The prosecution of speech crimes will erode public trust in the police and is taking us to anarcho-tyranny: the police will come after easy targets, and leave persistent criminals to run rampant. There is no British equivalent to the “thin blue line” movement in the United States, a segment of the population which will support the police come what may, and they may find themselves without a dependable public support base. While it is for politicians to repeal the laws which have killed free speech in Britain, the police must do their part too to revive Robert Peel’s founding principles and protect the safety, order and indeed liberties of the British people, instead of enforcing the political creed of multiculturalism over freedom, as many do today.
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Samizdata quote of the day – does anyone trust UK police?February 18th, 2025 |
 18 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – does anyone trust UK police?Leave a Reply |
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Here in the US, support for the “thin blue line” is growing thinner, and in any case I wouldn’t call it a movement, but rather a stance or viewpoint. Conversely the view that ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) is growing stronger.
The ACAB view was always strong among libertarians, as opposed to conservatives, and was one of the significant differences between the two groups. News of abuses by the FBI had many conservatives saying that the rank-and-file FBI agents were still good guys, with only a few bad apples near the top. That attitude has worn very thin now – and skepticism about the FBI has spread to increased skepticism about State and local law-enforcement as well.
I believe there is a deeper malaise in our current lives. There are plenty of people working for The State who are becoming more and more particular about what their job is and is not. The ‘more than my jobs worth’s’ have become ‘that’s not my job, you’ll have to do it yourself’s’.
We now have to sort our own rubbish, do our own Tax Assessments (if personal tax is complicated), interact with officialdom by clunky apps, and stay silent when the Police don’t do the job we expect of them.
Well if ‘that’s not my job’ then don’t expect an outpouring of public support. We have our own jobs to do.
As Discovered Joys notes, there is a wider dissatisfaction with public sector employees, but I think it is far stronger with the police because it’s not just that they are a waste of space, but that they are very clearly not on our side. Not only does Plod fail to prevent and solve crime, he is seen to be the Establishment’s bully boy when the population doesn’t do what it’s told. Plod is far keener on sending six coppers to some woman’s house over online comments than on using their time to make streets safer.
Someone in the Telegraph today quoted stats that rape has gone up fourfold in a decade in the UK. Another woman wrote about being scared to exercise outdoors after dark. Her fears are shared by lots of women and men too, judging by BTL comments. I see a lot of comments from women in the UK about constant harassment on the streets. No Plod to be seen in this.
I am a middle aged prosperous white man, but I am as disaffected with the police as any black London yute. And I have a relative who is a copper. Decent enough bloke but he spends his time ‘fighting’ the organised drug trade. So that’s going well as any Brit will tell you. Billions spent on the war on drugs and they are more widely available and cheaper than ever.
The police officers that I know are not bad people – but they are afraid of being punished themselves. If they say anything that is considered “right wing” they can lose their job, or even worse things may happen to them. And they can also lose their livelihood (and many have families) if they refuse to arrest other people for saying “right wing” things.
It is easy to call on other people to be heroes – harder to make a personal sacrifice, a sacrifice that will really hurt your life.
The police, in their training, internal discipline system, and in the system of “Woke” laws they operate under (and which all people, including local councilors, operate under) are in a very difficult position in Britain.
And we should not sugarcoat the American position either.
For example, three people were imprisoned for life in the State of Georgia for the “murder of a black jogger” as the media (America and international) put it.
Nothing about the “victim” being mentally ill (the jury were not allowed to hear that – the judge ruled that evidence that supported the position of the defense could not be presented to the jury, as this might lead to the jury reaching the “wrong” verdict – think-about-that), and he was presented as “running away” when he was actually attacking and fighting for the firearm. The media also claimed that the men “falsely thought he was a thief” – in reality he was a thief (there was no “falsely”) – under the influence of his mental illness (which included hearing voices urging him to attack people) the “jogger” was a robber of stores.
One of the three men broke down and, under intense pressure, made a deal – he was in a truck some distance away, but he was told that if he said he heard one of the other two white men using a racial slur, then he would be let off easy.
No racial slur was used (the recording – the men were talking to a police dispatch officer over a mobile phone – proves that) – but the man in the truck was desperate not to go to prison, so he perjured himself.
The judge sent all three men (including the perjurer) to prison FOR LIFE – so much for the “deal” (the only thing the perjurer got for his perjury was that he could apply for parole at some point – the other two got life-without-parole, one of them for shooting a mentally ill man who was attacking him, and the other, his 64 year old father – a retired investigator, got life in prison without parole for the crime of being there – in his truck talking to the police dispatcher on his mobile phone).
Britain has nothing to teach Georgia about how to have a corrupt “Justice” system – and the British media have nothing to teach the American media about how to be dishonest. Plenty of officials (including judges) and media types (as well as the education system) are just as corrupt in parts of the United States as they are in Britain.
Would Martin Frost have been prosecuted if he had ripped out and burned pages of the Bible? No he would not.
