If only he had a taser I'm sure this incident would have been better handled

SSY today condemned the growing burden that interfering in politics is having on police officers.

This follows the latest attempt of a top cop to influence government policy. Les Gray is the Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, and used the organisation’s annual conference as an opportunity to call for a crackdown on the right to protest, “officer discretion” in cases of domestic abuse, and for cops to be issued with tasers.

SSY think it’s ridiculous Les was stuck behind a podium trying to influence government policy, when crimes are being committed on the streets. If elected, an SSY Prime Minister would pledge to put bobbies on the beat, and leave defending democracy to those who know what they’re doing.

The most ill judged of Les’ comments were on the right to march and protest. As Leftfield has reported before, the right to protest is under severe attack throughout the UK. For several years now governments have used the fear of terrorism as a cover to bring in laws that restrict the right of people to express dissent. It’s now harder than ever to get official permission to protest. On a local level, this has been played out by the pledge of Glasgow City Council to cut the number of marches in the city centre by 90%, meaning groups like teachers and other public sector workers have been unable to take to their own streets to protest cuts.

Les called for this undemocratic situation to get WORSE. Speaking to the Herald he exposed the real agenda of cops working with anti-democratic governments in both London and Edinburgh:

“We need to drastically reduce the number. There is no point in doing half a job. It needs to be reduced to single figures so the bigger organisations would have fewer than 10 a year and others would have even less.”

Referring to the cost of policing protests and marches, he invoked the mythical “hard working tax paying law abiding majority who don’t want to see their hard earned tax money being spent in this way” of the Daily Mail. He left out the bit he was thinking about how anyone that wants to oppose government policy are workshy, dolescum hippie bastards.

He did at least crack one joke though, claiming “marchers only have three months on their calendars, namely, January, February, March, March, March, March and March” [dadum tish, thankyou, thankyou. But seriously folks. . .]

Of course many of the marches that take place in Glasgow and across Scotland are not political protests that SSY would support, but Orange Marches. Many who are genuinely offended by the politics of Orange Marches and some of the behaviour that goes on when their taking place might think restricting their number wouldn’t be that much of a shame. But in his actual speech Les had an interesting proposal to make on how to make sure marchers are still able to take to the street:

“We need to see a significant reduction in such events and if the marchers are so hell bent on marching, let them pay for it in the same way as football clubs and others do.”

If this plan was implemented there’s little doubt who would be hit hardest. As permanent organisations dedicated to marching, Orange Lodges almost certainly would be able to raise enough money to be able to keep a fair few marches on the streets. However, groups of ordinary people trying to protest cuts, or those who have little experience running political organisations, or indeed campaigning groups operating on a shoestring budget, would be the ones hit hardest. It’s a measure that would be blatant class discrimination, preventing people on lower incomes from having the right to protest on their own streets.

One of the ways that Les would like to see the money saved from less policing of protests is on high tech weapons. In one of the most clearly political of his interventions, he directly attacked those who have raised concerns about police using the “less lethal” electroshock weapons, Tasers.

“I take great exception to some of the ill-informed comments made by Amnesty International and others.  I invite them to join us on the streets of Scotland and see for themselves what it’s like to deal with drug and or drink fuelled violent individuals armed with firearms, swords, axes, baseball bats, knives or other deadly weapons. Perhaps they could show us how to disarm such individuals without the necessary equipment.  Minister, I don’t think Amnesty International will be reporting for duty anytime soon.  We need to have the right equipment to do the job and we are convinced that includes Taser.”

Again, there’s clearly a hidden subtext here: Amnesty and people who don’t want tasers are all bleeding hearts who have no idea what it’s really like on the streets. His comments of course ignore the fact that many of those of us who are extremely worried about cops being issued with potentially deadly electroshock weapons do themselves live in these same communities, and are well aware of the dangers of violence that are out there. However, living in a poorer urban area also gives you a big insight into what the causes of the violence are (alienation caused by poverty, people who don’t receive proper support for drugs, alcohol and mental health problems, lack of community facilities, hopelessness to name but a few), and how little is done by the state to tackle these problems. Getting to the root of why people end up in situations where they behave violently would be a better use of public money than equipping cops with a nasty new weapon.

However, not all forms of violence are of the same concern to Les. In his speech, he also spoke about the “bureaucratic nightmare around domestic abuse.” He said:

“There is no such thing as a standard case of domestic abuse. Each case will have its unique features and deserves to be dealt with uniquely. We need to simplify how we deal with domestic abuse. We need to reintroduce officer discretion and do away with the pointless bureaucratic quagmire that has developed recently. Let us deal with each case in its own right and take the appropriate course of action if and when required.”

Officer Discretion

Nobody is claiming the way the police deal with domestic abuse is perfect, but there is a reason that their procedures have been forced to change in recent years. That reason is that campaign groups and women’s support organisations have worked for years to expose the abysmal record of the criminal justice system in protecting people abused in their relationships and holding abusers to account for their behaviour. What Les is saying is that he wants cops to have the right to ignore complaints if they think that’s appropriate.

Now you might think that cops are the best placed to decide if someone is really being abused or not. But the fact is cops are just as much a product of our sexist, patriarchal society as anybody else. Do we really want to go back to the days when a police officer has the right to decide whether an abuse allegation should just be swept under the carpet?

Domestic abuse is a problem that is at virtually epidemic levels; in his speech Les said that police in Scotland investigated 55, 000 incidents last year. In the face of this, the solution is not to look away and pretend that some of it isn’t happening. Les described policing domestic abuse as “an absolute nightmare”. Perhaps he ought to think about what a nightmare it would be to have your abuse not dealt with properly at an officer’s “discretion.”

The big theme running throughout Les’ speech was that the police are, like all other areas of the state, having to face up to the massive cuts the next government is going to impose on public services to pay for the bail out of banks. While the police, as the frontline forces of the state, are likely to be slightly more protected than other public services, they’re going to be under pressure to cut costs.

Les’ solution? Get the savings from restricting people’s democratic rights and reducing protection for the vulnerable. In the conclusion he said that police forces are “in relatively good shape and are up for the fight.” If that fight is about our right to take to our own streets, or to be free from fear of having an electroshock weapon used on us, then SSY are well up for the political fight as well.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.