Just had the coppers round

Very valid points Pete, and no I didn't get to see any ID. They did come out of a police car though, but that doesn't really prove very much (they could have nicked it).

If they want to hassle me for no reason, so be it. I'm not one to ignore things like that, and would have no qualms about taking action against them for harrassment. I keep my car in good working order, and drive with care so they'd be hard pressed to pin anything on me.

The thing is, the police are employed to serve the people. They are not a law unto themselves, as much as they often think they are. If they want to give an innocent man (me) a hard time, then they should be prepared for a hard time themselves. It wouldn't be the first time I've used a solicitor to get a copper demoted for crossing the line (that's a different story altogether), and I received no further hassle from them for that one.

 

I had no further hassle after I complained, should have done it years before looking back on it.

You are right, we pay the cops wages, they are not dictators, although some would like to think they are. Some of them are corrupt and abusive and need to be brought to account.

I like to think :DOH: That most of them are good upstanding officers, but they are doing a very bad job at proving that to me, in my experience.

 

A young chap who lives in a flat above a shop near to where I live had his door broken down at 3am in the morning!! they came running up his stairs yelling & shouting because they had been tipped off that he had drugs there, but surprise surprise they had the wrong address!!!! OK the door was fixed for him but it really upset this young guy and he had to move because he found it difficult to sleep after that!!
I think this kind of thing can only get worse as the police are more stretched and crime is going up - although they lie and tell us it is going down!!:th_scifD36: decent law abiding people getting harassed by the cops, how wrong is that!!!!!!

Val

 

The thing is crime will go up as long as the police continue to alienate everybody. It is human nature to find it difficult to respect those who show such disrespect to them.

It is also human nature that either side will expect the other to offer respect first.

That's why when we were kids, the grown ups taught us to show respect without question, so kids would be respectful even though at the time they didn't fully understand all the implications, it was more a case of you show respect or you get a clip. Then you grow up, and you realise that you show respect to others because if you do, they are more likely to show respect to you.

The coppers need to have the respect of the people if they are to stand any chance of successfully controlling crime. They ought to know this, and if any one copper doesn't know this, he/she shouldn't be a copper.

From a teenager's point of view, they get a hard time if they do wrong, but they get equally harrassed if they do right, so they soon realise it makes no difference either way and they just do what they want. From my perspective as a slightly more mature person, a law abiding citizen who would normally be more than keen to help a stranger in need, or a copper investigating an incident, until this morning I had the attitude that we should always help the coppers in their duties if we can, but now I realise that if you happen to get their attention, you get made a suspect for nowt, so best to keep your head down. That's why coppers are overstretched. Nobody wants to help them because they treat everybody with such utter contempt.

 

Great story Armandii, I can just picture the scene and the looks on your faces each time you got stopped. :thumb:

 

Good story Armandii.

I have a far less impressive story.

When I was a teenager, my mate and I were into our motorbikes. We used to ride off road, with the landowner's permission. To get our bikes to and from the site where we had permission to ride, my dad would put the bikes in the back of his van, so they were never actually on public land while we owned them. That way everything was legal.

Because we were skint, we didn't have good trial/motorcross bikes, just clapped out old road bikes that we'd bought legally either as scrap, or MOT failures, not worth repairing.

My mate and I were always in the local bike shop every time we'd saved up enough pocket money/paper round wages to buy a bigger pair of shock absorbers, or a new tyre, or whatever else we could afford to make our scrap road bikes slightly better off road. The shop owner, a proper biker, was clearly impressed by our enthusiasm and ingenuity, so one day he took us out the back, showed us an area of his yard that wasn't secure, and told us 'everything I dump in this section of the yard is not worth selling, so I leave it for the scrap man. You're welcome to come in any time, you don't need to ask me first, and if there's anything you can salvage you can have it'.

We took him up on this offer, and a few times we'd make the short trip to the end of the road, look in the section of his yard he'd showed us, and come away with various bits of junk. We'd still regularly go in the shop to talk to the lad, partly for his advice, and partly to make sure our standing permission was still standing.

