There is no such thing as the Police family.

It was a sad occasion.  The funeral of a police officer in Liverpool today.  Very dignified. 

But was it very fitting?  There was something not quite right about it all. There were no "ordinary" people there.

Apart from the family and friends of the officer I’m not sure I saw many people who were not in uniform.  The subliminal message, this is all about us, it’s one of our own we have lost.  Which when you think about it for more than a nano second is the wrong message. And it reinforces the thinking that seems to exist in the police that its all us vs them.  That is certainly what it looked like today with the community the police serve being rather significantly absent and seen as irrelevant.

The tired phrase “police family” was trotted out again.  But the police are not a family.  They are members of our communities, just like everyone else.  It’s just we have given them one thing.  The power of arrest.  And that power is there to be exercised on behalf of the community family they come from.  This talk of the police being a family only alienates people from the police. 

Putting it very simply, they are not a Police Family.  They are not a Police Force.  They are a Police Service for the community provided by people of the community who chose to serve as officers.

When he laid out his nine principles of Modern Policing in 1829 Sir Robert Peel said this: 'The police are the public and the public are the police’ – police officers are drawn from the community and we exercise our powers on their behalf – we police by our community’s consent.'