Police that can’t be trusted

I am amazed that his overriding need for power over a young woman led him to think he would get away with it. The cameras in peoples cars, showing a tall person showing him clearly trying to convince her, which was his warrant card, and handcuffing her. Right down to claiming a gang made him do it. Poor, beautiful, girl met a monster. We all know his life sentence will be hell. Justice is served

Not a silly question at all. The media are telling us that's what it was, so to wonder how they knew this is perfectly logical. Maybe he , Couzens, told the officers who interviewed him? otherwise its hard to understand where the media got this information from.

lemsip, there's no need for that reply (or is it 'Ask a silly question - and get a silly answer' time?)

It's valid to wonder how anyone would know what reason/excuse was given. I doubt the conversation was recorded.

how do we know she was stopped for covid reasons

WE don't need to know how........ silly questions.......

Yes how do we know she was being arrested for breaking Covid regulations? How did the press know? They are not unknown for filling in gaps of knowledge. Was lip reading established?

On the whole the police are to be trusted. However, there is a significant minority for whom the power vested in them goes to their heads. I lived in Brixton during the riots and some of the police were extremely arrogant in their behaviour towards the public, in particular the black community. (Not sure whether I can use that description).

There have been reports in the media today of a chat group which Couzens was part of:

"Two Metropolitan police officers allegedly involved in a chat group that included Wayne Couzens that swapped alleged misogynistic and racist messages have been left on duty after being placed under criminal investigation, the Guardian has learned.

The two Met officers are said to have been part of a WhatsApp group involving constables from three forces that is under investigation after Couzens’s phone was seized following his arrest for the murder of Sarah Everard in March"

Whitewavemark2

Run away advised a woman police officer.

Didn’t work for Charles de Menzies did it?

He got shot dead.

One of the reasons why that happened was because Cressida Dick wanted the task force to travel from Brixton to N London for a briefing and she refused to stop the traffic in the area where de Meneses lived.

Apparently the police did a dawn raid on Couzens' house, arriving sometime after 5 am but waiting until after 7 am, thus giving him time to delete his phone records.

There was a former wife of a police officer on J Vine on Thursday morning. Apparently her husband was violent towards her. She reported him to the police who visited her with a female liaison officer. She was intimidated by them and they implied that she could lose her home and her children. She eventually divorced him and she he remarried. She met his widow after he died who said that he'd been violent to her as well. This does seem to be a pattern - that if a wife complains she is ignored.

back in the early 1960s my older sister married a policeman and they lived in police flats. I was 16 and used to go on the bus to visit her some evenings. When i left to go home another officer was outside in his own car and would offer me a lift home....he would try to give me a kiss before I got out of the car. I never allowed it. very very shy and innocent.... there is another sister who visited on a different day..... and I mentioned this to her just recently and she told me he used to do that to her aswell...... we never told anyone at all. Duncan was his name. Should have told my brother in law really.

As young mums, we were accosted by a flasher and the police asked what we were wearing! When my neighbour’s high school age daughter reported a flasher, they told her mum that she should have followed him so the police would know where the flasher lived. If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have believed it. This was in the 80’s.

Many years ago a friend of mine agreed to let the police use her flat for a surveillance exercise - the police officer made a pass at her when he was in her home and they were alone.

I also had problems with a policeman - I had been accosted by a weirdo exposing himself when I was on my way back to my student flat - for weeks afterwards I was plagued by a policeman coming round and asking me out.

Where has anyone linked funding cuts to lack of respect please lemongrove? I honestly can't find it anywhere other than in your comment.

Yes Scones ...I think you have missed something indeed.

Indeed he felt entitled to kill a young girl, he felt entitled to go to McDonalds with no trousers on, he felt entitled to be racist and sexist with his mates, and on and on.

lemongrove

Everyone feels ‘entitled’ now, you can see this all the time on social media and in the news generally.

No. Not everyone.

Nobody is blaming the cuts for the lack of respect. Only you linking the two unless I've missed something.

