Thoughts on trust in the police

Thoughts on trust in police

The law is more than just cops and robbers

We have to accept that not every cop is a saint.

We have to accept that not every court decision is just and fair.

We have to accept that not every “victim” is telling the whole truth.

We have to accept that church ordained clerics are nor always well behaved.

We have to accept that not every journalist is unbiased and well intentioned.

We have to accept that “the media” includes the dissemination of minority views as if accepted by the majority.

We have to accept that the media publishes things that are opinions, presenting them as if factually true

We have to accept that information is manipulated to give false impressions.

BUT

If we reject every cop, every court, every priest, every victims claim; then we have intolerable chaos. If we stop viewing the media as a source of information, we travel blind in a world filled with problems.

It is not simply believing that freeing a dozen criminals is better than wrongly convicting one innocent person.

If we have no trust, if we tarnish all the efforts to keep law and order, then we do not free a dozen criminals but we invite total anarchy.

True Anarchy not the watered down Hollywood stuff.

True anarchy is the total absence of rule by law, it is the total absence of self control, it is rule by the principle that the strongest takes all and the rest suffer all the time.

There are problems with law enforcement and the law courts, A guess, but would expect some people from just about every nation, will agree with this statement.

To examine why this is; we we need to study the application of the law. The courts.

In the UK many of the difficulties have their origins in our adversarial court system. Couple this with always applying the judges interpretation of the legal nuances of any law; rather than the actual intentions of the parliament that enacted it. Add the problems caused by laws of “tort” and you have a system that acts to preserve its own identity, it behaves in a manor suggesting that it, the law court system, is the arbiter of all that is right or wrong. It does not seek to apply justice, it does not seek to correct a wrong, it seeks to apply its own interpretation of the “letter of the law” It does not consider the intention behind the enactment of a law, it only considers its interpretation in a legal sense. ( see definitions at the foot of this essay)

These priorities, of our whole court system, have ended up corrupting the whole justice system.

Police now have to win the court case not apply justice to any situation. The police know that criminals who can pay for the most legally clever and ruthless lawyers will often escape punishment and so these police officers are temped to take remedial action themselves, without reference to any court. This is a slippery slope and can lead to vigilante punishment of people who are not actually guilty, just appear to be so.

Senior police officers have become “political” and some have become professional administrators, not law enforcement practitioners. Some appear to have political beliefs that may or may not line up with any particular government. When it does not line up, they seek to undermine the elected government. This should never be acceptable.

Reform the courts and the criminal justice system, remove the politics from senior offers, ensure promotion is only available to practical experienced police personal who have served years on the front line. Then deal with any mental instability or corruption within the police force. First step is to bring the courts back to democratic governance. In the UK ministers of the crown, elected to parliament and then selected to be part of a government, find every decision that make, decisions they have an electoral mandate to make; get challenged by lawyers in the courts. These courts are collections of other lawyers. They are not elected and they do not consider the electoral mandate as being of the slightest relevance. They apply their own interpretation of which ever law they pick and then seek to thwart the will of the minister and the electorate they represent. This is not democracy at work.

----------------------------

Legal—established by or founded upon law--- of or relating to the law.

Law – a rule or set of rules enforceable by the courts regulating the relationship between the state and its subjects. NOTE there is no mention of justice in any of this.

Tort laws--- as applied in UK courts--- tend to be based on a decision made in a previous court. That is the judgment passed down by a judge in one court gets repeated and applied as if it is the law, by later courts. It is notable that in the definition of “tort” there is inclusion of criminal laws.

Statute law-- a rule or body of rules made by municipal or other authority. Generally taken to mean the laws made by Parliament

Tort definition--- the word is based on the French word for wrong, a civil wrong, or wrongful act, whether intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another. Torts include all negligence cases as well as intentional wrongs which result in harm. Therefore tort law is one of the major areas of law (along with contract, real property and criminal law), and results in more civil litigation than any other category. Some intentional torts may also be crimes such as assault, battery, wrongful death, fraud, conversion (a euphemism for theft), and trespass on property and form the basis for a lawsuit for damages by the injured party. Defamation, including intentionally telling harmful untruths about another, either by print or broadcast (libel) or orally (slander), is a tort and used to be a crime as well.