One day my mate and I were making our way down the back alley carrying some bits we'd taken (with the afforesaid permission) when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by coppers. We were being done for burglary. We told the coppers repeatedly that we had permission to take the stuff. When it was clear they didn't believe us we both told the coppers to go and ask the shop owner. There was enough of them that they could have sent one plod to the shop while the rest made sure we didn't leg it, but they weren't interested. They were determined that we'd been caught red handed burgling, and furthermore, we were in a back alley.

Next thing I know, I'm on the floor, and my mate is legging it full sprint.

I remember landing on a bin, then bouncing off a wall, then my knees and hands being grazed on the floor, then a big size 9 DM shoe ploughing into my stomach. Then I get yanked to my feet by my hair and see a big fist lining up for my face.

I stood there laughing. This upset the coppers. After all, why should I laugh while getting the living daylights kicked out of me. The bit they obviously missed, while they were looking downover to aim at me, I spent most of the time looking up over as I was on the floor, and had noticed a steadily increasing number of faces at the back windows of the houses. This wasn't night time after all, the shop was still open. A copper screamed in my face 'WHAT YOU LAUGHING AT'. With a really aching arm, I just pointed at the houses. The copper looked round and saw some of the faces looking back.

I found out later some of the neighbours were watching because my mate who'd escaped had ran straight home, in his back gate, out the front, and then put word on the street what was happening. Some must have just noticed for themselves.

One of the coppers then said, 'just larking on, there's no need for this to go any further'. I went home, told my dad, and then we saw a solicitor.

It turns out that the copper that lead the beating was quite senior. He was demoted right down to a constable. The solicitor advised us to take it further, but my dad and I had a chat, and agreed that to have his salary halved, and have to suffer the indignity of being subordinate to those he used to boss about, was enough to teach him a lesson. After all, presumably he had a family to feed, and none of it was there fault. I don't know what happened to the other coppers involved.

I forgot to add, after the beating, my dad came to the bike shop with me and we told the owner what had happened. He was livid. He was was not only annoyed by what had happened to me, but by the utter contempt they'd shown him by not even making the effort to walk the 30 yards to his shop to ask him his side of things. I believe he wrote a nasty letter to the coppers too, which no doubt helped my case.

 

Well what a strange world we live in.

Just popped out for a smoke, and heard world war 3 going on between a lad and a lass just down the road. It ended with the lass bubbling hysterically. I listened for a minute to try to see if it was an upset cry or a hurt cry, and it sounded like the latter. So I came in and went out the front to see what was up, and there was a young lass sat down on the floor, bubbling and screaming. Normally I'd go over and see what I could do, but after being accused last week when I didn't even know about any incident, I didn't want to be fingered for something I didn't do, but at the same time I couldn't just ignore the situation.

I phoned plod on the non-emergency number. I described what I'd heard, a bit about what I could see, and when the asked me to go over I refused, stating that I'd been harrassed last week about a similar incident that I knew nothing about. I really don't trust plod anymore, and what went through my head was that if I'm nearby when plod arrives, if she is hurt, they will blame me because its easiest.

The response of plod was "thanks very much for the call, if we have anyone in the area we'll take a look".

The lass is ok by the way. I couldn't leave it to plod. I was just about to bite the bullet and go over when another lad came along to investigate. A few minutes later the wife checked and reported that the girl had set off walking, and didn't look hurt. I phoned plod back and to my surprise they took an interest in which direction she was going, so I told them.

I guess I can expect an early start tomorrow now, when the coppers come round to demand far more information than I know.

 

Blimey Dave, looks like you have been cursed to live in "interesting times"

Trouble is, even if you set your phone to witheld number, it doesn't work if you call plod, they can still see the number. Best to use a payphone & wear gloves.

 

He has had several cups of tea at my place! He is now known to the local police as a "Known Assosciate" of a local member of a criminal organisation!!!

Ok, joking apart. I make no secret of the fact that I am a memberof a 1% back patch bike club. I never leave the house without my club colours on. Everybody in the village knows me and my bikes. They never complain if my club brothers arrive at my place en masse, whatever the time. They do not complain because we try to keep the noise to a minimum and do not use the road as a race track.

