Female Police Officers

[maggiebee]

Just heard on the news that the second policewoman who was shot has died.

[ladybirder]

Kerosene is an ex copper em? Blimey!

[Kerosene]

I have my own post running on this, but obviously there are some comments on this different to on mine, so I'd say this:
The vast percentage of British Police Officers, and I'm a retired one, have consistently voted against being armed. Do we really want to be like the Yanks? I know I don't.

God knows how many similar incidents I was called to during my time as an operational cop, but you simply never went to work thinking you'd never return home at the end of your shift otherwise you'd never have done the job in the first place.

Cops do not think they're heroes, I know I never did, you are just someone doing a very necessary and worthwhile job for your communities. Most are locally recruited and use that local knowledge to try to help your community in all kinds of ways.

I was never armed, although a previous career in the military was a different kettle of fish and is a totally different scenario.

I was duffed up, assaulted on a number of occasions, threatened countless times, cursed and sworn at thousands of times, had complaints also made about me, but I could always look myself in the mirror and know that I only ever tried to do my best for the greater good. No heroics, just a wish to try to help others. No plaudits expected, no self congratulatory pats on the back, no smug comments to decent people, but definitely to the scumbags of the earth who made lots of other peoples' lives miserable.

The only thing I ever hoped for in the Police was for understanding, because many people have totally the wrong impression and think cops are out there harassing the public, being petty little Hitlers, not giving a t*ss about anyone or anything, etc etc etc. That, in my experience, honestly applied to a very small percentage of Officers.

I've had all sorts of experiences during my time from involvement in incidents where firearms were used to making a cup of tea for a bedridden old chap and his dear, senile old wife. From being literally set upon and beaten by a mob bursting out of a pub to having to deliver death messages of loved ones.

I was exceptionally proud to serve and feel devastated at these latest horrific murders of two innocent young women.

[Svejk]

I wonder how long it will take the
lovely Dale to claim a few grand of us at the European Court of Human Rights?

[Zeuhl]

stoke

<<do you honestly think that this scum would have murdered these policewomen in cold blood if he thought that there was the prospect of he himself dangling at the end of a hangmans noose???>>

Yes. More than likely.

You seem to be assuming that murderous 'scum' think in a rational or 'normal' manner in such circumstances.

I hate to spoil your party with facts but there is no factual evidence that state killing reduces/deters such awful crimes.

I seem to recall that a similar thread a few weeks ago revealed that the number of 'cop killings' in the UK is about the same as it was in the 1950s

[andy-hughes]

I have to agree with zeuhl here stoke, you are presuming a level of rational pre-emtive thought which simply does not exist in most of us - if it did, there would be little crime of any degree.

Human nature dictates that we act on the basis that any transgressions are unlikely to be foound out, and that ranges from pinching a grape off the bunch you are buying in Tesco, to cutting up an old granny with a rusty tin lid - we all think the same way, it is built in.

If I thought I was going to be caught, I would never drive my car at over the speed limit, but I do, and most of us do the same.

So the argument that capital punishment works as a deterrent is a facile one, and always has been.

I would have more respect of the Capital Punishment lobby if they came down off their self-righteous high horses and simply admitted that they know that capital punishment is revenge, and nothing more or less.

It's still wrong in a civilised society, but at least it would be honest.

[carolegif]

He threw a grenade at them after luring them to the house. Now we have to look after him for the rest of his life.

[andy-hughes]

I would take issue at the ntion of 'looking after him' - but what else do we do? Throw him away? yes I know the Self-Righteous Brothers will be queuing up to rant until they pass out, but as i opined earlier, we are trying to be a civilised society, and revenge murder does not belong here.

[Zeuhl]

<look after him for the rest of his life>

That's right. That's one of the duties of a civilised society.


We will 'look after him' in the sense that we will keep him locked up in a small space (probably for the rest of his natural) so that he can't do it again, and can't really do anything he might want to do if it conflicts with the highly limiting terms of his incarceration.

Much as I enjoy the occasional bit of telly watching, x-box or lying on the bed staring at the ceiling - I can't begin to describe how unbearable I would find the rest of his miserable life.

He had the impertinence to decide that those two officers had no right to live. I don't see why taking the same approach to him should be any more acceptable.

[Kerosene]

There are a certain amount of people in Manchester who undoubtedly have known of Cregan's whereabouts but did not inform the Police.

I hope they sleep soundly in their beds tonight?

[Granger99]

I think capital punishment could be used if there is DNA evidence as well as witnesses.
I am saying this as somebody local to me was accused of attacking somebody and a police officer and about 6 other people said it was him.
At the time of the incident he was on CCTV footage 100 miles away.
I do not think the polce officer or the other people were at fault as the criminal may have looked very similar to him.

[Zeuhl]

<capital punishment could be used if there is DNA evidence>

DNA evidence can be planted, contaminated and misrepresented same as any forensics.

[mike11111]

The problem with capital punishment, when it existed, was not so much a question of the death penalty per se, that was a matter of law, enshrined in statute, but whether or not the sentence should be carried out, which was a political decision. The decisions of the Home Secretary were shrouded in secrecy; the would be promulgated in the press by the simple statements, either, "The Home Secretary had advised Her Majesty to grant a reprieve to X, currently lying under sentence of death", or, "The Home Secretary regrets that he can find no grounds for advising Her Majesty to interfere with the due process of law". How he came to those decisions in any particular case is a state secret.

[Zeuhl]

Indeed

politics has a dirty hand in it too.

In the USA, those on Death Row (the guilty ones and the not guilty ones) must all shake when an election year comes around and politicians are trying to get re-elected working a 'tough on crime' ticket

[emmie]

i think it has been mentioned on here, that there is a suggestion that he or someone he knows phoned the police to report a burglary, if that is the case then surely it's premeditated murder. I guess that it matters not a jot, two serving officers are dead, and if it was this man, i hope they still him in solitary for life.

[Kerosene]

http://en.wikipedia.o...ki/Derek_Bentley_case

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Evans

Consider both the above before rushing headlong to demanding return of the death penalty.
(Which I gather would be exceptionally difficult to bring about constitutionally - I think?)

[emmie]

zeuhl, the difference is that he will still eat, drink, think, plan, and maybe one day get our of prison, whilst the two police officers can do none of those things.

[mike11111]

In the UK we were much more "civilised", when it came to capital punishment. Apart from having a system designed to impart instant unconsciousness and death within less than 30 seconds after the execution party entered the condemned cell ( often in less than 15 seconds), it was also an unwritten rule that if for whatever reason a criminal could not be hanged within 90 days of sentence he would automatically be reprieved, unlike in the US where some people wait years, if not decades, before being put to death.

[Zeuhl]

<he will still eat, drink, think, plan, and maybe one day get our of prison, whilst the two police officers can do none of those things. >

em

you could just as easily turn that around

the two officers are (sadly) either past caring or in a better place

the 'scum' will have many years to dwell on what he did, and think about all the places he might like to be and things he might like to do - but can't!

[mike11111]

Bentley was guilty of murder as the law stood at the time under the doctrine of "joint enterprise". Under normal circumstances he would have been reprieved, but as the lad who actually fired the shot was too young for the death penalty, someone had to hang. See what I mean about political decisions. Evans is different; he virtually confessed to the murders, thereby putting his own head into the noose.

[jno]

innocent people do confess to murders, though. Hanging them might wrap up everything neatly, but the real killer will still be out there. Moreover, there's a lengthy list of people who might be dead now but who turned out to be wrongly convicted. Miscarriages of justice have always been a powerful argument against the death penalty.