Policing MUST Change to Survive.

Violence and police corruption are a serious problem in Brazilian cities. ..... and UK officials attended a conference on that issue in Brasilia in November ...(Hansard 15 May 2009) so what is new here, well nothing with the exception that the Police in the UK have created a huge gaping hole in public confidence due to the manner in which THEY have policed several legal protests.
Recent reports have stated that the Police need to become more humane and use what intelligence exists to show discretion when policing, stop legislating through rules and regulations that can only stifle interaction with the public, in other words be less robotic. It has long been recognised that Policing and corruption are inseparable and it is not simply one bad apple it is more institutionalised and has become the norm for many Police forces and serving officers nationwide. Corruption is multi-faceted it’s a culture issue that creates a bad smell from the top down. Now we hear that within the Lancashire force a special unit is being set up just in case through recession , officers are led into corruption. (http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/4786308.print/)
IF this is really the issue then surely it has more to do with the recruitment process that is used to find Police Officers, IF simply because of an economic downturn an officer is able to be bribed and coerced into criminal activity then the system is fundamentally flawed and must be changed.
Policing is about placing trust in the hands of a select few members of society who we believe to be honest , fair and compassionate individuals, it shouldn’t be about pay and remuneration and sadly whilst we continue to offer salaries that are above other public sector workers then we will only ever have a police force that provides a basic service. We often hear the term “The Thin Blue Line”, a dictum that shows that the police are given a much more equitable position within society than they deserve. The judiciary firmly believe that no matter what, the police are honest, how many times have we heard within a trial the phrase “But why would the officer lie”, it’s a disgrace that police officers are still permitted to refer to their pocket books, also known as the little book of lies and it is shameful that evidence is permitted from officers patrolling in pairs, police corroboration is simply a system by which the police are legitimately lying to falsely convict individuals, because the legal system allows it. The judiciary are at fault, many cases brought before the Courts could be dismissed due to lack of evidence, disclosure delays and evidence misplacements, yet we still pursue these cases that fail and that costs money, huge sums of money are being swallowed up with cases that are doomed to fail, yet no one is questioning why this is continually happening. If the Police lose, misplace or alter evidence then that should be a strict liability issue and the individual (not the force they serve with ) should be immediately suspended without pay , an investigation should be undertaken by non police officers and if found to be at fault that officer should be arrested and charged for perjury, if found blameless then they should be compensated. Courts are clogged up, people have had DNA falsely taken and criminals created due to police corruption , police ineptness and that must change before the system self implodes. Already people are choosing to pay for private security to patrol their communities, they are installing CCTV to protect themselves from Police lies and they are failing to report crimes. Communities have lost faith with their police officers and the police withdraw even more, sadly they have become a rarity on the streets of our sink estates and wider communities.
To change policing they must regain OUR trust and that involves patrolling the streets on foot, interact with the public and cease immediately the use of corroborative evidence so that true justice is once again allowed to flourish. Remove the videos in custody suites and install one that is sent to a central location and cared for by non police officers, no video system should be able to be removed when it goes wrong as it does presently. Anyone found tampering with such equipment should be charged with perverting the course of justice as simply that IS what they are undertaking.

The police must learn from mistakes , they must learn to enforce legislation not divide and conquer, they must work with communities not against them and more importantly they must have discretion because that shows the human face of policing , an area in which most officers wouldn’t recognise today. The police must STOP their use of violence when making an arrest, in many cases it is pure overkill, they go in for the kill, it is no longer just a job it’s a personal situation they themselves have created by threatening unlawful behaviour that far outweighs their alleged offenders behaviour at the time. We only have to watch ‘Road cops’ or ‘Traffic cops’ Sky TV to get a fuller picture of police officers committing section 5 public order offences, the profanities, the violence the aggression, it is outrageous. Watching those programmes it isn’t hard for one to feel intimidated when a police officer is about, they are more tooled up than ‘Robo-Cop’ and that just isn’t fair. The balance we once had with the police and the community has been lost and it would be hard to regain but surely as a matter of public safety we should try.

K Clark-Stapleton