What would Peel think?

There was a curious news item the other day about the “special edition” Charlie Hebdo magazine that was distributed.  Apparently constabulary in England had been put on alert to be ready for any trouble that may flare up as a result of the publications sale in the UK.  So far so good.  Then a constable asked in a newsagent for the names and addresses of all those who bought the publications.  The names and addresses of the buyers were added to an intelligence note and fed into a police crime and intelligence system, police confirmed. Yes, you heard that right.

The said force was sensible enough to see this had been a pretty stupid thing for the officer to do and quickly apologised. Wiltshire police subsequently confirmed that it had deleted the names of the buyers from its system. No formal complaint has been made against the officer who will receive “words of advice” but is unlikely to face any disciplinary proceedings.

But it’s the assumption the officer made that is worrying.  Clearly a policeman is walking our streets thinking he can make up the rules as he goes along.  If you don’t find that worrying you should.

When you combine that with Police Scotland, for “operational reasons”, (that is a useful set of words to cover just about anything the police want to cover) routinely having armed officers on our streets, you can't help but think there is something seriously wrong at the top of our police forces.  And when they encourage the talk of the “police community” they forget there is no such thing.  All police officers are members of the community they serve. All we have done is we have given them permission to exercise the power of arrest.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  They are certainly not part of a separate community. 

Sometimes I think the training of police offers must be somewhat wanting.  They seem to forget in the UK, policing is by consent.  It's one of the original fundamental concepts of British Policing dating back to Sir Robert Peel.  It essentially means the police can only operate with the support of "their" public.  Not by force.   So why does it seem a random officer in Wiltshire thinks differently? And if he was like that, how many other officers are too.