Tribe of Cop

Originally posted: August 21st 2008.

Bristolian Andrew Carter has just had personal experience of the strongest underlying motivation in the police force. He spotted a police van reversing up the wrong way in a oneway street to get to a chip shop, and, having almost been injured previously by another driver trying the same trick, had to speak out.
He shouted, 'Hey, mate, this is no entry.' - One of the officers inside replied, 'Fuck off, this is police business.
He decided to take a photo. On seeing this, PC Aqil Farooq knocked the camera out of his hands, telling him he was under arrest for assault (allegedly with the camera), resisting arrest and being drunk and disorderly. He was handcuffed, thrown into the back of the van and locked in a cell for five hours. Then he was released on bail after being pressured to give a sample of his DNA and his fingerprints. The experience raised his bloodpressure to the extent that he had to stop work for a week, and he was prescribed a course of valium by his doctor.
He has had difficulty getting his plumbing business running again, and has been left with a fear of the police. PC Farooq was made to apologise, although he was obviously not acting alone, and the deputy chief constable Rob Beckley wrote to Mr Carter apologising for the officer's 'totally unacceptable' behaviour, again without acknowledging the support he would have needed from his colleagues to carry out this assault and abduction. There is no question but that Farooq and his buddy should have been prosecuted exactly as they would have been, had they been citizens. A 'disciplinary inquiry'- probably no worse than a ticking-off for being caught - is not good enough. They should have been arrested and charged with dangerous driving, breach of the peace, assault and kidnapping.
That's just one instance of the result of the inevitable attitude prevailing, at least as a morale preserver, in an organisation like the police, where officers are 'us' and the rest of the world is 'them', split into the ruling class and the lower orders; one to be pandered to and the other to be stood upon. And the priority in the organisation, like any organisation of this kind, is the survival of the tribe.
There is no doubt that the tried alternatives to a police force are unthinkable: justice only for the 'toffs', public hanging for all offences, lynch mobs... but vigilance - or at least, informed scepticism, remains important no matter what system we use.