Police Thugs

[Cyril Haearn]

In the real world, I always think it is best to try and keep the Police "on our side" than to alienate them.

An informal complaint, yes, but was it really actual bodily harm?

On our side?

The police are not on our side, in Germany at least. As far as I know, neither are the british police. On 10 October the police in Germany (all areas) ran a "Blitzmarathon", for one day only there were many speed checks. But all the locations were published and there was lots of publicity beforehand.

In Thueringen the police even stopped drivers who were not going too fast, to congratulate them!

Here in Luebeck, the police don't warn before checking cyclists, one reads about it in the paper later. They tolerate parking on cycle lanes, the main thing for them is: the motor traffic must "flow" (=be able to go too fast).

[PaulCumbria]

Some local authorities are setting up Community Toilet schemes, whereby shops are paid a small sum to make their facilities available to non-customers. My own LA in south Lakeland has done this, after closing down lots of public toilets.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
And our local mayor (gestapo) has his photo in the local press at least 6 times a week, always looks lost
Said with all the cut backs there is not enough money for things like refurbishment of public toilets, but manages to up the wages and expenses for councilers Oh and the occasional imported £20K palm tree, for promotional purposes.
Its pot luck if the public toilets are ever open, and if they are they are dirty and smelly, but the local fat cat (fat bummed) contract firm who do everything probably including potting the plants in the council toilets, turn up IN PAIRS in new wagon one to hold the keys and takeaway expresso's while the other wrestles with changing the toilet rolls, which is no task as the toilets are only part time.
Police well I dont see me ever needing their help in future and my only contact with them will be when they launch a manhunt to find me after stubbing my toe on a cars tyre
My last contact I was threatened with arrest, but only when they had gone away and come back later Well armed with that I would probably gone shopping would'nt I.
Like others here, just try and stop me when I am moving.......wont be pretty...........

[Shootist]

For some inexplicable reason I am reminded of the officer who stopped a speeding car. The driver apologised profusely and said, by way of explanation "Sorry. I was looking for a **********." to which the officer replied "You've found one. Name?"

[Roger Geffen]

To fluffybunnyuk

Could I urge you to do two things:

1. You haven't mentioned anyone (other than the WPC's accompanying police officer) who witnessed this incident. Assuming you don't have any witnesses, could I strongly urge you to go back to the location and see if there are any CCTV cameras covering the location, and then try and obtain any footage that may be available. Please do this as soon as possible, regardless of how you may be thinking about taking this forward. As others have suggested, there are several possible options. But whatever you may or may not decide to do, CCTV footage (or, better still, witness evidence) could make a huge difference.

2. Please do get in touch with myself (roger.geffen@ctc.org.uk) and/or my CTC campaigns team colleague Rhia Weston (rhia.weston@ctc.org.uk), who runs CTC's 'Road Justice' campaign. That will then allow us to discuss the various options.

As I hope you are aware, CTC's 'Road Justice' campaign (http://www.roadjustice.org.uk) is about strengthening road traffic law. We want to see more and better roads policing, as well as prosecution and sentencing decisions (including greater use of driving bans) which reflect the gravity of bad driving offences. We are very supportive of those officers within the police force who wish to see roads policing given greater priority and resourcing by their Chief police officers, Police and Crime Commissioners and the Home Office.

However we also have to stand up to rotten policing - and this is undoubtedly an act of truly awful policing.

To my mind though, this isn't just about you and a well-out-of-order individual police officer. It is about the attitudinal climate created by the decision by the Mayor and the Met Police to issue instructions to stop cyclists who weren't wearing helmets and hi-viz in the aftermath of 6 cyclists deaths in 13 days.

CTC protested about the police's absurd reaction here:
http://www.ctc.org.uk/news/police-shoul ... et-targets. In response, the Met's Chief Superintendant Glyn Jones assured us on Nov 29th that he had withdrawn the instruction to stop cyclists who weren't wearing helmets or hi-viz: http://www.ctc.org.uk/news/metropolitan ... list-fines.

Given that you reported your incident to this Forum on Dec 6th, I am assuming (but would be grateful if you could confirm) that this incident happened subsequent to that date?

Let me preface the following with the inevitable caveat: I am not a lawyer, and what follows is not 'legal advice' and should not be treated as such. However, my lay-person's understanding of the law is as follows. In essence, police officers are not permitted to do things that ordinary civilians would not be permitted to do (e.g. arrest you, assault you, stop and search you, stop you in the street and force you to account for your behaviour, etc), unless they have a clear statutory police power to do whatever they are doing. A police officer would be perfectly entitled to *ask* you to stop - just as a civilian would - and suggest that you might like to consider wearing a helmet and/or hi-viz. For your part though, you would be perfectly entitled to ignore them, as there is no statutory basis for what they are doing. If that police officer assaults you in order to stop you merely so they can offer this advice, I reckon that's a very clear-cut crime.

As others have said, whether you wish to pursue it in those terms, or simply register a complaint, is up to you. But do please get in touch to discuss the options.

Roger Geffen
Campaigns & Policy Director, CTC

[snibgo]

A police officer would be perfectly entitled to *ask* you to stop ...

I'm not a lawyer either, and I hesitate to sound as if I am contradicting anyone, but feel I should point out that the police can *require* a cyclist to stop for any reason or no reason at all. If the cyclist doesn't, the cyclist is guilty of an offence. RTA 1988 s163

But from my reading of the OP, the WPC endangered the cylist, and perhaps even injured the cyclist. That is unacceptable. I hope the OP does get in touch with Roger.

