Post by Teddy Bear on Dec 21, 2011 20:27:04 GMT
James Delingpole comments on a programme he was on yesterday with a 'Professor' about whether police should use more hard line weapons against rioters, who gives the line the BBC want to present. Which is why they also give this professor a whole article on his views. Notice no attempt to balance his view in the article with an alternative point of view from somebody who is not a lily livered liberal.
By all means shoot rioters but…
By James Delingpole
Yesterday I had a bizarre, typically BBC-ish debate on the BBC with someone called Professor Gus John about the policing and the riots. Professor Gus came up with the usual guff about the riots being caused by social deprivation, while I countered that this was really about bored, feckless youth protesting about the injustice of not having new enough trainers and big enough flat screen TVs – something which they managed to remedy very effectively.
It was pegged to the new report suggesting that police should be allowed to use baton rounds, water cannon, even live bullets against rioters endangering life and property. Professor Gus's line, astonishingly, is that this was bad because it might "escalate" tension – especially since so many kids these days carried guns and might be tempted to shoot back. "Eh?" I said. "You're saying Gus that the reason police shouldn't use guns is because the bad guys already have guns? Sounds like a counsel of despair to me."
Fortunately, I don't think Professor Gus is representative of anyone save the tiny minority of professional grievance mongers regularly invited onto the BBC to talk abject drivel. Most of us, I suspect, would not have anything ruled out – up to and including napalm strikes and daisy cutter bombs – if it enabled the police to do their job better. But I do think it's important that if we are going to give the police these shiny new toys and generous rules of engagement, we first ought to establish that they know what their job actually is – and what their job isn't.
Here are a few examples of what the police's job isn't:
1. Diversity/gay/lesbian/transsexual outreach, "Islamophobia"-prevention, social work, anything to do with people of all races, colours and creeds holding hands under a rainbow. The police's job is to treat everyone equally, not to give special favours to politically preferred minority interests. Nor to have any of their time wasted at special sensitivity-awareness training sessions at our expense.
2. Executing people for being drunk, depressed, middle class. Sorry but the idea that a barrister with a shotgun in a square which had been cleared of people represented a danger to anyone but himself is just a joke. There was no need for those marksmen to have shot him.
3. Getting a bit lairy, just to show who's boss. It's understandable that tensions should run high at demos and I've no doubt that for officers on the front line it can be a truly terrifying experience. But that doesn't justify excessive use of force. What's excessive? Beating unarmed protestors over the heads with sticks as happened at the 2004 Countryside rally in Parliament Square would be one example. The death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 would be another. Like soldiers, frontline police should be able to perform their duties to the best of their abilities confident that if decisions taken in the heat of the moment go wrong they nevertheless have the full support of their superiors. The quid pro quo for this privilege – and it is a privilege: policing is by consent, remember – is that wanton acts of thuggery should result in punishment and dismissal.
4. The video above. This represents one of the most flagrant abuses of police power I've seen in a while and the truly extraordinary thing is that Sandwell police actually released this video to the public as a PR campaign to show what a great job they're doing.
Really? So Sandwell police think it's acceptable, do they, to stop ordinary people as they try to board buses in West Bromwich and search them for weapons and drugs? Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Which ever weapons-grade dork dreamt up this fascistic scheme deserves to lose his job immediately. CONSENT, you pillock. CONSENT!
By James Delingpole
Yesterday I had a bizarre, typically BBC-ish debate on the BBC with someone called Professor Gus John about the policing and the riots. Professor Gus came up with the usual guff about the riots being caused by social deprivation, while I countered that this was really about bored, feckless youth protesting about the injustice of not having new enough trainers and big enough flat screen TVs – something which they managed to remedy very effectively.
It was pegged to the new report suggesting that police should be allowed to use baton rounds, water cannon, even live bullets against rioters endangering life and property. Professor Gus's line, astonishingly, is that this was bad because it might "escalate" tension – especially since so many kids these days carried guns and might be tempted to shoot back. "Eh?" I said. "You're saying Gus that the reason police shouldn't use guns is because the bad guys already have guns? Sounds like a counsel of despair to me."
Fortunately, I don't think Professor Gus is representative of anyone save the tiny minority of professional grievance mongers regularly invited onto the BBC to talk abject drivel. Most of us, I suspect, would not have anything ruled out – up to and including napalm strikes and daisy cutter bombs – if it enabled the police to do their job better. But I do think it's important that if we are going to give the police these shiny new toys and generous rules of engagement, we first ought to establish that they know what their job actually is – and what their job isn't.
Here are a few examples of what the police's job isn't:
1. Diversity/gay/lesbian/transsexual outreach, "Islamophobia"-prevention, social work, anything to do with people of all races, colours and creeds holding hands under a rainbow. The police's job is to treat everyone equally, not to give special favours to politically preferred minority interests. Nor to have any of their time wasted at special sensitivity-awareness training sessions at our expense.
2. Executing people for being drunk, depressed, middle class. Sorry but the idea that a barrister with a shotgun in a square which had been cleared of people represented a danger to anyone but himself is just a joke. There was no need for those marksmen to have shot him.
3. Getting a bit lairy, just to show who's boss. It's understandable that tensions should run high at demos and I've no doubt that for officers on the front line it can be a truly terrifying experience. But that doesn't justify excessive use of force. What's excessive? Beating unarmed protestors over the heads with sticks as happened at the 2004 Countryside rally in Parliament Square would be one example. The death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 would be another. Like soldiers, frontline police should be able to perform their duties to the best of their abilities confident that if decisions taken in the heat of the moment go wrong they nevertheless have the full support of their superiors. The quid pro quo for this privilege – and it is a privilege: policing is by consent, remember – is that wanton acts of thuggery should result in punishment and dismissal.
4. The video above. This represents one of the most flagrant abuses of police power I've seen in a while and the truly extraordinary thing is that Sandwell police actually released this video to the public as a PR campaign to show what a great job they're doing.
Really? So Sandwell police think it's acceptable, do they, to stop ordinary people as they try to board buses in West Bromwich and search them for weapons and drugs? Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? Which ever weapons-grade dork dreamt up this fascistic scheme deserves to lose his job immediately. CONSENT, you pillock. CONSENT!