English Police Officers (was Re: Interview in Byte with Chris Sontag/SCO and FUD relating toBSDsettlement agreement)

[Paul Robinson]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 09:50:14PM -0700, Terry Lambert wrote:

> Like the English policeman, they were alarmed
> when they thought about it, but about all they could contractually
> do was say "Stop!  Or we'll ask you to 'Stop!' again!".

Sorry to go off on a tangent (follow-up set to -chat), but as somebody known
to be English, I have to defend (if that's the right word) the nastiness of
my local law enfocement officers.

Although they mostly don't carry guns, they do carry big sticks, pepper
spray and handcuffs and there are riot police on every division quite happy
to give you a damned good thrashing. In fact the main problem we have is
that they seem to like going around killing people, including one guy who
they shot because he had a chair leg in a bag which they had been "reliably
informed" was a shotgun, and it would seem they don't care much about
finding the killers of anybody shot whose skin colour is not... shall we
say.. "pale"?

Oh, and in Manchester, some specially trained police have been walking
around with MP5 machine guns, on and off, for at least the last 10 years
that I remember. Something to do with a couple of Irish lads who keep on
trying to kill loads of civilians in offices and shopping malls. But let's
not get into that (5,000 dead so far), the point is, they have the same guns
the British Army carry. And they're scary.

So, although I'd love English life to go back to the village bobby on his
bicycle chasing after a villain in a black and white stripy shirt and a bag
over his shoulder with "SWAG" written on it, the policeman shouting "stop
you rotter! stop or I'll get jolly angry!", I'm afraid those days are gone.

In Manchester at least, if you're a naughty boy and you get caught, it's 
16/1 you're going to spend time in hospital straight away, and about 5/1 you 
won't make it out of prison without having a go at killing yourself.

-- 
Paul Robinson