Every now and again, rather too often for my liking, officers from one of more of Britain’s police forces, do or say something that causes the public to not just lose confidence and respect for the police, but to actively dislike them.
These incidents can be relatively minor where the only thing that has happened is that the police lose their self respect, something we saw a great deal of following the death of George ‘Fentanyl’ Floyd when Members of the Metropolitan and West Midlands knelt in supplication to the memory of an American street thug. Other situations which drained public support away from police are the Rotherham and West Mercia Police forces where police let Islamic Rape Gangs operate for years with almost complete impunity, because these forces were desperately not wanting to be called ‘racist’. There have also been numerous additional incidents where ordinary people have been treated extremely shoddily by police officers to such an extent that they no longer see the police as Sir Robert Peel intended them to be, which was citizens in uniform, but a capricious and somewhat out of control opponent to be avoided and to be given zero respect or trust.
The drop in respect and trust is not something to be celebrated. On the contrary it is something that should be mourned and seen as a symptom of a far deeper societal malaise. This is because complex civilised societies such as our own require there to be police forces but also require those forces to be trusted and respected by the population because these police forces rely on cooperation from the general public in order to police their areas effectively. The problem is that every case of police injustice, police laziness, unnecessary police violence, police arrogance, police dishonesty, police politicisation, chips away at public trust and respect.
Another recent incident that has helped to dissolve public trust in the police was the by now well publicised case of West Yorkshire Police officers arresting a 16 year old girl with Autism for using the phrase ‘you look like my lesbian nanna’ to a female police officer. The policewoman’s nasty attitude, shown in the video below, in which she said that she ‘didn’t care’ that the young woman had Autism, along with the policewoman’s extremely thin skin witnessed by her overreaction to the ‘lesbian nanna’ comment has both disgusted and alarmed a great many people, both at home and overseas.
West Yorkshire Police when they realised the extent of the righteous public anger about the behaviour of one of their officers released a statement outlining the background to the case. They said that the Autistic girl was found drunk in the centre of town and brought her back to her family. I’ve no argument with the police’s actions here. After all you’ve got a vulnerable girl who has slipped the bonds of her family and has got drunk and bringing her back home was the correct and right thing to do. Where I stop my support for the police is when the police woman arrested this vulnerable girl for using the word ‘lesbian’ not as a form of insult but as a neutral descriptor based on the similar appearance of the police woman to her lesbian grandmother. The result of the police woman’s over reaction was that someone who should have merely been dropped off home ended up being held in a police station for 20 hours before being released without charge.
This was disgraceful behaviour by West Yorkshire Police and not just by one individual officer but by the other officers who accompanied her. I find it disgusting that none of this police woman’s colleagues thought to calm down this uniformed rage monster or try to resolve the situation in a better manner than actually happened. The officers who said nothing and did nothing while one of their fellow officers was on some sort of faux offended power trip in my view makes their conduct just as bad as the officer who said she didn’t care about the kid’s autism and arrested her for a non-offence.
There are times when I will cut the police some slack because I know that they often have very difficult jobs to do but on this occasion I will not do so. This matter could have been resolved much much better than it could have been and the blame for that lies at both the individual police officers who were involved in this incident, but also the force itself. West Yorkshire Police failed to ensure that they fielded officers who were equipped with common sense and the ability to behave decently to members of the public. Therefore criticism is due not just to the officers immediately connected to this disastrous incident but to everyone in West Yorkshire Police who trained and managed these officers.
Respect for police was already dropping down the proverbial toilet in the UK and the sight of a police officer arresting a disturbed young woman for saying that she looked like her lesbian nan,will pull the chain on that tiny amount of respect that still remains. West Yorkshire Police are currently being subjected to opprobrium from across the world because of their actions and the fault for that lies not with the girl at the centre of the story, but West Yorkshire Police themselves.
Addendum
West Yorkshire Police have a worryingly strong reputation for policing related fuckwittery and in particular pandering to some groups at the expense of other groups. Here are just a few stories about West Yorkshire from this blog and elsewhere which mention this force. Sadly I’ve little doubt that searching elsewhere and talking to those who’ve had the misfortune to be mis-policed by West Yorkshire will show up similar and possibly worse problems regarding this force than either the ‘Lesbian Nanna’ story or those I’ve linked to below.
2019 – West Yorkshire Police have a worryingly strong obsession with ‘diversity’ issues and even crowed about winning some useless ‘diversity’ award. Force gets criticised but WYP just cleave to the ‘diversity’ bollocks harder.
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2019/02/21/west-yorkshire-police-get-a-well-deserved-online-hammering/
2018 – West Yorkshire Police act as uniformed enforcers for trans ideology activists.
2023 – West Yorkshire Police Chief Inspector cucks for Islam by taking part in a Kangaroo Court meeting where a woman had to beg for her son’s life after he accidentally scuffed a Koran.
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2023/03/02/pictured-is-not-a-proper-police-officer/
2020 Women’s rights demonstrators allegedly targeted for harassment by West Yorkshire Police
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2020/09/21/britains-thoroughly-bent-police-part-one/
2017 – Allegations that West Yorkshire Police has a highly selective way of investigating attacks or harassment based on a person’s immutable characteristics.
2017 – Ex Muslim alleges that West Yorkshire Police did little to protect him from Islamic nutjobs
2015 – West Yorkshire Police wring their hands over the ‘well being’ of Muslim family who decided to join up with ‘Islamic State’.
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2015/06/16/let-them-go-we-dont-want-them/
2023 – And of course we must not forget how West Yorkshire Police have done a considerably less than sterling job of protecting teachers from gangs of Islamic extremists with one teacher targeted by such extremists still in hiding two years after Islamic nutters kicked off about the teacher using Charlie Hebdo images of Mohammed in a lesson talking about freedom of opinion.
Yes, well of course, but when I was a young’un several decades back the police really pissed many of us off because they had a remit to prosecute cannabis users for even small amounts for personal use. Historic, yes, but the same argument applies that they were diverting resources against apprending the really serious criminals.
Nicking an autistic girl for a mere word is a whole lot worse than a nick for a bit of weed but you are correct in saying that the Lesbian Nana incident was a massive and inappropriate waste of police resources.
Try living in Bradford…WYP are the least of our problems. Mainly because they are nowhere to be seen.
Must be awful. Sorry to hear that WYP are as useless in Bradford as they are elsewhere.