Police Powers
Dr Vernon Coleman
Back in 2010 I bravely (or idiotically) wrote a long book called `2020’ in which I tried to forecast what our future would be like in the year 2020. Here is a short extract from that book which is now available again as a paperback. (For details CLICK HERE)
My 87-year-old father parked his car (quite legally) and went into a hotel to have lunch. While he was enjoying his meal the manager tottered over and told him that the police wanted to speak to him. My father abandoned his meal and struggled down the steps to the roadside. Another motorist had nudged his car while parking. There was no damage to either car. My father's car was parked perfectly legally. The police were in the vicinity only because they had been called to another minor traffic accident. My father confirmed that there was no damage and was eventually allowed to go back into the hotel to finish his (by now cold and ruined) luncheon. A couple of weeks later he received a letter from someone in the local `collisions department' of the constabulary informing him that the police had given themselves six months to decide whether or not to take legal action as a result of his collision. At the time of the offence, remember, he was sitting in a hotel eating his lunch while his car was parked outside. And, remember, there was no damage done to the vehicle and neither he nor anyone else had complained. He received further warnings about this non-existent incident and was, as a conscientious, law-abiding citizen unnerved by them. He knew he had done absolutely nothing wrong. But the police were, nevertheless, warning him about some unspecified legal action.
A 71-year-old widow who prodded a 17-year-old hoodie who had been throwing stones at her window found herself charged with assault. When the hoodie threw stones at her windows she pursued the stone thrower to tell him off. When she caught up with him (the fact that she was able to do so says more than we would like to know about the health and fitness of the current generation) she `addressed him frankly' and prodded him in the chest with a finger. The police were called and instead of arresting the stone thrower they arrested the old lady and bundled her into the back of a police van. She was eventually ordered to pay £50 costs and given a conditional discharge.
The police misuse powers given them under anti-terror legislation. They question photographers who have taken entirely innocent pictures of tourist destinations and landmarks. The police have even taken it upon themselves to delete photographs taken on digital cameras.
In my experience, this sort of quiet bullying goes on all the time and the middle classes (especially the elderly) are most likely to be the victims. They are an easy target. They don't complain much. And if they do complain no one cares.
Everything the police do seems designed to isolate them still further from the communities they are paid to protect. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that people don't join the police force because they want to serve or protect the community, but because they get a badge, possibly a gun, a lot of power and the legal right to bully and harass people who aren't police officers. They also get the right to break the law with impunity. As in all fascist states the police are employed to harass and frighten law abiding citizens. And, boy, do they enjoy it. And they even dress in a way designed to intimidate. For example, the police seem to have taken to wearing riot gear while wandering around country town centres. This is absurd. It frightens people unnecessarily and damages yet further the already fragile relationship between the police and the public – their employers. On the rare occasions when we do see policemen strutting on our streets they are dressed up in flak jackets. Moreover, policemen constantly demand to be allowed to wander around armed with pistols or taser guns. At least one chief constable wants his policemen to wear baseball caps instead of helmets. He presumably thinks that baseball caps will make them look more American, more paramilitary, and get rid of that old-fashioned `Dixon of Dock Green' image that the police seem to find offensive but which the public still prefer.
Every day I pick out bizarre and terrifying new facts about our modern police. At a demonstration recently the police confiscated a bar of soap and a pensioner's walking stick. Both were deemed to be `dangerous'. In a third of all cases, violence not classified as a crime by the police, who are trying to improve the figures in order to please the Government. The police refused to take any interest in a mugging because the victim was white and Christian and they were too busy. How can a crime be worse because the perpetrator has racist motives? What does the race or religion of the victim affect the way a crime is treated? This is political correctness and multiculturalism gone mad. And it is, of course, the arrogance and incompetence of the police which results in motorways and other major highways being left closed for unnecessarily lengthy periods, at great cost to the nation's economy (in terms of fuel wasted) and the health of the nation (in terms of the toxic fuel residues pumped out into the air as cars queue or struggle along at 15 mph.)
The police have for years relied upon, and taken cruel advantage of, the fact that courts, juries and a good chunk of the general public has always believed that policemen always tell the truth and certainly never, ever lie on oath. As people have found out that this is not true public perceptions have changed. But judges, divorced from reality and protected from the horrors of the real world by chauffeurs, servants and a constant police presence wherever they go, still believe that a policeman's word can always be trusted. Sadly, no one in England has grown up until they recognise that the police routinely lie in court. They are, as a breed, inveterate and accomplished liars and perjurers.
It has long been said that the people who become police officers are the same sort of people who become criminals. It's luck and circumstances which decides who becomes which but these days the money policemen receive is vastly superior to the sort of income that can be expected by ordinary criminals. (A 49-year-old policeman retired early in disgrace and received a pension in excess of £110,000 a year for life.)
The problems are exacerbated by the fact that the Labour Government's mind-bogglingly stupid red tape and targets culture mean that when the police arrest someone they have to fill in 128 bits of paper. Just 1 in 58 policemen are patrolling the streets they are paid to protect. The rest are doing paperwork. The Labour Government publicly guaranteed that the police spent 80% of their time on the streets. This was just another lie. The fact is that there are 143,000 policemen in Britain and of those only 2,400 are out and about at any one time. Indeed, only 81,877 ever go out into the outside the world. The other 60,000 plus are presumably too important to be expected to do anything except sip coffee and attend meetings. Most of the hours policemen do work are spent sitting in cars on motorway bridges or standing by the roadside holding those absurdly inefficient speed camera gadgets designed to fine motorists who have the gall to leave their homes and go off to work. (The persecution of speeding motorists will decline as politicians realise that society cannot afford to take driving licences away from hard-working taxpayers, nor can it afford to lose the tax they pay on the petrol they buy.)
Sadly, the relationship between the public and the police will deteriorate still further in the coming years. As the new, all reaching State gives them ever more power, and expects to be protected against all insurrections (whether physical, mental or spiritual), so the police will become increasingly arrogant and increasingly superior and distant.
My prediction is that the chances of the police acquiring greater powers (and using them) is 100%.
Note
The essay above was taken from `2020’ by Vernon Coleman – which was written in 2010 and contains my predictions. `2020’ is available via the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com Read it and you can see how much I got right – and how much I got wrong.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2010 and 2025
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