The Met Police...

[Stan]

Some disgusting vile creatures amongst them. It's actually disturbing reading this. And this is just a tiny snippet no doubt. 

What needs to change? More importantly, how quickly can that change come about? Because quite clearly there's a fundamental issue at hand. 

[Bluewolf]

26 minutes ago, Stan said:

What needs to change? More importantly, how quickly can that change come about? Because quite clearly there's a fundamental issue at hand. 

Sadly the worlds moral compass is fucked.... Like the governments, those in important positions don't care enough about doing the right things or acting in a manner befitting their position and we the sheep are happy to keep taking it up the arse over and over again which allows them to keep getting away with it... 

[RandoEFC+]

Cressida Dick should be long gone for a start. Even if she isn't directly culpable for any of these individual incidents, she has overseen too many scandals and gaffes in the past few years. Replacing her would go some way to beginning to restore public trust in the Met.

It's a real shame because I remain convinced that the vast majority of people who go into policing do so with a genuine drive to serve and protect the public. A handful are wrong-uns who want to be given a sense of authority and others make honest mistakes, but when there's no visible accountability and the systems in place to deal with problems seem to fail so spectacularly, you can't retain public confidence, and that's on the superior officers to sort out. I imagine your average copper on the beat is probably appalled by the way the Couzens, corruption and Partygate fiascos have been managed because those are the guys with their feet on the ground who face the backlash, and its their job that gets made more difficult.

[Danny]

Genuinely bemused when people don’t have base level distrust of the police. Do not buy into the “a few bad apples” routine either, especially when it’s said so consistently to defend their latest fuck up.

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, Danny said:

Genuinely bemused when people don’t have base level distrust of the police. Do not buy into the “a few bad apples” routine either, especially when it’s said so consistently to defend their latest fuck up.

Do you know anyone who's in a police force though? I know a few and they're all basically sound people. Admittedly I live in a more rural setting. I genuinely think most of them go in with the best of intentions. When it comes to the ones who climb the greasy pole like Cressida Dick and others who end up in front of the cameras, then the politics come into play, conflicts of interest and self-preservation lead to people having to make decisions about how honest to be in front of different groups of people and in different circumstances. That's when they start talking about "a few bad eggs" where, if they stuck to their morals, they'd make changes to the institution and start addressing the structural problems that have allowed a few bad eggs to become a few too many. But a leader of a police force or any institution starts admitting they need structural change, they open themselves up to accusations of failure. That's where personal ambition clashes with moral duty and it's clear that too many of those in senior positions are disproportionately choosing the personal ambition option.

It's still a minority giving the rest of the police force a bad name though. I'm not defending any of the individuals but the increase in volume of horror stories recently is partly down to increased involvement of the police watchdog following the Sarah Everard scandal.

I would still largely trust a police officer if I came into contact with one. I'll admit it isn't 100% though.

[Waylander]

I have/had  friends in the police.

One recently told me he was homosexual and said he could not have said that on the job because of the office culture.

He was quite a big chap and had served in a few places.

At one station a number of officers kept making snide remarks so he got a job in transport police telling me stories about things going on. Sometimes because of emergencies on the streets they would be called on to support and he said the older ones in their 50s would not want to go out because of fear of getting stabbed so close to retirement.

The school gangs in London stations with knives and also raping and by the time they normally caught up with them they were often dead or dying. 

He was also beaten up once by travellers and hospitalised for heavy bruising after being attacked in a set up by the travellers for one of theirs being arrested. 

He himself had an issue with a fitness test, he had been doing a fitness test periodically for years and in his penultimate year they brought in a health questionnaire. He told them the medications he was on and was told he could not do the test.

Without the test he would get demoted a year away from final salary pension. He said he had been on medication for several years and had always done and passed the test. They would not budge.

Eventually he went through their union who told him it would not even get reviewed before his pension kicked in so we was safe. He is now retired on the higher pension. 

All of them disliked the police hierarchy. 

[Stan]

56 minutes ago, RondónEFC said:

Do you know anyone who's in a police force though

I do and he's an absolute cunt. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

2 hours ago, Danny said:

Genuinely bemused when people don’t have base level distrust of the police. Do not buy into the “a few bad apples” routine either, especially when it’s said so consistently to defend their latest fuck up.

Everyone forgets that the full phrase for “a few bad apples” is…

“a few bad apples spoils the bunch.”

Which is fucking true, a few bad cops and a few scandals and the rest of the police end up looking like massive dickheads.

So it should never just be “it’s JUST a few bad apples” and not worrying about it. It should be “it’s a few bad apples, let’s get rid of them before they taint the image of the police too badly.”

Saying “it’s a few bad apples” is used incorrectly and it’s insane because it’s often used to undermine how serious an issue is… but really it should mean it’s a serious issue that needs to be dealt with quickly.

[Cicero]

Police Unions need to go. 

