Phil Redmond: A case for restraint

Apr 3 2009 Liverpool Daily Post

PEELERS. Bring ’em back. Another old chestnut I know, but old chestnuts, like clichés, only roll on because they contain life’s great truisms. You can’t beat a good beat bobby – even though many have tried.

This week, continuing the theme on Tasers, I was going to focus on the array of kit a modern police officer already has strapped to their belt which is capable of inflicting pain and physical damage and ask: how barbaric do we really want to get in sanctioning force against our fellow citizens? However, the TV footage from the demonstrations surrounding the G20 event in London this week, might serve as a better illustration of the general point surrounding this type of debate. The level of self-restraint required of those carrying potentially lethal weapons on our behalf.

When Robert Peel created the first police force in the early 19th century, with the primary principle “the police are the public and public are the police”, he understood that civilian policing required the consent of the public, a consent that would only be given, and more crucially, maintained, if the police were seen to be acting on behalf of the public and only using force proportionate to the occasion. So, how did modern policing rate after the G20 events?

There was obviously no confusion about who the police were and who were the public. The public were the fuzzy lot who didn’t quite seem to know which protest or demonstration they were attending, except that they were determined not to be told that they couldn’t do it. The police were the ones in co-ordinated outfits determined to stop them bringing the city to a standstill which was, of course, the prerogative of a bunch of political tourists and their cavalcades.

There was obviously also no doubt that, as the day wore on, and tiredness and perhaps psychological stress took its toll on both sides, public and police, there was only going to be one outcome. Someone was going to get hurt. My money immediately went on the agitated hairy and body-pierced young men without weapons, rather than their poly-clad fireproofed, shield and baton wielding opponents. It could have been Roman Britain or the film Gladiator, never mind the early 19th century.

And so it played out. The occasional and individual temper flash of frustration about being penned in.

The occasional and individual hot-headed retaliatory shove with the shield or use of the baton becoming more than what’s termed a proportionate response.

Both making the case against allowing potentially lethal weapons like Tasers to become simply part of the general issue kit.

That is how tragedies happen. When there is more opportunity for errors of judgment. And greater risk. To the public.

Next week: What’s the real cost of sanctioning more Taser-toting Centurions against more community-based Peelers?