Fair & balanced post

“Few would probably have many qualms about a clearly disruptive and violent young man say being treated in the same manner as Somerville was…”

Um. I would.

See this, for instance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11152883

All right, so the lad was clearly ‘causing trouble’ – but it still makes me feel physically sick to watch. If you condone such behaviour by the police “in some circumstances” you’re really no different to a fucking fascist defending Hitler’s brown shirts.

As much as the police are trained to use force effectively and must know better as a result, would a member of the public doing something similar get a six-month sentence if it was their first offence?

There’s a pretty strong argument that, because of the power we grant them, the police should be held to a higher standard than the general public.

“Um. I would.

See this, for instance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11152883

All right, so the lad was clearly ‘causing trouble’ – but it still makes me feel physically sick to watch. If you condone such behaviour by the police “in some circumstances” you’re really no different to a fucking fascist defending Hitler’s brown shirts.”

According to the BBC, the other officers were cleared on all counts. Apparently holding someone down so a thug can repeatedly batter him is perfectly legal.

“There’s a pretty strong argument that, because of the power we grant them, the police should be held to a higher standard than the general public.”

Great power, great responsibility. Also the fact that committing certain crimes against the police – verbal abuse, assault – are considered to be worse that doing the same thing to a civvy, to the extent that they actually have seperate laws to deal with them.

[2] Oh, I know those images may seem shocking but I’m afraid they are just grist to the mill for clientele of ‘The 16 Stitches’, ‘The Mutiple Contusion’ or ‘Face and Bottle’.”
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/wetherspoons-to-open-in-a%26e-201009013051/

It seems working with clients who kick shit out of each other every weekend may be contagious – in some parts of Britain the public are even prepared to risk normal facial contours for a bag of nuts?
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/812539-mass-brawl-in-tunbridge-wells-over-the-last-bag-of-nuts

By the way Inspector Gadget says, “The idea that all police officers can be trained in all circumstances not to react to the cumulative effects of abuse like this (discussing the role of the custody officer) is simply not good enough. This kind of behaviour is learned by the underclass, and others, at an early age and is designed to get them the attention their damaged lives cannot provide by the usual means. And it works”.
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/

The inspector has designed a test for prospective custody officers – it goes something like this;
“Get two adult friends to stand either side of you, and another to the front. Make sure they are no more than 3 inches from your ears and face. Get them to start shouting as loud as they can, simultaneously for ten minutes. To make it real, they can spit in your face, endlessly repeat the same thing over and over again and scream, rant and rave. They don’t stop, no matter what you say. That’s the test. They simply will not stop.
Take this test in your hallway, invite some neighbours around to repeatedly bang on your letter box, over and over and over and over, whilst shouting abuse and leaning on your front door bell. You’d have have to do the test somewhere between 8pm and 3am after you got up at 6am to come to work. Oh, and make sure at least two phones ring continuously throughout the whole test”.

How long could you last?

@7 – if you can’t hack it, don’t do it. “Stress” is not an excuse for licensed thuggery.

[9] I agree – in the court of perfection there is no excuse for human failings’

Oops, should say [8]

Clearly if this copper wanted to get away with it he should have killed the woman involved. Then there would have been the jolly cover-up involving discredited pathologists, procrastination by the CPS, and/or lies leaked to the tabloids about the victim’s life, and the death would be seen as a “tragic accident” rather than brutality. This copper has a lot to learn in the ways of Inspector Knacker.

Lib Con seems to have accidentally printed an article which not only claims that the law favours women (‘…it helps greatly for the victim to be middle class, female and middle-aged) but that this is also right and just (‘Few would probably have many qualms about a clearly disruptive and violent young man say being treated in the same manner as Somerville was’).

The police are the repressive arm of the state: violence should only be permissible in exceptional circumstances: it is no more legitimate to use unnecessary force against a man than a woman.

This thug has been rightly prosecuted – but the system that gave him power to abuse is still in place.

@ 7 “How long could you last”?

Not long so I wouldn’t join the police.

The custody Seargeant is deliberately an objective figure, not involved in the arrest, so not party to any aggro that may have occured prior to getting to the police station. He/she is reponsible for the prisoners welfare and is supposed to diffuse any tension, not add to it.

“Lib Con seems to have accidentally printed an article which not only claims that the law favours women (‘…it helps greatly for the victim to be middle class, female and middle-aged) but that this is also right and just (‘Few would probably have many qualms about a clearly disruptive and violent young man say being treated in the same manner as Somerville was’).”