Do the authorities care about the man murdered by Islamic forces in Sweden – no they do not, indeed the authorities there were prosecuting this man (whose family had been murdered in Iraq) for the “crime” of burning a book (a copy of the Koran) which he had bought – the book was his own property, he had not stolen it (but, somehow, this does not seem to matter).
Mr Martin Frost’s own daughter had been killed by Islamic forces – but the authorities do not care about that either, they care only about his damage to a book, a book he had not stolen (the book was his own property).
Why do they care about his damage to a book? They care because it was a copy of the Koran – rather than, say, a copy of the Bible (they would not have cared if he had burned pages of that).
So it is an open and shut case – not against Mr Frost, but against the British legal system. Not just the police – but also the courts and the laws.
Some random thots.
Maybe one reason that public trust in the police in the US has not degraded as much is that most policing that touches people’s lives is locally based and operated and there is at least an element of local accountability. A sheriff or police chief who loses the confidence of the local people may find themselves out of a job. When was the last time that a senior police officer in the UK was fired – I mean, let go – for poor performance?
In the US, the lowest public confidence tends to be in the various agencies of the Federal government which have police powers, and in large departments, usually in big cities, which have been taken over by political influences, often driven by powerful union interests.
That’s not to say that local policing has not also sometimes been redirected towards goals that favour the institution and not the public. The ‘War on Drugs’ was/is one such diversion. But it’s better than in the UK, I submit.
The issues Paul Marks describes are less issues of simple policing than of the larger criminal justice system, principally the sometimes-highly-politicized prosecutorial function. Much the same can be said of the UK, just in reverse – if the police actually catch a villain, it seems, the criminal justice system seems to fall all over itself to find ways not to punish him.
In the US, the rictus of concern over racial bias in policing seems to be passing. Many police departments are realistically integrated with real coppers and not tokens, including the command structures, and the public are mostly starting to see through the automatic claims of racial bias and unfair treatment that are often trptted out. The hackneyed claims of aspiring rappers who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, picking up duapers for their new baby before heading off to their college classes, have now become an actual meme, and the transparency of body-worn cameras and meaningful freedom-of-information laws have led to a different era of open-ness and accountability
Perfect? Not by a long chalk. But, I submit, better.
llater,
llamas
The Public loves cops when they go after murderers and rapists and thieves and truly bad people. The problem is the cops they see on a daily basis are not detectives but just beat cops who go after the low hanging fruit, like speeders, and who can effectively get away with almost anything thanks to Qualified Immunity. Then throw in stuff like using SWAT all the time and tossing in Flash-Bang grenades and burning up toddlers in the process. Or kicking in the wrong door, keeping the homeowners in cuffs for hours after recognizing it’s the wrong house because no one did any second checking before showing up, and because of QI no one is accountable and the insurance carrier just writes a check. Or shooting to death a drunk guy in a hotel hallway who was begging for his life and tried to pull up his pants and the cops investigate themselves and find they did nothing wrong and then the cop who lit up the drunk guy retires with a PTSD claim.
If the police actually cared about their oaths, they would resign en masse and let TPTB figure out who was going to kick in the doors, but their sweet dental plans and retirement mean more to them than their responsibilities to us. And if it means they have to kill a few innocent plebs in the process, well the most important thing is they go home at the end of their shift and we’re just little people.
When the laws themselves are corrupt, and they are – the laws are unjust, the police are in a terrible position.
“Resign!” and do what? Even becoming a nightwatchman now involves getting a “license” (Dr Bonham’s case in 1610 is not upheld any more – more and more jobs require a “license”) – and to get this license a person must pass an examination proving they support “Diversity” and “Inclusion” – basically all jobs, whether there is an examination or not, now require such a commitment (hello Equality Act of 2010) – so the only way out would appear to be to commit suicide – at least that is legal now.
And the authorities (with the former police officers having killed themselves) would have no trouble at all in finding young men willing (indeed eager) to enforce the “Woke” laws – after all they are arriving in boats (and by aircraft) almost every day.
Some people may think that “kill themselves” is over-the-top language – but one person who was sent to prison (basically for nothing much) has already killed himself. Did this cause the authorities to rethink what they were doing, did they have a crises of conscience?
Of course not – in their minds it is just “one less right winger”.
They would do well to adopt the motto of the Barbados Police Force: ‘To protect, serve, and reassure’
The motto is emblazoned on every police vehicle.
I wonder to what extent Britain’s police force sees itself as protecting, serving and reassuring the public?
I got a Youtube ad up recently. It was targetted at UK customers and offered a “Glock 19” pistol for 35 quid which would be totally legal in the UK. It was only for rubber bullets. I strongly suspect this is far from legal. It also crossed my mind that this was the police fishing. Probs not but the fact I even thought of that says a lot.
@Nickm – why bother with the rubber bullets? From what I hear, it’s not hard to lay hands on a real firearm in the UK if you are so inclined. Seems to me that I’m reading about a shooting in the UK pretty-much every day nowadays. That strict gun control is really working, eh?
llater,
llamas
In the US, it strikes me that cops are not woke – they are not fans of DEI, of enforcing Feelz, of making us stop being mean. They are workers, with defined jobs.
