Would you go to work each day knowing that at some point you will be assaulted or abused by strangers because of the job you do? Would you leave your house and family each day wondering if you will come home at the end of the day? That is what thousands of Police Officers do every day because they believe in a country free from crime and free from fear.
I have lost count of the amount of times I have been punched, kicked, wrestled, spat upon and verbally
insulted throughout my own career. It was never anything personal as they didn’t know me. They just believed that assaulting the police was fair game. It is something every Police Officer on the “thin blue line” faces every day. Police officers just accept it as a normal part of their job and usually don’t even report it. It is not acceptable though.
Last year there were 30,000 recorded allegations of assaulting the Police and the figures are rising rapidly.
Police are one of the smallest, most identifiable groups in the country. If they were a race or religion such as Black, Asian, Muslim or Jewish there would be outrage at the violence and hate directed towards them. What makes it worse is the people who show so much aggression are the very people the Police are trying to protect.
In my opinion it goes to the very heart of British Policing. In the UK our officers Police by consent, unlike many other countries.
Sir Robert Peel recognised that a numerically inferior police force could not hope to enforce the law effectively without the consent of the public. If they became hostile and denied the Police the opportunity to do their duty, it would become impossible for them to do so. He therefore needed to ensure that any official police force operated ethically and retained the trust of the public. He devoted a lot of energy to developing a formal concept of ethical policing. He called this concept “Policing by Consent”. It is the principal which the British Police still use today. In short, Policing by consent means that when a police officer asks you to do something you do it because you respect his authority, not because he might kill you if you don’t.
In a word, “Media”. That can be the press, the news, internet, social media or any other mass communication.
The British Police were on the whole, respected, and held aloft as the pinnacle of Policing.
About 10 years ago the government shouted “World Recession” and that it needed to save money … lots of it. One way was to take a well sharpened and bloodied axe to the Police, but would the public allow that to happen?
It was left to the government and “spin doctors” to encourage the press to print detrimental stories about the Police and hide anything good. They supplied false information such as, “crime was falling off a cliff” and “Police numbers were being culled proving we don’t need as many”. This meant they could push even more officers over that same cliff as well as their budgets and the Police Stations to boot. With one swift swipe of the axe they bludgeoned moral, response times and staff. They also gave the press an arsenal of false ammunition and the green light to take aim and shoot at the Police. The press were like a dog with a bone they could not put down. To this day they will not let go of that bone and growl at anyone who comes close to taking it from them.
The press and particularly the BBC seem to have lost objectivity and impartiality. Instead it prefers to drive a story that actually incites more violence and protests which in turn fuels more news. I have just looked on the BBC website and see numerous news stories about protecting black people, actors not voicing over coloured cartoon characters and air corridors. What is missing is a story about the Scottish officer that was critically stabbed or the bravery of the officers rushing towards the violence they face every day.
It seems to have become a national obsession to record videos of people assaulting the Police or officers being compromised. These videos are often altered or edited to show the Police in a bad light. It may be that the officer is pushed, spat at or otherwise abused but all that is shown on social media is an officer trying to arrest someone who screams and shouts racism or Police brutality. It is done for the phones or press cameras. People get paid for these videos so there are no shortage of others willing to set up a scenario just to get a video to go viral. One recent video of protests in America has been viewed 52 million times. When do you see videos of the assaulting of Police officers. On the other hand some officers do not help themselves. Taking selfies at work to post on social media makes them and the Police service look unprofessional or worse.
The Police service itself is being led by officers who do not understand front line Policing. Some believe that allowing officers to take the knee, wear multi coloured LGBTQ items, dance or join in with protests is endearing them to the public. All it does is dilute the authority of the officers who have to later stand in front of a baying crowd demanding blood. Even when a street party changes to being a riot the senior officers would rather the Police throw stones with the crowd to show solidarity rather than form the “Thin Blue Line” to defend people and property.
No one I know from my 30 years in in the Police has ever been interviewed about racism, yet someone who
never spent a second doing “the job” decided my colleagues and I were institutionally racist. This has now turned into a trial by media where they are the judge, jury and want to be hangman. They have twisted words, news reports and statistics to argue their point. Anyone who tries to defend the Police is automatically labelled as “racist”. The British Police are not being judged on what they have done, but what the American Police have done. It is farcical.
As you can see there is no one reason (in my opinion) as to why the Police have been relegated to a bad case of halitosis where no one dare open their mouths to defend them. The chants of racism and Police brutality, aided by a media frenzy, have found traction here amongst people looking for a cause. If you look at the “Black Lives Matter” aims, one is to get rid or defund the Police. So far I have not seen just how they have made black lives better but I have seen over a 140 officers lives made worse through being assaulted in the protests.
It is no wonder that swathes of the population believe a totally stretched and demoralised Police, deserve to be punished. If they can get the right photo of an officer they may get three more people following them on social media. Even a Police Officer being stabbed protecting others is only newsworthy for ten minutes.
At the moment it is open season so grab your bricks, bottles, knifes or even a petrol bomb to assault the Police but make sure your camera is at the ready and the press are there.
What do you think?. Is assaulting the police just part of their job?