Police fining cyclists

pj i think there's an inherent belief amongst police officers that the job confers responsibility and rightfulness and thus there is no further need for exacting standards of behaviour or restraint. this is specious and untrue. i would completely agree with the 'they're just doing their job' school of public order, if there was an awareness of the human failings and the predominantly masculine assertiveness that accompanies this 'just doing they're job'-ness. there is also a met-wide tendency for an institutionalised us vs them culture, and a reactionary approach to dealing with the general public that is, at best, antipathetic, and at worse, provocative. at a very base level this value system leads to the public being treated like ignorant mongs, promises being made and not kept, and and the emphasis for proving innocence or establishing a sense of right pre-empting any help bein given. on a more serious level, it leads to abject, catastrophic institutional failure, namely in the case of stephen lawrence, james ashley, harry stanley and jean charles de menezes, and more shamefully even than that initial failing, a complete abrogation of responsibility, and a failure to stand up and say - no, we fucked up, i resign, a man fucking died - i can't live with myself. but if the Chief Constable, Ian Blair, or Cressida Dickcan't accept that sanctioned murder, whatever the circumstances, requires responsibility from the person in charge, even if there are a list of 12 systematic failures that to the death of one man, then the odds on the there being a more responsible form of policing on the streets, at the point of contact, seem somewhat remote. I'd consider killing myself if i was Ian Blair, i wouldn't be able to live.

in many ways i am not disputing the good things and the role that the police fulfil within society. my faith in humanity at large is not sufficient for me to contemplate living in a world without them. i have met a few police officers who are clearly driven by a moral and ethical framework over and above the need to wear uniform, or the love of 'fighting crime and using a siren' and believe in their capacity to create a better world; these people are phenomenal. However, i have grave doubts over many of the others that operate. i guess at the end fo the day, the police are like so many of the things we love to hate, supermarkets, property investment, 4x4s, merely a reflection of our own totally warped value system and desires, a society that measures affluence on the size of your plasma TV, and not on the quality of the air that we breathe, or the schools our children attend, or the hospitals we die in. the police force upholds the interests of the few, and not the many, not the dispossessed, but the empowered, the already enfranchised.it's fucking depressing.

Right, sonny - you're nicked. I don't like your attitude, or your language.