to be in London]
But equally, there are many decent policemen/women doing a difficult job, and I want to be clear I’m not anti-police; I’m just anti policing-by-thuggery-and-intimidation.
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Stephanie says:
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My wife and I live about 130m from the proposed site and we have 2 small cherdlin.The proposed location is a minute commercial area in the midst of a large residential area. I fear that this technical non-residential status will trump the reality of the residential location which includes schools and child-care centres.Everybody I have spoken to who has lived near a rehab centre tells me they bring loitering, anti-social behaviour and needles in the street. I’m also concerned about Brockley becoming a centre for drug users, more dealers moving in and there being violent conflict between them and with existing drug dealers.If these concerns make me a nimby then so be it. If it was your neighbourhood and your kids you might also have concerns.At the consultation meeting last Wednesday, the advocates told us that in their experience of running 150 such centres, there would be minimal problems and we would barely notice the centre’s existence. They emphasised that service users would be a self-selected sample committed to recovery and could be holding down jobs, have cherdlin and/or only suffering from a mild problem with cannabis use. When it was suggested that some of the users would only be attending because of court orders, there was muted assent.The rosy picture painted by the advocates also stood in contrast to testimony of residents who had worked with the client group in question, others I have spoken to who have lived near rehab centres, and the impression given by CRi’s own risk assessment. According to this document, there is a moderate likelihood of moderately severe agression from service users towards staff, volunteers, peer mentors, peer advocates, service users and visitors. This risk will be reduced by issuing all staff with personal alarms. Risks to local residents and passers by are not assessed, but I think we can assume they won’t be issued with personal alarms.The general impression was one of a meeting divided between advocates and residents, with no honest broker to mediate or give unbiased information. Also sorely lacking was anybody from the organisers who knew how to chair a meeting. This alone went a long way towards undermining the effectiveness of the consultation.My faith in the consultation process was further undermined by the consultation document’ that advocates said had been distributed to 1000 local residents. Few people in the immediate area say they received the document although many who actually received it may have ignored it because at first sight it looks like a general consultation with no relationship to the local area. Only in the small writing on page 2 would readers find out that a rehab centre is proposed for Shardloes Rd. No street number is given, no map is given and there is no photo of the building.The document includes a questionnaire that doesn’t ask residents how they feel about having a rehab centre on their doorstep, it only asks them if they want better drug treatment services in the area. There are no quantifiable options that could be used to register opposition. Only one of the text boxes could conceivably be taken as an invitation to voice opposition. This box is at the end, the responder would have had to go through the nauseating series of leading questions to get that far, and any contents would not contribute to the hard statistics’ that end up being presented to the mayor. As an object lesson of how to lie with surveys, it’s only failing is that its shifty guile is all too blatant.The above considerations seriously undermine my faith in the rest of the assurances from the advocates, including the assurance that this really is the best location. If it really is, then fair enough, it has to go somewhere, and it’s just my bad luck if it turns out badly. However, it’s difficult to believe any assurance when it’s being offered up alongside obvious flim-flam.