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The behaviour of UK police officers.

Andy_Ross said:
I think around 1500 stackings and disciplinary cases over the last few years in the Met is more towards endemic than the usual 'few bad apples'
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Some police managers think they are on a crusade and I wonder how many of those sackings and disciplinary actions were properly evidenced and justified. The whole misconduct system is unreliable. It is designed to fail to protect popular and senior officers and it can be weaponsied against unpopular and more junior officers.
 
Andy_Ross said:
I think around 1500 stackings and disciplinary cases over the last few years in the Met is more towards endemic than the usual 'few bad apples'
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The part of that saying that tends to be ommitted and forgotten is that the few bad apples spoil the barrel. The whole point is that corruption spreads.
 
Mojo said:
You need people who are prepared to scrap, not people who actually want to.
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Yep - people who want to scrap should not be on the police force at all, training should weed them out. It's like the various armed police officers - a big macho group who consider themselves an elite. It's obvious that any changes that have been made are superficial and it really is the "one bad apple" in its proper meaning i.e. one bad apple spoils the rest of the barrel.

ETA: Ninja'd
 
Has the Met force ever been, not sure of the best way to put, properly behaved, professional behind closed doors? I've read accounts from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s about corrupt and bad police officers.
 
Young men who want to fight, who enjoy fighting, have been selected for by evolution for a very long time. A society that has many such fighters is in a good position. They need to be taught self-control and restraint, and to know the right time to fight and only to fight at that time. But merely enjoying fighting as such isn't necessarily evil.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
The part of that saying that tends to be ommitted and forgotten is that the few bad apples spoil the barrel. The whole point is that corruption spreads.
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There's also the implication that the barrel itself is no longer suitable for storing apples, since the spores that caused the spoilage are now in the wood.
 
Rolfe said:
Young men who want to fight, who enjoy fighting, have been selected for by evolution for a very long time. A society that has many such fighters is in a good position. They need to be taught self-control and restraint, and to know the right time to fight and only to fight at that time. But merely enjoying fighting as such isn't necessarily evil.
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This. I spent a lot of years training in martial arts and some of the hardest competition is also where I made some of the firmest friendships with some excellent people (eg my wife). The problem is that such an "openness" (let's say) to violence can be corrupted. Working as a a doorman my crew had my back as I had theirs and it's too easy to allow that team loyalty to override other ethical thoughts. My brother (who was happy to fight if he saw someone else being physically bullied) was persuaded to join the police as a custody officer. The guy who recruited him spoke of how they needed more good guys who wouldn't throw their weight around etc. A good guy, right. Yet my brother watched him join in with others pushing around a guy with obvious mental problems - pack mentality. We're all large and contain multitudes and different circumstances will bring out different facets. Think of speeches by George Washington or Tim Collins (Desert Storm) warning their men of what might be done in the heat of war.
Bad cops are like bad apples as they allow the more unpleasant aspects of people to surface. Like in the book Good Omens these bad actions put a little tarnish on everyone's soul and next time it's a bit easier.
 
Rolfe said:
On the other hand, the Manchester cops seem to have covered themselves with glory today. Seven minutes from the 999 call being made to the attacker being shot dead.
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That was short-lived, now we know one of the victims was shot dead by the police.
 
Initially, it would appear that people inside the Synagogue were hit as bullets fired by the police at the attacker, pierced into the building. It is possible they were the ones stopping him from getting inside.

I have seen a video of people just standing and watching the armed police, despite appeals for them to leave and calls he had a bomb. The same happened at the Glasgow Airport attack. Some people stay routed to the spot, fascinated by what they see, forgetting the danger they are in.
 
Nessie said:
Initially, it would appear that people inside the Synagogue were hit as bullets fired by the police at the attacker, pierced into the building. It is possible they were the ones stopping him from getting inside.

I have seen a video of people just standing and watching the armed police, despite appeals for them to leave and calls he had a bomb. The same happened at the Glasgow Airport attack. Some people stay routed to the spot,
fascinated by what they see, forgetting the danger they are in.
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Or frozen by what they see. This is, by and large, a peaceful country and attacks like this are outside people's expected range of events.
 
Nessie said:
That was short-lived, now we know one of the victims was shot dead by the police.
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I hope due consideration will be given to the context that the officer had to weigh up the risk of shooting against the risk of letting an attacker wearing what appeared to be a bomb vest into the building. I know the odds were that the vest was fake, but had it not been (and does anyone know if this has been confirmed), the death toll could have been much, much worse.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
I hope due consideration will be given to the context that the officer had to weigh up the risk of shooting against the risk of letting an attacker wearing what appeared to be a bomb vest into the building. I know the odds were that the vest was fake, but had it not been (and does anyone know if this has been confirmed), the death toll could have been much, much worse.
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Sadly, police misconduct and criminal investigations are driven more by opinion and politics, than evidence. The IOPC will certainly want him prosecuted. The CC of the Manchester police will decide based on what he thinks is politically expedient.
 
Indeed. It looks like the police were faced with a situation where the attacker had run someone down and was now trying to barge into the synagogue with a knife and a maybe real/maybe fake bomb belt.

A "good guy with a gun" is a way to deal with that, but isn't cost-free.
 
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