I wouldn't annoy a police officer before the Pan-Opticon was installed anyway.
When a Cop in the 90s arrests a guy because the cop got annoyed at something the 'suspect' said, you had the option to blame it on the cop's thin-skinned personality. Now annoyed cops can use the law directly.
The UK police implicitly allowing retributive online abuse is subtly humorous.
You'll find in the UK that it's quite common practice to use the vagueness in the law to pin a different charge on somebody. Being rude to a police officer isn't a chargeable offense, yet it'll be treated as such. The police have no requirement or training available to actually understand the nuances of the law, nor are they updated when the law changes. The British police is mostly under-trained and under-funded, especially as you break out of the London bubble.
One of the major issues with UK law is it's vagueness and openness to interpretation, which is all of course by design. You don't tend to notice erosion until the ground beneath you collapses.
Being annoying or insulting isn't a crime, but there are lots of other things that are crimes. If you want to hold the system accountable, don't give them any excuse to take you down. If you're going around filming cops, there may not be any legal requirement to be polite and respectful, but you had better be polite and respectful if you want to be effective.
As far as internet comments go I think it's more than a stretch to put "screw off" in the abusive bucket.
>what are they getting a warning for?
So the cop can have a paper trail proving he was awake and working.
>I don't want people being let off because they make a good impression! That lets the police enforce laws based on their biases, such as race or gender. I'd much rather have simple factual enforcement. Either you were speeding or not.
Automated enforcement of the letter of the law would instantly screw basically everyone. I don't think you understand how many letter of the law violations cops see every day and choose not to do anything about.
As a police officer in the UK, you try and pull this shit here you're most definitely getting fined, and then we're going to have an unpleasant conversation about perverting the course of justice.
Policemen being upset with verbal abuse is fine. Not working as hard? Fine, too. Arresting the person who is yelling insults is not fine - it's vindictiveness and abuse of power.
There is really nothing special about the cop person deserving of more or less respect compared to other normal people. It's only the cop's mission that deserves deference and should define possible criminality of any communication initiative. For example:
If a cop is aiming a sniper rifle to kill a hostage-taker, complimenting the cop on his uniform is interference, and should be a crime - it impedes the execution of the law.
If a cop is walking down the street, hurling insults and making faces at him is not really impeding the execution of the law (uncivilized as it is), should not be a crime or grounds for arrest. Getting in the way may be a crime if the 5 seconds that took to sidestep the perp can actually impede the execution of the law. Asking for a badge number is interference, but is specifically enumerated as a trade-off worth making and not a crime.
Now, sometimes cops are obligated to work with people who are being jerks. This problem is also well-known to DOL, USPS employees and even many people in private sector. There could be a separate law created that says "if by law we must work with you, by law you must behave or pay a measured fine". Such law then could provide deterrence against verbal abuse for all people who are not able to get out of obligation to work with nasty people. I doubt that arresting the insulter would be as a remedy in such law, at worst I see 10-minute detention to identify the person's name and address where the $250 fine could be mailed to, akin to a traffic ticket. And this protection should not be specific to only police, or even government employees - an ambulance worker, or someone assisting disabled people may also be not in a position to turn away the jerk, but then they should get protected as well.
Overall I am in favor of measured responses, Powell's military doctrine should not be applied to your own citizenry.
> Telling an officer to "fuck off" or "piss off" is not a crime. It's not an offense to be rude and you certainly shouldn't have to "Wind your neck in" in fear of a public servant.
> Insulting people online or just saying something mildly offensive will often lead to prosecution.
"will often": no, not at all. Could occasionally. You're not helping your argument by overstating this. The courts are not stuffed with people being fined for saying things that are "mildly offensive".
And nothing of what you're talking about is government surveillance. The police aren't the government, and the police do not routinely surveil the populace.
They wouldn't have the staff, for one thing! The police actually wanted to close the police station in the town in which I live -- population over 100,000 in the wider borough -- and replace it with what amounted to a kiosk and service from police stations five miles away in each direction.
And yes, really: for those viewers who persist in believing that the surveillance system in Hot Fuzz exists in reality... nope
“The guy told them to p off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,”*
This is a common use of laws in the United Kingdom. They put lots of laws on the books around trivial things that they almost never enforce on their own, but then which officers arbitrarily use in "convenient" situations like this. The average person swearing in the street will not be accosted, someone arguing with a cop who wants to make a point will.
If he had calmly showed police his bag of power bars and digital watch, and asked pooice to view the cctv, he would have walked away.
(It's bullshit that being angry towards officers got him arrested; it's part of the police job to deal with people in distress and they should have managed it better).
Police should be trained, and it should be a point of pride for them, to be ultra-cool in the face of upset or rude people. There should be no incentive for arrest in a situation like this, no power struggle, but instead they should be proud and rewarded for having deescalated any non-violent situation. Think about the famously robotic Queen's Guards in the UK. Insults or bait should roll off police like water from a duck's back.
In this case, the woman was irritated because she was being penalised for a really, really minor infraction. And then she was defensive because persisting with the cigarette request and the demand to leave the car seemed unfair. And then she was rude because he was abusing his authority and he was too embarrassed to acquiesce to a member of the public (giving him the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't because she was a woman and a black woman). The police should accept in the first, explain in the second and then deescalate in the third stage of a case like this.
Sorta interesting article, but I wish it gave more details on the outcomes.
Obviously, as a society we should demand that police officers uphold extremely high standards of conduct, given their power and position, and this certainly includes being called a fucking stupid asshole pig (or whatever) without responding violently/illegally.
It's not a crime to insult a cop, and if pepper spray and handcuffs are used in absence of a crime, there should be negative consequences for the police officer and his department.
> Here's a rather strange example (note that in this video an officer does incorrectly assert that my video recording him is against the law - when I calmly correct him and move on, he doesn't say another word about it):
I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but after watching the video, I wanted to let you know that you definitely do sound like a smart aleck when talking to officers (e.g. "well, we both know that in the real world there is such a thing"... or, "well, fundamentally, I...")... maybe you weren't "disrespectful" in your choice of words, but I can't say the same about your tone and approach. It seems like you're willing to give officers as hard a time as possible just because it's not outright illegal. Don't expect a nice reaction when you do that. They had quite a bit of patience with you and you saturated it.
Unless policy has changed in 5 years, you don't need to pull strings to make the police visit somebody who made tweets you don't like. You just need to make the right noises and be sufficiently offended such that the police will check whether there is a genuine problem or not.
It's pretty scary getting a phone call or visit from the police, but they make it quite clear you're not in trouble, at which point it's mostly infuriating that someone got butthurt enough to trouble you in this manner.
When a Cop in the 90s arrests a guy because the cop got annoyed at something the 'suspect' said, you had the option to blame it on the cop's thin-skinned personality. Now annoyed cops can use the law directly.
The UK police implicitly allowing retributive online abuse is subtly humorous.
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