You're right to have seen a shift in how I feel. Like anyone with a working heart and mind, my politics and opinions evolve over time, though I still leave much of my old writing in print even when I've moved on from it cos it's usually a valid prespective.
I got sick of the officers like the WPC you mention. 'Well, a lot of officers agree with what you're doing, and in fact my daughter's a vegetarian...'
If they really do agree with something yet will use as much brutality and violence as it takes to assault and prevent the thing they agree with then they are morally bankrupt.
I still believe that many people join the police for great and noble reasons. But those who stay there must blind their consciences, and as such lose my respect and earn my disdain.
I got sick of trying to appeal to their humanity and then half an hour later seeing that same matey copper stand by as his colleagues beat my friends on the head with batons. The day the matey copper nicked his colleague for assault would be the day I believe in him again. Which, we know well, is never going to happen.
I got sick of the habitual lying in Statements and in court, in my own trials and in those of friends.
It was compounded by meeting Janet Alder whose brother was assaulted by coppers and left to die in a police station lobby. The whole thing's on video, the last 11 minutes of his life, it's as damning as the Rodney King footage. The coppers banded together, lied through their arses and got off.
It tied in with all the demonstrations where I'd been nice to coppers then seen them start riots. It tied in with what we already knew of the Hillsborough disaster.
I got to see that it isn't 'a few bad apples' it's the entire structure of the force, it's the *whole point* of their job.
So they defend the force and the job above any ideas of truth, justice or social good.
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