[ArMoRothair]

where do you go 'to toilet'?

If you look around the streets where I live, early on any Sunday morning, you will see plenty of evidence of where people have found.

[tyreon]

Like the quick repartee Armo. Salutations!

Not wishing to digress too much from the original thread,but going on with my own and police activity and defending lubrication...Let's say you've had a skinful,but still sober. It's cold outside. You haven't thought thru things too much. You're waiting for a bus or whatever. Suddenly,you're caught short. You want to go to the toilet. Can't find one. You relieve yourself. Oh dear! Police spot you. One would hope an apology and show of contrition would do. But in this day and in this age...maybe not. Targets have to be met. You'd never think that scenario would happen to that Ian Tomlinson guy...but that it did. In defense of the police,I guess 'most' would adopt some understanding...but the culture and times change. And where are the public toilets. I see some cities are reputed to have pop-up pissoirs. All right for the guys. Dunno about the girls. Guess they're more in use at the weekend

[fluffybunnyuk]

Getting this thread back on track again. I thought I'd post an update.
After 1 week of going to the Police Station and calling 101, and no activity by the Police I called again. After making noises about the people I had been conversing with, and a likelihood of chatting to the press, you'll be shocked to know I was promptly contacted by a Duty Officer, and an inspector no less. I've now been told in no uncertain terms how seriously they take this and that it will be investigated.

I had a really good chat with both of them. It was quite useful since I was able to make some points regards hiviz,the H£^%&^% word, and stopping people unsafely on the corner of junctions.

With this issue I failed spectacularly, I will leave the campaigning to the CTC I think. The Police clearly seem to believe in hiviz,and helmets as being part of the solution.

I also pointed out that inactivity over a previous failure to do anything regarding a potential RTA had led me to making sure this allegation was pursued.
I also pointed out it'd be nice to see the police out nicking more people for traffic offenses on the road. I know.... you can thank me for that later...especially if you get a FPN.

I wont comment on the details of the case until I have an initial finding. I will keep notes of various things for commenting on later.

Emma

[horizon]

A police officer would be perfectly entitled to *ask* you to stop ...

I'm not a lawyer either, and I hesitate to sound as if I am contradicting anyone, but feel I should point out that the police can *require* a cyclist to stop for any reason or no reason at all. If the cyclist doesn't, the cyclist is guilty of an offence. RTA 1988 s163

I was once stopped by two policemen (I was cycling with my children). They had clipboards and looked like they meant business. They wanted to ask where I bought my panniers. Or so they said. Make of that what you will.

I took it in good humour but I couldn't undo the having stopped.

[fluffybunnyuk]

The jist of what i gathered from talking to the 2 senior guys at the Police was:

(a) stop for the officer - in a safe manner and at a safe location.
(b)ask if they suspect you of an offence.
(c)if the answer is "no". say goodbye and make like a tree, and leave...

addendum:if (c) then there is no reason to give your name either if asked or if they seem to be on a fishing expedition...

Doing My Civic Duty

Emma

[thirdcrank]

Although I can't find his post, TonyR gave that explanation a while ago. I think that I'd be a bit more careful over (c) eg, it might be uiseful to know if the reason for stopping you was that the big bad wolf was in the area, with a well-known appetite for fluffy bunnies when there were no little pigs at large.

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Edit:

It's occurred to me that it may appear I'm using the analogy to justify stopping cyclists to tell them they should be wearing helmets etc. I'm just making the point that it's possible that the police may be stopping you for a very sound reason which it's worth waiting to hear.

[Tonyf33]

It's occurred to me that it may appear I'm using the analogy to justify stopping cyclists to tell them they should be wearing helmets etc. I'm just making the point that it's possible that the police may be stopping you for a very sound reason which it's worth waiting to hear.

It's also a very real possibility that the police are stopping you other than for the purpose of making a load of noise to somehow tick their boxes of victim blaming and in actual fact the stop in a very high% of cases actually serves no useful purpose whatsoever, frustrates the person (cyclists in this instance) and in fewer cases actually cause that person harm or endanger them...just sayin' for balance and all that..

[Vorpal]

Although I can't find his post, TonyR gave that explanation a while ago. I think that I'd be a bit more careful over (c) eg, it might be uiseful to know if the reason for stopping you was that the big bad wolf was in the area, with a well-known appetite for fluffy bunnies when there were no little pigs at large.

===============================================================
Edit:

It's occurred to me that it may appear I'm using the analogy to justify stopping cyclists to tell them they should be wearing helmets etc. I'm just making the point that it's possible that the police may be stopping you for a very sound reason which it's worth waiting to hear.

Maybe someone should tell them about the boy who cried wolf.

[thirdcrank]

It's difficult to draw the line and it's supposed to be a free country. Nearly fort years ago, as a young(ish) sergeant, I tried to organise a cordon around a suspect package, at a distance advised by one of the military personnel dealing with it. "If you can see it, your in the danger zone" were his words. Even with an Army Landrover clearlhy marked bomb disposal, with beacons flashing etc, some people wanted to argue the toss about their right to ignore police instructions - and this wasn't just after the pubs had turned out.

In the twilight of my career, as an old(ish) inspector, a colleague queried why I took the loud hailer to a simiular incident. "So I can stand at a safe distance to say 'Come and stand behind me where it's safe.'"