The local plod are a complete joke. I have lost count of the amount of times I have been foillowed by supposed "Under cover" cops. After I had a run in with the pikeys they kept me under observation for nearly a week. They were supposed to be covert! They were so bad that I took pictures of them and thier different cars. At midnight on one of the days they were watching me, I took a pot of tea out to them. The silly sods asked me how I knew they were cops and how I knew they were watching me. I just laughed and told them to bring the cups back when they had finished.

Whenever the club goes out on a run, the cops follow us and try to keep up. They try to find out what we are doing and when. We get stopped for absolutely no other reason than we are a 1% back patch club. They ask locals questions about us and then the local telll us what they are asking.

One of the idiots that stopped me, had followed me for a few miles. I knew he was following me so I took him for a ride around the country lanes. Dopey sod then tried to stop me 200 yards from my house. If you are ever stopped, the thing to do is get out of your car or off your bike and be at the cop cars door before they get out. Demand to know why they have stopped you. Demand they give you thier collar numbers. If you have a mobile phone take a picture of thier car and them. Really takes them by surprise every time. Don't let them intimidate you. Read the Public Order act, especially the bit about stop and search.

I have been stopped five times in the last month. EVERY time I have made an official complaint. Every club member does the same. When you make an official complaint they ask you if you want the complaint dealt with "In House" or "Officially". In House means that nothing will be done. Officially mean that the complaint will be referred to the Police Complaints Commision and a seperate force will have to investigate the complaint. The stupid thing about us being hassled all the time? Every member is fully legal to ride, full licence, tax, MOT and insurance. NONE of us are involved in anything illegal. The cops know that. What they do not like is that we will not allow anyone to ride with us. We do not tell anyone where we are going, who we are meeting or why. We will not allow a cop into our clubhouse. Every time we have any sort of get together with other clubs, the cops try to barge in and we stop them at the entrance to the yard and refuse to let them in, simple.

We knew that the cops were watching us leave the clubhouse to go to a big party. They followed us all the way down the motorway with a helicopter. When we got to the town we were going to, there were cop cars at every roundabout and junction trying to note down all our numbers. They were a tad surprised to find ALL of our numbers were the same P155 OFF! At each junction we just parked a bike in front of the cop car. We were not doing anything illegal, just going to see some good friends for a party.

A bike cop riding a bike kitted out with cameras, tried to get in amongst the pack of bikes on a run. Silly sod. We just boxed him in and took him along with us until we got where we were going. He got off his bike at the entrance where we all stopped. While he was attempted to have a go at us, one of the guys put a disc lock on the front of his bike and threw the key into the field. When he tried to pull away he got about a foot before the lock hit the forks on his bike and he wasn't going anywhere. The look on his face was priceless.

We are supposed to be policed by consent. Owing to the fact that the police are controlled by the police authorities who are in turn controlled by the government we now have the police force we deserve. The government is too busy cow towing to the PC brigade, human and civil rights and the race relations people. Police resources get allocated to whichever cause is flavour of the month and everything else is set aside. Emphasis is always placed on any offence for which a fine can be imposed, such as speeding. So the police are acting as unofficial revenue gatherers. Have a look at how many speed cameras there are near you. They do not have to be manned, but they cost upwards of £35000 each. That is a lot of revenue to recover. It is nothing to do with safety, that has been proved many times, so much so that many fixed penalty tickets are getting overturned. Now that the councils have to fund the maintenance of the cameras but are not allowed to keep the fines collected many councils have stopped funding them. Swindon for example covered all of thier cameras after the council refused to fund the repairs and servicing (About £750,000 per year). One of the motoring organisations checked the facts and they showed that there were LESS accidents while the cameras were not operating.

When the cops stop hassling us and do the job that the public want them to do, we might, just might have some respect for them. That day is a long way off. I don't trust them and have absolutely zero respect for them. I am not a criminal. In fact my club membership is a way of life that does in fact mean that I have to follow more rules than the great majority of people. I am just following a chosen way of life and that is what the authorities fear. They cannot control us. They do not understand us. We refuse to be intimidated by them. So they hate us and fear us. They have us listed as a dangerous paramilitary organisation. A constant source of amusement to us. We do not look for trouble, if it comes our way we will without a shadow of doubt, deal with it in a most robust manner. All we ask is that we get treated as you would like to be treated. Try telling that to the cops.

Chopper.