A press release from the Association of Chief Police Officers, not surprisingly, welcomes the latest police-state measures. But it seems they were taken by surprise, too:
Ref:21/07 January 17, 2007
ACPO COMMENT ON SERIOUS AND ORGANISATED CRIME BILLACPO spokesperson said:
�Tackling serious and organised crime is a serious issue to the police service. ACPO welcomes any measures that support us in our endeavours to combat this from of criminality�.
(Sic. Really – a direct cut-and-paste from here)
The unnamed (conceivably fictitious, since no-one is offered for interview) spokesmanperson – PC being the only correct thing about it – can only be referring to the Serious Crime Bill.
Can the Home Office not even get its news management right? A huge and complicated Bill is launched which will tear up important parts of common law, create major data-mining powers of an unprecedented nature, and create severe sanctions backed by imprisonment for people who have done nothing wrong at all if their conduct is deemed potentially helpful to criminals anywhere in the world. It was not drafted over the weekend.
It is a surprise the department failed to get a Chief Constable briefed and ready to stand up to say how wonderful it is in glorious detail, complete with scary illustrative anecdote – preferably involving paedophile terrorists. ACPO are left not knowing what the Bill is called. Or how to spell what they think it might be called. Still, they are so desperate to kiss the governmental arse that something supportive is rushed out, regardless that it is gibberish.
At some point current ACPO members will have sworn to uphold the law and keep the Queen’s peace. Is that not incompatible with being political lapdogs?
[Thanks to PJC Journal]
And the most appropriate corrective action is … ?
Best regards
Having ‘sworn to uphold the law’ is incompatible with expressing support for a new law? You think they should condemn the laws they are sworn to uphold? And you want a coordinated media campaign from the police to provide convincing propaganda of the law’s wisdom, their full and hearty support for it, and a detailed explanation of how they plan to use it on paedophile terrorists? (With a heart-rending story about some little 6-year-old girl called Aisha…)
As your meta-tag says “How very odd!”
(Has it occured to you that although the police are obliged to support the law, the style in which it is done could be conveying a message all of its own? Just a thought.)
Pa Annoyed wrote:
I’m struggling to understand this point. Is not the issue that this is currently only proposed law (containing much that many people feel is draconian). Thus, ACPO would seem to be taking on themselves the mantle of Parliament, rather than waiting until Parliament itself has decided what new laws, if any, should be put on the statute book.
Best regards
Having ‘sworn to uphold the law’ is incompatible with expressing support for a new law?
No; but I think it is incompatible with being catspaws for the Government.
You think they should condemn the laws they are sworn to uphold?
No. They swear to uphold the law, “without favour or affection”, or something similar, in the older oaths. That’s the law as it is, not as it might be for their convenience. I think they should remain silent on the law save to the extent that it has direct practical consequences for the management of the police’s work. Serving judges in the House of Lords rarely take part in the legislative debate. When they do it is to raise points of jurisprudential principle or the administration of the law.
I would be less concerned about this, were it not that when police are opposed to the law or equivocal about it, they generally refuse to discuss it, citing precisely the same duty I allude to above.
And you want a coordinated media campaign from the police to provide convincing propaganda of the law’s wisdom, their full and hearty support for it, and a detailed explanation of how they plan to use it on paedophile terrorists?
No. I don’t want it. My chiding the Home Office was ironic. That is how things are usually done in Blair’s Britain, where all the organs of state have become propaganda arms for the political leadership. The Home Office is notorious for its incompetence in every respect.
If I had my way, the police would not comment at all on the law and would most certainly not lobby for the ruling party (or any other). They would not comment on trials or sentencing. I would also want it a disciplinary offence for them to notify an arrest in advance to anyone but the suspect, the suspect’s family and professional advisers, or others having a need to know in order for the arrest to be performed.
Has it occured to you that although the police are obliged to support the law, the style in which it is done could be conveying a message all of its own?
Yes. That is the entire point of the post.
That’s a little clearer, but not much. I don’t have a problem with your criticism of the law (or proposed law) itself, or the government that produced it, but I’m still not sure why the police press statement has got you worked up, other than pointing and laughing at their spelling mistakes.
The police are not libertarians, as a whole, and given that their job is to uphold the law, they would be expected to welcome the tools to do it. Setting the balance between civil liberties and crime prevention is not their job, and they shouldn’t be expressing any political opinions they have on that. The police’s job is crime detection and prevention by all means Parliament allows, and they should only comment on how law helps or hinders that. For them to praise or criticise a law on any other grounds would be to take a political stand; becoming the libertarian politician’s catspaw instead of the government’s.
