Trust is an
unusual attribute. It can take an
eternity to earn and be lost in the blink of an eye. Once someone or something’s credibility is
eroded, it is gone and the notion of trust is lost. We see this everywhere in daily life from
marriage breakdowns to chapters of employment drawing to a premature conclusion. It is something we all accept, a common
social norm, cardinal to the rules which define the society we live in.
So why is
it then that the vast majority of people in this country still reject these
social rules when it comes to dealing with the police?
Certain
police forces resemble the serial adulterers at times (you know the ones I mean). The one who breaks their partner’s heart a
thousand times or more, and yet they are taken back time and time
again. We all look at the downtrodden
partner with bemusement, many with pity. But we are in no doubt that they are foolish and should stop
placing their unwavering faith in this untrustworthy person who deserves their
loyalty no more.
And I must
at this stage make the distinction because unfortunately one can make lazy
sweeping generalisations which place everything together and it is wrong. For example I have lived in the East Midlands
for eleven years now, ten of those in Nottingham. Reflecting on that period, I do not hold the dossier
of stories which I have previously highlighted.
In some
ways Nottinghamshire Police are very different from their London
counterparts. I do not remember seeing
Nottingham officers on duty for the carnival performing an embarrassing “wiggle”
which looks like your uncle at one of those 90s family reunions. Like the boring images
that are so cliché of Notting Hill Carnival for example. I can be tedious and highlight Nottinghamshire’s
failure
to apprehend James Brodie, but one can forgive such a blemish when remembering
that there is little concrete evidence to support the theory that Brodie is
even still alive.
The way in
which Nottingham has been rehabilitated from the lawless wild west of less than
a decade ago is an achievement which they must also take credit for. Not solely.
But they deserve to be commended all the same.
No. This is not about Nottinghamshire
Police. This is specifically about two
police forces, one of which I have written about twice
in the past. The other is a force who I
hold in the same contempt as the Thatcher government for their role
in the miners’ dispute of the mid 1980s.
The reasons
why I hold the views
have been addressed previously so will avoid going over old ground again. Instead I wish to focus on recent news, and
how related to the context of those historical events, the time has come to
approach the issue of our relationship with these two forces in a more
enterprising and contemporary way.
The release of
the Hillsborough files have confirmed what people who relate to views outlined
in my previous posts have long since suspected.
That South Yorkshire Police deflected attention from their own failures
in the disaster by slandering the reputations of Liverpool fans in the form of
doctored evidence and downright lies.
Actions which took place 23 years ago granted, but which were as good as
repeated during Sir Norman Bettison’s initial reaction to
the report last week with the following response:
"Fans' behaviour,
to the extent that it was relevant at all, made the job of the police, in the
crush outside Leppings Lane turnstiles, harder than it needed to be.”
The obvious suggestion will be to throw Sir Norman out of
the force, despite his subsequent apology, which naturally should be
welcomed. But how on earth does this
solve the wider problem which led to the culture of corruption that didn’t just
affect a police officer here or there, but practically everyone who was
involved with the investigation into the Hillsborough disaster. And what about those who helped to conceal
all of this? We are no longer talking
about purging a few bad eggs, we are looking at an entire force decayed to its
roots.
This, coupled with conduct during the mid 1980s
at the time of the miners’ dispute, poses severe questions as to whether this
force has the confidence of the public it is supposed to serve. The scars of these episodes will serve as reminders
for years to come, anytime an issue arises questioning the integrity of this force;
people will question whether they are being furnished with the full story. This break down in trust will not be
repaired. It will be borne into the
collective DNA of anybody in that part of the country, and indeed anyone else
who for one or reason or another will have dealings with this force in the
future. It will haunt them like the scar of Cain from the
biblical tale for generations to come.
The term South York’s police will become a paraphrase in modern popular culture
which will be defined as corruption, dishonesty and serial abuses of authority.
It is a lot like the Metropolitan Police in London, although
they are a bit further down the road.