The woke component in the US comes in from the prosecutorial people – the ones who are hired politically. They are the ones likely to drop otherwise good cases brought in by cops because of political considerations, and the ones most likely to push for punishment of non-criminal but rude behavior.
But in the UK, that wokeness extends all the way down the chain to the beat cop.
I think you’re hiring very different people as cops over there than we do here.
Mark Steyn recently wrote:-
The Prisoner of Windsor, my whimsical inversion of Anthony Hope from a couple of years back, includes a scene in which a psychotic Home Secretary muses on one of her prisoners, gaoled for contempt:
‘There was an Australian blogger,’ she wheezed. ‘Mouthing off about “Londonistan” and “Eurabia”. We were shutting down a free-speech demo in Luton, and he got lippy with a copper. Then in court he started swearing at the judge. Very Oz. Got thirty days for contempt in HMP Tea-Cosy. Someone in the department thought it might be a big up-yours to these “citizen-journalists” if we transferred him somewhere harder. I sort of knew where they were going with this, but I signed off on it anyway. Third night he was there, six of the jihad boys jumped him. He’s a vegetable now, so no more blogging…
‘I thought I’d feel bad about it… So I was surprised, after a day or two, that I felt fine. Made it easier to do it again …and again.’
NickM:
£35 doesn’t buy you much. If it was a soft air gun, which fires plastic pellets, then it is legal, but it is also harmless.
Some criminals have been “converting” blank firing guns to fire real ammunition, so they are the current object of panic by the authorities (apart from knives bought on Amazon that is. Grind those pointy ends off, people).
Blank firing guns are made from very low quality alloys, so I cannot see them surviving more than a few shots. Really, these black market armourers should be prosecuted for trading standards offences.
FWIW, I think of cops the same way I think of government — a necessary evil. The situation in the US has been really weird for the past few years. If I go back ten years to read what I wrote and thought about cops it is mostly negative, so for me to find myself defending cops since 2020, which I have been doing is really odd.
Cops are also like lawyers — everybody hates them until they need one. For all their faults we have to remember that they run toward gunfire while we all run away. I think most cops in the lower ranks are basically good decent people trying to do the best, in the US anyway. For example, someone complained about traffic cops — but in truth those guys probably save more lives than anyone else. Is it annoying when I get a $20 ticket for a rolling stop? I guess so, but it isn’t a big deal really. But when they are pulling over guys going at 60mph outside a school zone, or driving drunk, then they are performing the work of the angels.
Ultimately though, cops enforce the law. Often the problem is that the laws themselves are stupid. SWATing as we see it today is because of the stupidity of the war on drugs. The free speech arrests are because of the outrageous abandonment of the basic principles of decency in British law.
I live near Chicago and it is an interesting case study. Not long after I first came to Chicago I was downtown and saw a couple of cops hauling off some guy — his crime? Disrespecting the cops. That is the dark side of the often horrible Chicago PD. But the situation now in Chicago — which is to say — one of the most dangerous cities in the world — is almost entirely the responsibility of the leadership who have put cops in the situation that whatever they do, they are in the wrong.
So they just back off, and don’t get involved. And as a consequence? Whenever I hear about one of those dreadful school shootings with half a dozen or a dozen little kids get shot, it breaks my heart. But I also remind myself that in Chicago we call that “the weekend.” Every weekend it seems a dozen people are shot and injured or killed, frequently little kids. But the news media doesn’t care that there is a Stoneman Douglas or a Dunblane every weekend in Chicago. Why? Maybe because most of the victims are black and most of the victimizers are black too? Maybe because it doesn’t fit the narrative or support the agenda. But for sure the cops in Chicago want to do something but are handcuffed with the utter lack of support from their leadership. They can stop a hundred homicides but if they treat some horrific gangbanger a bit too roughly or dare to shoot someone who is going to shoot them they can find themselves losing their livelihood and maybe spending a few years in jail.
So we shouldn’t blame individual cops, though there are undoubtedly some bad eggs in the basket, we should blame the leadership who sets the standards.
llamas, JohnK,
Your points are well taken 😉 but I don’t think they address what I was really getting at (I wrote that comment in a hurry so probs my bad) which was that I seriously could contemplate the very idea of UK Gov/uncivil service/etc fishing like that. They lurve getting people on lists. I don’t think that’s what the ad was but the State has created a climate in which a rational person could even consider that possibility is utterly plausible.
Anyway, I’d need much more firepower to take on the hordes of Eurasia who we’ve always been at war with.
Frasier Orr wrote:
For all their faults we have to remember that they run toward gunfire while we all run away.
Just like at Virginia Tech, and Uvalde, and Parkland, and Sandy Hook? Never, ever forget while the cops were all outside doing nothing while the shooters were killing people like fish in a barrel, (I forgot, they couldn’t go in because of their department policies and they were waiting for orders or back up or some such thing), they were johnny on the spot about stopping parents from trying to save their children.
And never forget, their number one priority is to go home at the end of their shift. You are expendable and they’ll sleep good that night if you get killed while they wait outside.