In both this story and the one you linked to (over the 90 days terrorism isssue), the police did the right thing – they supported proposals on the grounds that they believed it would make law enforcement easier and more reliable, but they left it up to Parliament to decide what was right and where the balance of interests should lie. In the latter case they said so explicitly. The newspaper might have labelled it “lobbying”, but that’s journalists for you. It was the police that asked the government for the 90 day extension, and no doubt made the complaints about their difficulties that led to the serious crimes bill. They get very frustrated when they’re expected to prevent crime and then not allowed to do so. It’s only right that Parliament and the public should know that, and that it isn’t just some totalitarian wet dream on the part of the government ministers, when they make their decision. On the other hand, the government get full blame for saying ‘yes’ to them.
This business of political impartiality is very difficult for the politically partisan to get their heads around. Because their political views seem like plain common sense to them, for the police and civil service not to stand up and say so looks like political bias, especially if they do give advice in other politically controversial areas on matters pertaining to their business that the partisans don’t agree with.
In this case, even if the police don’t personally like it, they have to say that they support it because fighting serious and organised crime is their job. Personally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they really do like it, and the press statement is the result of a wild party at HQ to celebrate. But the wording of the statement is such that while it says they welcome supportive measures, it doesn’t explicitly say that they think this bill is supportive, and the spelling mistakes mean you can’t tell if this wording was carefully deliberate or not. But whether it is approval or contempt, I don’t see anything wrong with the statement or the fact that they commented.
That’s all come out a little serious-sounding, and I didn’t mean it to. My original comment was supposed to be short and ironic in response to your irony, but trying to express complicated ideas compactly leads to misunderstanding, I find. Possibly my beliefs are too weird for people to ‘get’. 🙂 Most of the criticisms I offer are intended to be good-natured.
Best wishes.
I’m still not sure why the police press statement has got you worked up
ACPO and its individual members, as opposed to the police in general, are noticable political actors, given to making ex cathedra statements about what would be good for the country with all the authority that their siver braid confers. Such pronouncements, when they are not sucking up to the government, are very seldom more than pedestrian reaffirmation of received wisdom and often pusilanimous in the extreme.
There are plenty of original, skeptical, intellectually honest policement – though few libertarian ones for obvious reasons. However those valuable qualities do not get you promoted to the highest levels. Being a compliant and efficient bureaucrat does. (That’s one more reason why keeping regional police forces as small and independent as possible is a good idea. It potentially decreases the bureaucratic gradient.)
Yes I must agree with Guy here. Chief Constables, for the last 30 years or so, have been fast tracked graduates who have never felt a collar or walked a beat.
Their language is management speak. Not the argot of the street.
Once upon a time this was not so. There used to be Chief Constables who knew what their job was, because they had started as ordinary constables, degree or not.
I had a deputy chief constable as a family friend (never got to be Chief cos he didn’t know the funny handshake) but he had a degree in physics and started on the beat just like the bloke with 2 O levels.
He knew his job was to enforce the Law, not interpret it, not instigate it, that was Parliament’s job, but to do it. He solved every murder in S Wales that occured on his watch when he was Head of S Wales CID.
The current bunch, see themselves the same as a CEO in any other business be it ICI or an International bank . Whilst us poor ordinary citizens worry about mugging and burglary, they look at balance sheets and cost cutting.
The rot set in around Z cars time I think!
Now I know how you all love my sunday night anecdotes. So here is one that illustrates policeing in GB today.
On a hot night back in the summer, the doorbell goes. It’s 12.30 at night but that’s ok. My friends know I am a night owl and often drop in for a nightcap and a chat after a gig or a club.
But instead of the bunch of conviviality I was expecting- there were these two badly dressed coppers.
“Good evening sir. Could you confirm that these are your chimney pots?”
My mind went blank. Quite apart from being confronted by the police, which doesn’t faze me in the least, I had to ask- What chimney pots!!????
“The ones that were either side of your bay window sir”
Oh those. We’d had the chimney stack taken down years ago because of damp and were left with these two late victorian terracotta chimney pots about 4 foot high that we couldn’t get rid of , so we stuck them in the garden, bunged some flowers in them and forgot them.
So they lead me to their car. An unmarked and battered kind of vehicle, and there in the boot, sure enough, were our chimney pots.
What had happened was that these police were on some kind of cruise patrol, in an unmarked car, saw these guys in our garden nicking the pots and gave chase. They caught the guys and had them banged up for the night.
Now this may seem a remarkable result on the face of it.
Crime solved before even reported!!
Ah but…
See they insisted on coming in to fill out a statement.
“Cant it wait till tomorrow?” I asked.( Well It’s about one oclock now).
“We’d prefer to do it now if you dont mind sir”
So in they came and it took two hours and three pots of tea , to write
“Yes I can confirm that the property referred to is mine”
In Milltupliate. Such is the paperwork these days.
Meanwhile, five minutes down the Hill in St Pauls, real crimes were being committed.
Ah but the good constables prefered to drink tea and chat with me till the end of their shift. And who can blame them.
Evening All, and mind how you go.
Oh, and I haven’t heard
A dicky bird
about it
since!