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by iso1210
1982 days ago
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The general view in the population is the police do not deal with normal people other than as victims. If you're arrested, or even questioned, you're seen as guilty. Besides if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear. This view doesn't hold when the police get you for speeding (go find real criminals) Many police officers are quite reasonable, but then you have Derbyshire, whose actions over covid have likely killed people (by reducing compliance with lockdown orders) The difference with the police in covid is the public are suddenly seeing that the police are dealing with normal people, not just criminal scum who should be lucky they aren't shot. As I understood it, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 really clamped down on DNA and fingerprint storage. Not enough, but at least it was a move in the right direction. Particularly bad was that if you were charged and found innocent, they would still keep your records for 3 years. |
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Unfortunately, there is an element of human nature that says, "It won't happen to me." And then maybe one day, if you're unlucky, it does happen to you. And everyone else who is similarly confident that it could never happen to them won't necessarily be there for you, because it's so far out of their experience and frame of reference that even if they're a generally decent person, they have trouble relating to the situation you're in or understanding how they might feel in your place. And so the people who are least at risk, who are often the ones who could make the most difference, don't always act as strongly or as frequently as they could to mitigate the risk to others.