Everyone feels ‘entitled’ now, you can see this all the time on social media and in the news generally.

Constantly blaming ‘cuts’ for lack of respect is simply the wrong answer.
Lack of respect for anyone in authority has been going on for a long time but getting worse with every year that passes.
Police, teachers, firemen, ambulance paramedics, and hospital staff etc all suffer as a result.It’s the climate of ‘Nobody tells me what to do!’ And ‘No, I won't wait, I want xyzz right now!’ And
‘It’s my right!’ Social attitudes have changed and are getting worse as time goes on.

the austerity agenda came from a government that sought to reduce spending on all public services, including the police.
The message was that public services were wasteful, private not only more cost effective but better.
The pandemic has shifted the dialogue, clapping the carers, fibs about 20,000 more police when of course, 20,000 and more had been let go.
The cuts have not helped our country in any way. We have increased drug/alcohol use, with increased violence. Anti social behaviour includes verbal and physical abuse of all public servants. The police inevitably are all to often the targets.

Re; the vigil for Sarah Everard....
The amount of police there was because it was banned!
........................................

Planned evening vigils were called off because of Covid restrictions, but hundreds gathered at Clapham Common.

It led to confrontation with the police who tweeted that it was "unsafe".

But the cuts have to be pretty dispiriting too don't they?

The police obviously felt they had to attend the vigil for Sarah, but whoever sent so many policemen that evening surely got it wrong did they not?

The photograph of the young woman, police hands all over her and her face amongst their boots reminded me of the police treatment of suffragettes.

www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/black-friday

So bad. Police are authority - we’re all conditioned to do as they ask (well mostly). How is a woman, perhaps tired and maybe a bit tiddly ( because you’ve had a nice night out and maybe a few drinks with a friend ) going to ask all those questions ? Did you see about those two young women in Derbyshire who went in separate cars with their takeaway coffees to a beauty spot for a walk and got surrounded by THREE police cars because of covid ‘rules’? Police work by intimidation. Some teenage girl friends of my daughter got stopped by 2 police officers when the were messing around at a bus stop - an officer of the law pushed one of them against the wall with her arm up her back. They were being cheeky - they were 16. What chance they asked for their ID? Ridiculous .

No....not talking of money/cuts etc but for quite a while now the utter lack of respect for the police from the general public and from criminals of all kinds is so dispiriting to police officers.They soon find that out once they join.
Look at how ambulance drivers/ paramedics and even sometimes, firemen are treated by the public at the scene of an emergency, it’s appalling and a sad reflection on society.

‘I am constantly amazed that any one wants to do this job, these days’. I wonder if that’s one of the key problems lemongrove.
Over the past 11 years, public services, including the police have faced cuts as a result of political decisions. We no longer get have police on our streets, their ability to investigate, to respond to crimes like burglary, car theft etc so restricted it seems handing out a crime number to enable an insurance claim is what happens.
There are fewer supervisors, the once excellent training courses diminished.

We need to invest in our society. Police, criminal justice, education, health, nhs, fire service etc etc. Instead, public services have been devastated by cuts. Little wonder we have more serious drug/alcohol problems along with the child neglect and domestic violence that go with that.
I do trust the Police. My experience of working alongside them, including training officers increased my trust. The police are drawn from society, so reflect it.

lemongrove

Would anyone distrust and avoid all builders because of Fred West? Am sure that some builders have committed rape and murder whitewave of their partners/ wives/ girlfriends etc.
Trying to make a case to distrust the police is very wrong in my view.

Quite right, I wouldn't distrust and avoid all builders because of Fred West.

All builders are individual builders but each individual policeman wholly represents the police force and everything it stands for. When you approach that man in uniform, or he approaches you, you expect a standard of behaviour that means you can trust that man utterly even when you are at your most vulnerable.

Exactly lemongrove so the mention of that incident and the inflammatory photograph posted on this thread lends nothing to the discussion.