The police have grown too powerful and too scornful of the public they should serve. This is what happened when I dared to disagree with them...
PETER HITCHENS: The police have grown too powerful and too scornful of the public they should serve. This is what happened when I dared to disagree with them...
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For years I have feared that the police have grown too powerful and too scornful of the public they are supposed to serve. As they have become more political, more Left-wing and less interested in preventing or pursuing actual crime and disorder, they have also become bossier and more remote.
This week I have strong evidence that this is so. It comes from the mouths of the police themselves. Because I dared to disagree with their view, these persons have responded like a Victorian maiden aunt confronted with a glimpse of a naked piano leg.
The squeals of outrage and the grinding noise of pearls being clutched can probably be heard as far away as Belgium.
As you will see, they would have been better advised to sniff their smelling salts, lie down for a bit in a darkened room and listen to some whale music. But, as a lovely Irish phrase expresses it, they ‘lost the run of themselves’ and went a bit wild.
Some of what they did must remain confidential to protect my sources. But take my word for it, this is a rather mild version of the story.
The problem was a briefing by Cheshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service held for the media, just before the trial of
Lucy Letby. If this was just an impartial factual discussion of technicalities, why didn’t they invite Ms Letby’s defence team along too? Well, they didn’t. They argued that because I did not accept their justification for holding this event (and I absolutely don’t), this meant I didn’t understand what they had told me, presumably because I am stupid.
I understand it all too well. I just don’t agree with it, although I explained their position in my column and quoted accurately what they had said.
They accused me of ‘carelessness’. Not so. I had spent several days on email exchanges with them about this subject.
The idea that people can hold differing views on such a topic seems to be a shocking mystery to them. I think the police – like most public and powerful bodies – seek cosy relations with the media so that they can keep those media onside. Their current affronted petulance greatly encourages me in my view.
Cheshire Police wrote to The Mail on Sunday, heavily implying that we should not have published my column.
Soon afterwards, we received an epistle from various notables at the College of Policing, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Crown Prosecution Service which suggested that this newspaper publishes an article ‘which seeks to provide your readers with clarity’ (ie, which takes a different view from mine).
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think a society in which the police seek to influence what newspapers publish, whether fact or opinion, would be a society that had gone badly wrong. There’s a name for countries like that which has slipped my memory.
Then, on Friday, The Mail on Sunday received a snappish email declaring that our behaviour was causing ‘disgust and dismay’ among the police forces of England and Wales. Remember that this overheated performance followed my publication of an uncontested fact, and an informed expression of opinion about it.
If this is how they behave towards Britain’s biggest Sunday newspaper, what must they be
like when dealing with a powerless citizen who has the nerve to disagree with their opinions?
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