They have already had their “Hillsborough report moment” in the form of
the Macpherson Report. But we have the benefit
of being a decade down the road to realise that this force is just as loathed as it was then, if not perhaps more so, if that was even possible. Names of victims of their disgraceful conduct
when attempting to conceal their mistakes are so imprinted on our minds that a
collection of terms require no further explanation: Sylvestor, De Menezes,
Duggan, Tomlinson, Hackgate. All of which took place after the force was
supposed to be improving, when the mistakes of the past were supposed to have
been addressed.
Recently Andrew Mitchell has found himself caught up in an almighty
row over a bicycle and a Downing Street gate.
It is alleged that he swore at a police officer who was supervising the
entrance gates. It has all boiled down
to a politician’s word against that of a police officer. Politicians don’t exactly
have the best reputation but it is still interesting to see how the public
immediately takes the police officer’s account of events at face value, as if
it is inconceivable that a police officer would lie.
I mean why on earth would a police officer lie?
We then hear the reaction of the
Police Federation and all of a sudden there is a fishy smell of manipulation in
the air. The same kind of stench
that was billowing out across the country last summer during social unrest as
politicians lined up to denounce the cuts against the police.
So what do we do?
The
solution is staring us in the face. When
institutions have become discredited, they cannot be saved. To return to the theme of an unscrupulous
lover who lets us down: we need a divorce- a full and final settlement. We can’t go on pretending that they will
change their ways when history shows us that they never will. The names and victims will change, but the
similarities are frightful.
Now before
anybody wonders, I am not proposing we abolish the police as an institution and
live in a society which resembles the scene from Robocop 2 when law and order
breaks down. A vacuum from the absence
of a police force would lead to social mutiny and cannot be tolerated in
any modern society. Not one that would
be expecting to function with accepted social rules anyway.
However the time has come to have an informed debate about adopting
examples set in Northern Ireland and assessing the merits of a long term
solution to the issue of credibility.
This is the territory which had a police force, the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC), who sometimes appeared to be an extension of
the Unionist movement and were not considered to be meeting the needs of the
Catholic community. By the end of the 20th
century they lacked the authority to perform their roles. The proposal to disband the RUC was met with
derision at the time but over a decade on the replacement force, the Police Service
of Northern Ireland (PSNI), doesn’t possess the same historical baggage. It is allowed to perform its day to day duties
without the shadows
of human rights abuses against children for example.
Were all of
the RUC dishonourable? That’s a
difficult one to answer with any degree of certainty. I prefer instead to use the fruit bowl
analogy, and I repeat it a lot when I talk about institutions like the
Metropolitan Police. The theory goes that
good, honest and honourable people go into the Metropolitan Police with the
best of intentions: to uphold the law.
Sadly they are exposed to unethical, usually illegal, behaviour within a
culture of corruption. The end result is
that they too eventually become part of the landscape. Just like a fresh healthy selection of fruit,
placed in a bowl of rotten produce long past their best, which should have been
hurled into the garbage many moons ago. We
hope that the new fruit will bring healthy life back to the rotten flesh, that
in time it may indeed become edible again. But it’s not.
The result is that the entire bowl becomes contaminated and inedible. Do we throw the bowl away? We should.
But instead we go back to the shop and purchase even more fresh fruit
under this misguided philosophy that somehow we can reverse the laws of
nature.
We cannot
make rotten fruit good no more than we can hope that a bad police force can be
turned around. We have to finally reach
the point where we say enough is enough and draw a line and start again.
It will be
expensive, disruptive and will upset a lot of people. But it is a short term pain to ensure that we
find a long term remedy. To carry on, in the vain and deluded hope that “this
time they will change” is not just silly but pathetic. We have to face the truth and shut down the
police forces which no longer retain the faith of the public. To not do so is living in denial and
resembling the gullible partner who takes their philandering partner back “one
last time” despite accepting that the final chance had long since been spurned.
I am not
hearing this anymore. It is like white
noise to me. Because as Sunshine
Anderson once said so
eloquently, I really have heard it all before.
