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If you are a police officer, and you are surprised or disbelieve this

It seems I need to get you to the point where you want to read for honest police officers, who are unsurprised by the contents of this webpage. I don't think I'm very good at explaining things to police officers, and accepting them will also be difficult for most, I expect a good opinion of the force they work for is linked to the self-worth of many police officers, and also the social cohesion there. Most people have difficulty understanding things which they have incentives not to understand. But I shall try anyway.

Firstly, you could try to put yourself in the position of somebody who wants to attack the police without having been at the receiving end of any misconduct, and imagine what they would invent. What you imagine should be very different to the contents of this site. And why would anyone do it in the first place? Making this website is a lot of effort, it's emotionally draining and it's frightening to oppose authority like this. And it might not do anything. It's not likely to affect any particular situation in which the police are behaving themselves. What possible motivation could there be apart from righteousness?

Secondly, think about how searching the house of a person by gaining their consent. PACE codes of practice which you should be familiar with state that the consent must be written, that you must explain to the resident that they can withdraw their consent at any time and you would have to leave etc. Are these codes of practice rigorously followed? What would you do if you were with another police officer, who was taking the lead in an attempt to gain consent for a search, and they didn't do it correctly? It is your duty here to prevent a search happening incorrectly. Would you interrupt them, and get them to apologise to the householder? Or would you think this would undermine your authority? Would you think you were just making achieving your goals more difficult? Would you fear the other police officer would stop liking you? Would you think this happens all the time, and it doesn't do any harm? Would you find it easy and natural to just stay silent and go along with it?

Police officers are constantly in antagonistic situations in which every person with authority and with good knowledge of the relevant laws and regulations shares the same goal. Situations like this are very dangerous. Everyone would need to be saints for rule-breaking not to become accepted. And some police officers will be people who joined the police because they want to wield authority over others. People tend to behave as their incentives dictate, then convince themselves whatever they end up doing is right.

And groups of people, such as "all police officers" or "all authority figures", if they are privileged above most people, tend to act to preserve those privileges. Every time the police start doing something they shouldn't, but get away with it, not being held accountable becomes a shared privilege. If a police officer does something that police officers normally get away with, and someone who knows this complains, other police officers are going to tell themselves that since it is done regularly, it can't be wrong, instead of judging from the relevant laws and rules.

If you still are not convinced, without even checking the details, there are responses you can press for which would do no harm if the allegations are false. For example, if your police force stated "no officer of this force takes the property of others without consent or a valid power of seizure, if any police officer has taken or said they would take any of your property without consent, you ask about the power of seizure, and get no response, not even a statement that the power must be kept secret, then you can contact ......." If I am lying and it really doesn't happen, that statement will just do nothing, it will not cause any harm.


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