I am someone who grew up with what I would describe as a healthy sense of respect for the police. I have never run afoul of them — the most "negative" encounter I have had with them was when I was about 18, driving my Mum's car around at about midnight, having been to visit some friends, and I got pulled over to be asked "is this your vehicle, sir?" to which the answer was, of course, "no, but I am insured on it." I wasn't speeding or driving dangerously, so I guess I was just stopped as some sort of random check or something.
However, in more recent years, I have come to somewhat lose faith in the police as a whole. I would go so far as to question what on Earth they are actually doing any more, having been in situations where a police presence would have obviously been quite helpful — mostly antisocial behaviour in the street, and particularly little scrots racing obviously stolen motorbikes around the area — and not seeing anything actually worthwhile happening.
I always used to enjoy watching shitty television like Police Interceptors, particularly when I am away from home, like I am this evening for the monthly trip to the office. But nowadays I just find them frustrating to watch, not because of the interesting things you see the cops in the show doing, but because of the inevitably disappointing follow-ups that inform you that despite all the hard work of the officers on the ground in a particular case, nothing of any actual note really happened to the people who deserved either some sort of consequences or some justice for what had happened.
Take the episode I caught part of this evening. A significant portion of the episode consisted of the police discovering a strange house that had seemingly been sitting empty, but which a local had seen some suspicious-looking individuals apparently breaking into. Upon arrival at the scene, the investigating officers found a machete case and what seemed to be some bloodstains on the floor. Once the armed police unit had been called in for backup, they investigated the house and discovered that it was not so empty at all; it, along with its next-door neighbour, which had had a hole punched through the wall to connect the two, was being used as a cannabis farm, with plants worth over half a million quid on site.
As part of this investigation, the plants were seized, as you might expect, and some fingerprints were found that you would think might lead to some further investigation. However, the programme made the disappointing announcement that after all that, "no further action was taken".
Look, I get sometimes that it's not possible to bring people to justice for their crimes — and that police dramas on the television, where the noble officers always get their man, are not at all reflective of reality. But quite often it feels like after a token "visible" effort has been made — while the cameras are on, in the case of a show like Police Interceptors — then something causes "the police", collectively, to just sort of shrug its shoulders and go "ah, well, probably wouldn't have caught them anyway" or something along these lines.
This must be inordinately frustrating for the officers on the ground who are pursuing these criminals with the hope of bringing them to justice. Can you imagine feeling pretty damn good about yourself for uncovering half a million quid's worth of drugs, and then discovering later that pretty much nothing was done about it? I can imagine that being exceedingly irritating — but unsurprising, given the amount of bureaucracy that goes into anything involving "local authorities" these days, be it teaching, policing or getting potholes fixed.
I also completely understand those who mistrust the very concept of the police on the grounds that the service continues to struggle with institutionalised discrimination, both within its own ranks and towards potential suspects. There has been outright violence and rioting in my city as a result of this sort of thing just recently — I don't really know all the details, but from what I understand, it has left a lot of people looking at our local police force in a somewhat less than complimentary light.
I'm pretty sure the residents in the area I live in are frustrated, too. There's a house just down the road from us that is very obviously one of the sources of the reckless teenagers racing around on obviously stolen motorcycles — because the obviously stolen motorcycles are parked outside the house. And it's obvious that they're stolen, because the lineup parked there seems to change on a pretty much daily basis. No-one buys and sells that many motorcycles in that short a space of time unless they are up to no good. And yet I know the police have been informed of this on multiple occasions by a variety of people, and yet nothing has been done.
So what even are they doing any more? I don't know. What I do know is that these days, I feel much less inclined to trust the police than I did in the past. And while in some ways that makes me feel a bit sad, in others I feel it's a sensible, healthy attitude to take, particularly as the world seems to be sliding inexorably towards global authoritarianism.
It's been said many times before, but we really are living in the absolute worst, most tedious cyberpunk dystopia that ever existed. We're getting pretty much all of the shit that sci-fi authors warned us about, with none of the fun stuff.
Oh well. Perhaps one day this will pass.
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