Good point, that, although I think it’s fair to say the law, as applied, is biased against women in some cases (sentencing), and in favor in others (apparently police called to a domestic incident tend to arrest the man by default, even if he’s the one who called it in).

[13] “The custody Seargeant is deliberately an objective figure” – maybe, but that still does not equate with an emotional robo-cop type figure.

It is a given that a violent assault by a six foot man on five foot woman is totally indefensible, a moment of madness, that will impact not just on the ex-officer (who has lost his career and is facing jail time) but almost certainly his two young children, and possibly even his marriage as well?

I suppose the question posed by Gadget is whether or not the level of intimidation experienced by police officers is contributing to unprofessional, and displaced forms of police aggression – from what I’ve seen in A&E there are some very damaged people out there (a la Raoul Moat) who, as Gadget says, have lost, or never developed the ability to interact in a way that most people would regard as “normal”.

I can’t help feeling there might be consequences, sometimes for innocent people as a result of cumulative exposure to the type of sorry individual one would feel rather uncomfortable with if they came and sat next to you on a bus?

And yes, before it is pointed out I realise a cop should not act in this way then expect to be immune from the consequences – but as the old saying goes “walk a mile in my shoes” and you might have a different perspective?

[15] Dear, oh dear – should say UNemotional robo-cop type figure ………

Whatever happened to that useful edit facility that LC offered to it’s more impetuous commentators?

‘…but as the old saying goes “walk a mile in my shoes” and you might have a different perspective?’

I prefer Jimmy Carr’s version: ‘Before you criticise a man you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way you’ll be a mile away – and you’ll have his shoes.’

The only issue here is a fellow officer came forward. Without that you have no chance of a conviction. No surprise this was not the Met. They all stick together there.

Be interesting to see how the other officer is treated by the force over the next few years. But this shows that the police must rid themselves of their bad apples, and I hope it encourages other officers to come forward.

“Consistency is crucial” could easily mean people being habitually unprosecuted for crimes they committed. Surely you mean that justice should be properly done no matter who is involved?

There is an issue of police conduct and their proper accountability. The IPCC and police boards are pretty poor at their jobs but a general culture within the police and the justice system needs confronting.

I suspect I’m not unusual among the users of this site in that I have an ambivalence towards the police. If I’m at a demo I look at the sceptically, wondering how they may react if things got out of hand. If I am the victim of a crime they would be the first people I would turn to.

@15 – “I can’t help feeling there might be consequences, sometimes for innocent people as a result of cumulative exposure to the type of sorry individual one would feel rather uncomfortable with if they came and sat next to you on a bus?”

But the minute you physically act out your aggression (or whatever else), built up through whatever circumstance – in this case “cumulative exposure” to “sorry individuals” – you’re no longer innocent.

Whilst it might be appropriate to factor these issues into sentencing, it is never okay to lash out at someone else, whether “genuinely” innocent or otherwise. For instance, the fact that someone has a hard day at work does not excuse him (or her) beating his wife (or children, husband, partner, etc.).

I also think we should do more to combat the kind of alienation and pressure that results in some people becoming “sorry individuals” (and indeed, challenge the notion of what a “sorry individual” is, following R D Laing).

An unhappy combination of neoliberalism and state parasitism hardly helps.

[20] Ah, RD Laing, a clever man, a psychiatrist who wrote with startling insight about mental illness and the experience of his patients, yet one who abandoned the x5 children from his first marriage to a life of penury.
The children it is said shared a single room and washed in a Glasgee “steamie” after Laing did the bunk.

He went on “to father five more children with three different women, had innumerable affairs, was subject to violent drunken rages and became obsessed with his own fame”.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6058901.ece

His own son Adrian said “being the son of RD Laing was neither amazing nor enlightening – for most of the time it was a crock of shit.”

Very few custody cops will have had the luxury of Laing’s extensive psychiatric and psycho-analytic training yet Laing was also a man prone to volatile behaviour, especially when he had a wee dram, or two?

@21 – from what I’ve heard, Lenin was a bit of a cunt too.

Is Laing’s personal life so damning that you ignore his ideas?

[22] not all – Laing was a huge influence on me; he was one of the reasons I trained as an RMN in fact, but, if we have learnt anything from the maverick it is that patterns of behaviour usually make far more sense when they are put into context.

