Yes, he's a right-wing fascist police officer! Open letter to Nottm Post
Andy | 25.07.2004 09:38
A reply to the article published in the Nottingham Evening Post by Notts Chief Constable Steve Green, about the causes of crime.
Since the Nottingham Post has apparently decided not to print my detailed rebuttal of Steve Green's article, despite my being far more of a specialist on the sociology of crime than this cop is, and since instead they have simply published the flood of bigotry from their usual readers (including one letter which sounds like it was written by a BNP activist), I have submitted it here instead, in the hope at least that some will be made aware of the nonsense which is going on.
It is ridiculous that this rich powerful cop is claiming to be speaking as a beleaguered minority and that the letters to the Post complain about a PC conspiracy when in fact it is exactly the opposite - this cop is saying what all the power-holders say, and it is the Post and its readers who are suppressing alternative opinions.
Here is the letter:
Dear editor,
It’s time to get tough on right-wing rhetoric, not youths
“There are some who will dismiss my views as those of a right-wing fascist police officer”, remarks Steve Green (July 21 2004). Is this any surprise, given the ill-informed nonsense he is coming out with? A senior police officer is not an expert on the sociology of social problems. He is someone with a narrow institutional standpoint providing a one-sided, limited perspective. It is only from the standpoint of such bias and distortion that anyone can portray the ever more powerful police as beleaguered defenders of freedom and the youths they harass, the victims of underfunded education and urban poverty, as the real “tyrants” of modern society. It is only from such a distorted perspective that he can argue against a “disproportionate” emphasis on the rights of those who are treated by society as having no rights, and who he himself wishes to subject to the “iron discipline” of authoritarian control.
It is clear that Green does not believe in rights. Or in individual freedom. He believes in “rules” and “community”. And since he believes that his own officers express these virtues, he believes in arrogating more and more power to himself, at the expense of individuals’ rights. Good for him, bad for the rest of us. Why is it so terrible that suspects have a right to a solicitor, to prevent police from extracting forced confessions and fabricating evidence? Shouldn’t people have a right to play music in their own homes, to congregate where they see fit and to freely express themselves with expletives if this is what their free speech demands? Rights are for everyone or for no-one. To smash such rights does not produce the fluffy, sharing, compassionate world Green conjures in his rhetoric. It is to produce a Big Brother society of intolerance and control, where people learn, not caring and sharing, but the importance of submitting to the strong and the principle that might makes right.
Green expresses a laudable sentiment about the importance of protecting the vulnerable. But his approach is the utter negation of this sentiment. He wants to protect children, and yet advocates that they be criminalised and brutalised by authoritarian adults. He wants to protect people with disabilities, yet such people are also criminalised, since his approach is intolerant towards the psychologically different. He wants to protect the elderly, yet he would dip into their scant pensions to fund endless prison building. He wants the prison system to be a bottomless pit, and has no regard for the effects this system would then have on other areas of state funding or on taxpayers’ pockets.
Alongside the exaggerated crisis of anti-social behaviour, there is a far more serious crisis of creeping rightslessness, where even the most basic freedoms are today under threat or have already been destroyed. Today, we see community activists jailed under anti-social behaviour orders for lobbying councils, and activists threatened with ASBO’s for peacefully picketing outside shops. We see beggars and prostitutes dying because they are driven underground by crackdowns, the prostitutes forced to take more risks, the beggars dying of hunger and exposure because the police ensure they get no money. Prisoners are dying because of overcrowding, because judges take an approach similar to Green’s. Pensioners and hospital patients are dying because money which should be going to them is being sucked into the bottomless pit of police and prison funding.
Why not look to the causes of social problems, instead of throwing away our money and freedoms into this pit? For Green, such serious analysis is part of the problem. He says that criminal actions have “absolutely no motivation”. This is absurd rhetoric, ignoring the most basic of logical principles: that every effect has a cause. The absence of deterrents is not a “cause”, for if it were, how comes Green himself is not engaged in all these criminal activities, when he, too, is not subject to deterrence? As for his claim that gentle, understanding parenting causes crime, this is a claim for which he presents no evidence. If this is true, why are criminal actions mainly a problem on working-class estates, when liberal parenting practices are primarily middle-class? Sociological evidence suggests that violent and abusive youths are those whose parents are prone to use physical and extreme punishments and to scold rather than listen. The youths are simply imitating their parents’ ways of acting. But whereas when the youths act in this way, it is seen as “crime”, when the parents act this way it is seen by the likes of Green as laudable firmness. And it is precisely this double standard, this embracing of violence and intolerance by the socially included, which necessitates the fact that youths respond to their circumstances with violence and intolerance. If Green does not want to understand what causes social problems, he should shut up and leave the issue to those of us who do not succumb to his brand of irrationalism.