[Danny]

1 hour ago, RondónEFC said:

Do you know anyone who's in a police force though? I know a few and they're all basically sound people. Admittedly I live in a more rural setting. I genuinely think most of them go in with the best of intentions. When it comes to the ones who climb the greasy pole like Cressida Dick and others who end up in front of the cameras, then the politics come into play, conflicts of interest and self-preservation lead to people having to make decisions about how honest to be in front of different groups of people and in different circumstances. That's when they start talking about "a few bad eggs" where, if they stuck to their morals, they'd make changes to the institution and start addressing the structural problems that have allowed a few bad eggs to become a few too many. But a leader of a police force or any institution starts admitting they need structural change, they open themselves up to accusations of failure. That's where personal ambition clashes with moral duty and it's clear that too many of those in senior positions are disproportionately choosing the personal ambition option.

It's still a minority giving the rest of the police force a bad name though. I'm not defending any of the individuals but the increase in volume of horror stories recently is partly down to increased involvement of the police watchdog following the Sarah Everard scandal.

I would still largely trust a police officer if I came into contact with one. I'll admit it isn't 100% though.

Don’t need to know any personally to know that power corrupts people and that the police and justice system in general have long discriminated against minorities and the working classes. Approaching people with that sort of power with a base level of complete trust is generally mad and why you get the random “I’m genuinely shocked” moments whenever they fuck up big. Why would anyone be shocked. Your mate or whoever might be sound, he might also be a massive cunt, but there are just too many examples to count that let you know the police force in general can’t even guarantee their own officers won’t impede justice.

On a side note, the atmosphere created by policing, where police officers or people within the community of the police will almost refer to them as a social group who are judged unfairly as people in the same way that happens to ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people is mad. They can literally leave their jobs whenever they like, they also willingly chose the job. There’s just a massive power trip involved and yeah it’s not all coppers but it’s enough to know you shouldn’t trust them.

[Cicero]

15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. 

 

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer

[RandoEFC+]

You can't just not have a police force though. You have to give this power to some people because society needs some people to do the job of maintaining order, and the only way you can avoid sometimes employing the wrong people is by having recruiters with psychic powers choosing the intake.

I'm not necessarily arguing with what anyone's said but I will say it's one thing going on about how hopeless the police are and how loads of them are cunts or whatever, but what would you like to see as alternatives? Certainly, the level of accountability needs to be improved and that's where you need to find a way to adjust the incentives for those who reach the upper administrative roles in police forces. Currently, someone in that position has a far greater incentive not to rock the boat than they do to actually introduce reforms that flush out the bad recruits as soon as they show that they're bad recruits, and before they can start corrupting the people around them and making up a large enough proportion of their police force to drag the standard down by a notable amount.

Cicero may be onto something with the union perspective. I see this in teaching. Our version of a "bad egg" is someone whose standards are in the toilet, or they take the piss with how much time they take off sick, or they "forget" to meet deadlines. I will largely back the workforce of teachers in the UK to the hilt, but there are a minority who really hold back their departments and schools who have to pick up all of the slack when they don't meet the required standard. It's impossible to get rid of these people because the unions will fight to the death to keep them in a job. The threshold for evidence you need to reach to dismiss an employee that is drastically underperforming against their professional responsibilities is almost impossible. This is the job of the union of course, in that individual case, but when you look at the big picture, them keeping one of their members in a job like this indirectly harms (let's say) half a dozen of the other teachers they represent who have to go above and beyond to pick up the slack, covering lessons, merging classes, marking mock exams from other people's classes, etc. Some of the teaching unions never think of the wider impact of denying those teachers the opportunity to be a part of a fully functioning team by bringing a new employee on board to replace the "bad egg", because it becomes all about "winning" their case and keeping people in jobs who are causing more harm than good. Note that I haven't even gone into the impact a "bad egg" has on the pupils/public here!

If it is similar in the police, and the unions fight tooth and nail to keep bad police officers in jobs, perhaps more can be done on that front. Making it too difficult for police forces to get rid of these people has a negative impact on the public and their colleagues.

To be clear, I'm very much in favour of any worker having access to trade union membership to protect them against bad employers, but I think it's messed up when unions go so far to defend one of their members in cases where that one member is actively impacting on the day to day working life of many others.

One last thing I want to add for a bit more balance. I don't like the flippant "they can just quit" line really. These people, even the cunts, have to put food on tables and you can't just assume they've got another job to walk into that would pay them the same amount of money. I'm sure some of them would like to walk away sometimes, I don't envy the average police officer who has bottles lobbed at their head by a Black Lives Matter march one weekend and then has to charge a far-right pro-racism protest with a riot shield a week later. There are two sides to this and it'll take a lot of convincing for me to change my opinion that most of them are honest people who go into the police force with good intentions.

[Spike]

3 hours ago, Cicero said:

Police Unions need to go. 

 

2 hours ago, Cicero said:

15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. 

 

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer

What the American police can and have done has no bearing on this issue nor the British police force, mate. This is a different world, and I think it is one of those things that can be really only understood by people that live or have lived in the UK for an extended period of time.