In ‘Sanity Madness and the Family’ – Laing tells the story of a Jane who felt like a vessel, or tennis ball (at 17 she presented with ‘early schizophrenia’).
It emerged during observations at mealtime that Jane’s mother would ask her to ask her father to pass the salt – her father in turn would say to Jane tell your mother to get it herself, etc.
http://www.soteria.freeuk.com/Anti-Psychiatry6.htm

Trite, possibly, but I do tend to agree with Gregory Bateson’s dictum that context determines meaning.

@23 – well, quite; having ‘trained’ as an historian, context is all.

Hence, I think it is useful to “factor these issues into sentencing” – presumably someone who has been physically and verbally abused for four hours receives a lesser sentence for the use of casual violence than someone who does it for a jolly – but I still don’t think it excuses such behaviour.

I also think that the penalties for misuse of the extraordinary powers granted to the police (and the army, e.g. in Ireland) should be severe.

I don’t think we actually disagree on principle (am I wrong?).

(Re-reading ‘The Divided Self’ just now!)

“Hence, I think it is useful to “factor these issues into sentencing” – presumably someone who has been physically and verbally abused for four hours receives a lesser sentence for the use of casual violence than someone who does it for a jolly – but I still don’t think it excuses such behaviour.”

What about a crime of passion, where the judge and jury are convinced that the perp was so upset or enraged that they genuinely forgot themselves?

21. the a&e charge nurse

‘[20] Ah, RD Laing, a clever man, a psychiatrist who wrote with startling insight about mental illness and the experience of his patients, yet one who abandoned the x5 children from his first marriage to a life of penury.
The children it is said shared a single room and washed in a Glasgee “steamie” after Laing did the bunk. ‘

I had never heard of him but he sounds a fascinating and tragic character. Incidentally a Glasgow Steamie was a public laundry not ‘ public baths ‘ as the Times claims.

[24] “the divided self” – splendid read, yes, we are certainly more in agreement than not.

[25] remember this story about the Swedish twins, one from America who had joined her sister who was living in Ireland to both visit England – one of the twins stabbed, and killed a man the day after this incredible incident on the M6?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEIRxztJZI&feature=related

Not even the psychiatrists could understand why – but she was eventually sentenced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility (she jumped from a 30 foot bridge not long after the stabbing).

Just to add, the two main cops (during the motor way sequence) behaved with admirable professionalism and bravery in my opinion.

I happen to have seen that the other day on that Mororway Cops programme (or whatever it’s called) in the end the psychiatrists decided it was some form of intense and temporary madness.
It was a bizzare incident, like watching some sort of cojoined hysteria, one of them goes under a lorry travelling at motorway speed and then got up and tried to attack the policeman treating her broken leg.

“Not even the psychiatrists could understand why – but she was eventually sentenced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility (she jumped from a 30 foot bridge not long after the stabbing).”

I’m really not sure manslaughter should be a criminal charge, nor attempted murder. I think it makes more sense that you’re either done for killing or trying to kill someone, or for endangering someone’s life through recklessness or neglect.

At the moment, someone who tried to murder someone but misses could well get a softer sentence than someone who accidentally kills someone through a preventable error. Which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

At the moment, someone who tried to murder someone but misses could well get a softer sentence than someone who accidentally kills someone through a preventable error. Which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Well, I don’t know how it works down there, but up here, the penalties for murder and attempted murder are exactly the same, and the judiciary take an equally dim view of both.

Only just noticed this was cross-posted here. Whoops.

“Lib Con seems to have accidentally printed an article which not only claims that the law favours women (‘…it helps greatly for the victim to be middle class, female and middle-aged) but that this is also right and just (‘Few would probably have many qualms about a clearly disruptive and violent young man say being treated in the same manner as Somerville was’).

Well, do you really think that this case would have gotten as much attention as it did had this involved someone other than a middle class, middle-aged female? I sincerely doubt the Daily Mail and much of the rest of the media would have given it such a lavish spread otherwise, prosecution aside. As for the second part, I wasn’t suggesting by any means that would be acceptable, rather that there’s a lot of double standards potentially at work here, as the comments on the Inspector Gadget blog pointed out. There’s plenty of commenters and commentators out there that want the police to be tough, to give clips round the ear etc, to go back to those halcyon pre-politically correct days when the villains got a good hiding. The problem with that kind of sentiment is it leads exactly to this: the innocent being treated like rag-dolls.