Commentary
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X8005300301 |
| Published date | 01 July 1980 |
| Date | 01 July 1980 |
| Subject Matter | Commentary |
BITING THE HAND
As is well known, it is extremely difficult to understand the
motives of any other
human
being!
It is becoming increasingly difficult to do so when those concerned
are retired police officers.
"OPERATION
COUNTRYMAN"
was embarrassment enough
without aretiring officer putting his "No. II's" into the mess with
all the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros. Surely, he would never have
done such a thing in any ordinary criminal case before or possibly
coming before the courts. Why do it to other officers?
And then, we have a security officer with the Co-Operative
announcing in a weekly magazine
about
aparticularly scurrilous
BBC programme "if I had been asked to edit it, I would not have
changed aword".
Alright, we all want to eradicate "the bad
'uns"
but
surely there isa
better way to do it
than
to provide ammunition to the many enemies
our
service has.
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
And we speak despairingly
about
the loyalty of youngsters!
TERRORISM
The
admiration of every police officer all over the world went to
Sir David MacNee
and
the men and women of the Metropolitan
Police for the
manner
in which they dealt with the hostage taking
situation in the Iranian Embassy.
One could go further
and
suggest
that
the admiration of many
ordinary members of the public (not
just
in the U.K. either) went to
the same extremely professional team.
But the ink was hardly dry on the columns of some of the British
media before we were back to the tired old "who killed Blair Peach?"
theme.
One can understand
andindeed
love "concerned people"
but
one
day, someone has to say to them "this is a real world".
215 Police Journal July 1980
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