 

[Spike]

A little off topic but I wanted to look at some stats to few perspective, I knew it was bad in the USA but not THIS bad

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733

 

Shocking stuff

[Cicero]

16 minutes ago, Spike said:

A little off topic but I wanted to look at some stats to few perspective, I knew it was bad in the USA but not THIS bad

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733

 

Shocking stuff

I think context needs to be provided as I am fairly certain a vast proportion of police shootings in the United States are a result of the victim carrying a firearm. 

That being said, I think the damning thing is the hours of policing training which is required for each country. When you have officers who can't tell the difference between their taser and their firearm, things need changing. 

 

[Spike]

13 minutes ago, Cicero said:

I think context needs to be provided as I am fairly certain a vast proportion of police shootings in the United States are a result of the victim carrying a firearm. 

That being said, I think the damning thing is the hours of policing training which is required for each country. When you have officers who can't tell the difference between their taser and their firearm, things need changing. 

 

Easy to plant a gun on someone too and have a valid reason for blowing someone away

[DeadLinesman]

4 hours ago, Danny said:

Don’t need to know any personally to know that power corrupts people and that the police and justice system in general have long discriminated against minorities and the working classes. Approaching people with that sort of power with a base level of complete trust is generally mad and why you get the random “I’m genuinely shocked” moments whenever they fuck up big. Why would anyone be shocked. Your mate or whoever might be sound, he might also be a massive cunt, but there are just too many examples to count that let you know the police force in general can’t even guarantee their own officers won’t impede justice.

Do you trust Doctors? Nurses? Physios? OT’s? Social Workers? Go on the HCPC website and check out the number of hearings and tribunals about misconduct. There’s literally hundreds country wide. If we go with the whole ‘too many example to count’, then we’re fucked as a whole because there’s not a profession in this country that doesn’t have a lot of bellends working for them. Just depends which hill you fancy dying on.

[Spike]

16 minutes ago, DeadLinesman said:

Do you trust Doctors? Nurses? Physios? OT’s? Social Workers? Go on the HCPC website and check out the number of hearings and tribunals about misconduct. There’s literally hundreds country wide. If we go with the whole ‘too many example to count’, then we’re fucked as a whole because there’s not a profession in this country that doesn’t have a lot of bellends working for them. Just depends which hill you fancy dying on.

Malpractice is not uncommon at all. Nor are dodgy doctors that overprescribe or do other shady doings

[Danny]

18 minutes ago, DeadLinesman said:

Do you trust Doctors? Nurses? Physios? OT’s? Social Workers? Go on the HCPC website and check out the number of hearings and tribunals about misconduct. There’s literally hundreds country wide. If we go with the whole ‘too many example to count’, then we’re fucked as a whole because there’s not a profession in this country that doesn’t have a lot of bellends working for them. Just depends which hill you fancy dying on.

Doctors aren’t paid to stop and search kids based on their skin colour mate.

[Cicero]

I thought we left the All Cops are Racist narrative in 2020? 

[DeadLinesman]

22 minutes ago, Danny said:

Doctors aren’t paid to stop and search kids based on their skin colour mate.

They’re also not paid to fuck their patients or take advantage of patients and service users. But here we are.

[Danny]

2 minutes ago, DeadLinesman said:

They’re also not paid to fuck their patients or take advantage of patients and service users. But here we are.

No they’re not. But the Police are paid to discriminate using stop and searches. Judges are paid to give black kids longer sentences than white kids. They both get paid to do that. Doctors don’t get paid to fuck services users, that is something they have to hide.

[RandoEFC+]

48 minutes ago, Danny said:

No they’re not. But the Police are paid to discriminate using stop and searches. Judges are paid to give black kids longer sentences than white kids. They both get paid to do that. Doctors don’t get paid to fuck services users, that is something they have to hide.

Two things. Firstly, what evidence/policy/statistic are you referring to that leads you to this conclusion because I know there will be something which allows this claim to be rooted in some truth but not as literally as you're putting it.

Secondly, where does the rational conversation start here? What policies need changing, for example? I totally get the righteous anger but at some point you have to shelve the approach of seeing the worst in every aspect of the institution you're criticising and suggest what your alternative looks like.

[DeadLinesman]

1 hour ago, Danny said:

No they’re not. But the Police are paid to discriminate using stop and searches. Judges are paid to give black kids longer sentences than white kids. They both get paid to do that. Doctors don’t get paid to fuck services users, that is something they have to hide.

Need to see some evidence of this. Not ‘here are some statistics to back my claim’. Cold hard evidence that the police force are paid bonuses to arrest ethnic minorities and judges paid bonuses to give longer sentences. 

[Spike]

Pattern recognition is an important tool as a cop, some of those patterns can be construed as racism, Implicit bias is unavoidable. The cop that can’t spot the signs of gang members in a city like Chicago is dead, the cop that sees those signs in everyone is probably racist or a killer. 

It can be hugely dangerous to be a cop, people forget.