The recent terrible vehicular incident in Liverpool when a man in a car drove into a crowd of people celebrating a Liverpool football win has illustrated something stark and worrying about British society. Whilst my thoughts at this time are primarily with those who have been injured in this incident, it’s the public reaction to this incident that specifically interests me.
What’s noticeable about the public reaction to the incident and in particular with regards to reactions to police statements is the sheer lack of trust that the public now have in any statement made by the police in connection to the Liverpool vehicular incident. Whereas once it would have been inconceivable that large or seemingly large bodies of the public would immediately question the motives, honesty and probity of the police following a tragedy like this now there’s mass distrust of the police.
The distrust is so great that on social media nobody that I can see is trusting the police on, for example, the issue of the extension to pre-charge custody that’s been made even though there could be sound legal and procedural reasons for such an extension. These reasons could include the suspect not being medically fit or sober enough for questioning, the need for the police to collate the evidence such as witness statements and CCTV that they might wish to use when questioning the suspect. In a case like this the police are not going to leave anything to chance and I suspect that they will want to have all their ducks in a row prior to questioning and definitely prior to charging. Some were even claiming that the failure of the police to name before charge (something that is rarely done these days) was evidence of a conspiracy to hide this offender from the public.
The attacks and conspiracy theorising on the issue of the detention extension and the lack of naming of the accused (he’s since been charged and therefore named as Paul Doyle aged 53 of Liverpool), were I believe groundless but the fact that these expressions of total distrust in the police popped up so quickly bodes ill for Britain’s police. Many people now automatically assume that the police are going to lie to the British public following incidents like this and to a large extent this feeling is the fault of both the police themselves and their political masters.
A good example of the expression of public distrust in the police often occurs when police forces have made the ‘please do not speculate’ calls after nearly every major terror or public order or crime incident that occurred in Britain over the last ten years or so and people have noticed that. Whilst making the ‘don’t speculate’ call might have some sound legal and policing justification such as preventing a future trial being tainted or to prevent vigilante groups rising up, they do have the effect of making it look to some as if the police are hiding stuff for nefarious reasons. This is especially the case when the crime or terror incident in question is one where migrants or foreign origin religious and political extremism are suspected connections to the incident or crime. The immediate response now from a growing number of people it appears is to assume that the police are protecting some villain or some ‘community’ through the ‘do not speculate’ calls. The policy of two tier policing where one group whether they be racial, religious or political are policed more softly than others is now blatantly obvious to all but the most dim and ill-informed has also contributed to both the public’s lack of trust and the unease that many members of the public feel when police make comments after a crime or terror incident.
The many years of the political classes hacking away at police impartiality and the slow but now obvious politicisation of the police has in my view contributed greatly to the drop in public trust in the police. Police forces that ally themselves to political causes or ideologies or who are perceived to do so are not going to be seen as impartial. For example it’s difficult to say that a force is impartial when they paint their cars in rainbow colours, publicly promote the cult of trans, have senior officers take part in Islamic kangaroo courts following a ‘scuffed koran’ incident or fail to deploy public order law when thousands of Muslim and Leftist Jew haters take to the streets.
If you’ve looked at the reaction of the public to the police’s statements and actions following the Liverpool horror and thought that they were extreme then all I can say is hang on to your hats as this public reaction is liable to be far worse when the next mass casualty terror atrocity or migrant or assumed migrant related crime or similar incident occurs. When this happens the police will be even more mocked when they try the ‘don’t speculate’ line and they will be mocked as they’ve lost the respect of the public who once would have hesitated before accusing the police of bias or wrongdoing or some other nefarious action. If the police thought that they could ride two horses at once, one called ‘multiculturalism enforcer’ and the other called ‘impartial police officer’ and get away with it then I’m afraid that they are very much mistaken. The police have squandered a reputation for impartiality that took over a century to build in about twenty five years and I don’t think that reputation can be easily rebuilt if that is it can be rebuilt at all.