In fact, it is the “decent majority” which, in insisting that its own preferences be made into rules and enforced violently, by insisting that their own dominance be assured by dictating where people can congregate and what words they can use, is being selfish and inconsiderate, and trampling on the rights of others.
Of course, many foolish people will rally to Green’s call, because he has hit all the right buttons of existing prejudices and widespread irrational dogmas. But it remains to be seen whether his proposals will seem as rosy when the “decent majority” find themselves without rights at the hands of the state, and when they find their tax bills doubled and trebled to pay for endless prison building.
It is ridiculous that this rich powerful cop is claiming to be speaking as a beleaguered minority and that the letters to the Post complain about a PC conspiracy when in fact it is exactly the opposite - this cop is saying what all the power-holders say, and it is the Post and its readers who are suppressing alternative opinions.
Here is the letter:
Dear editor,
It’s time to get tough on right-wing rhetoric, not youths
“There are some who will dismiss my views as those of a right-wing fascist police officer”, remarks Steve Green (July 21 2004). Is this any surprise, given the ill-informed nonsense he is coming out with? A senior police officer is not an expert on the sociology of social problems. He is someone with a narrow institutional standpoint providing a one-sided, limited perspective. It is only from the standpoint of such bias and distortion that anyone can portray the ever more powerful police as beleaguered defenders of freedom and the youths they harass, the victims of underfunded education and urban poverty, as the real “tyrants” of modern society. It is only from such a distorted perspective that he can argue against a “disproportionate” emphasis on the rights of those who are treated by society as having no rights, and who he himself wishes to subject to the “iron discipline” of authoritarian control.
It is clear that Green does not believe in rights. Or in individual freedom. He believes in “rules” and “community”. And since he believes that his own officers express these virtues, he believes in arrogating more and more power to himself, at the expense of individuals’ rights. Good for him, bad for the rest of us. Why is it so terrible that suspects have a right to a solicitor, to prevent police from extracting forced confessions and fabricating evidence? Shouldn’t people have a right to play music in their own homes, to congregate where they see fit and to freely express themselves with expletives if this is what their free speech demands? Rights are for everyone or for no-one. To smash such rights does not produce the fluffy, sharing, compassionate world Green conjures in his rhetoric. It is to produce a Big Brother society of intolerance and control, where people learn, not caring and sharing, but the importance of submitting to the strong and the principle that might makes right.
Green expresses a laudable sentiment about the importance of protecting the vulnerable. But his approach is the utter negation of this sentiment. He wants to protect children, and yet advocates that they be criminalised and brutalised by authoritarian adults. He wants to protect people with disabilities, yet such people are also criminalised, since his approach is intolerant towards the psychologically different. He wants to protect the elderly, yet he would dip into their scant pensions to fund endless prison building. He wants the prison system to be a bottomless pit, and has no regard for the effects this system would then have on other areas of state funding or on taxpayers’ pockets.
Alongside the exaggerated crisis of anti-social behaviour, there is a far more serious crisis of creeping rightslessness, where even the most basic freedoms are today under threat or have already been destroyed. Today, we see community activists jailed under anti-social behaviour orders for lobbying councils, and activists threatened with ASBO’s for peacefully picketing outside shops. We see beggars and prostitutes dying because they are driven underground by crackdowns, the prostitutes forced to take more risks, the beggars dying of hunger and exposure because the police ensure they get no money. Prisoners are dying because of overcrowding, because judges take an approach similar to Green’s. Pensioners and hospital patients are dying because money which should be going to them is being sucked into the bottomless pit of police and prison funding.
Why not look to the causes of social problems, instead of throwing away our money and freedoms into this pit? For Green, such serious analysis is part of the problem. He says that criminal actions have “absolutely no motivation”. This is absurd rhetoric, ignoring the most basic of logical principles: that every effect has a cause. The absence of deterrents is not a “cause”, for if it were, how comes Green himself is not engaged in all these criminal activities, when he, too, is not subject to deterrence? As for his claim that gentle, understanding parenting causes crime, this is a claim for which he presents no evidence. If this is true, why are criminal actions mainly a problem on working-class estates, when liberal parenting practices are primarily middle-class? Sociological evidence suggests that violent and abusive youths are those whose parents are prone to use physical and extreme punishments and to scold rather than listen. The youths are simply imitating their parents’ ways of acting. But whereas when the youths act in this way, it is seen as “crime”, when the parents act this way it is seen by the likes of Green as laudable firmness. And it is precisely this double standard, this embracing of violence and intolerance by the socially included, which necessitates the fact that youths respond to their circumstances with violence and intolerance. If Green does not want to understand what causes social problems, he should shut up and leave the issue to those of us who do not succumb to his brand of irrationalism.
In fact, it is the “decent majority” which, in insisting that its own preferences be made into rules and enforced violently, by insisting that their own dominance be assured by dictating where people can congregate and what words they can use, is being selfish and inconsiderate, and trampling on the rights of others.
Of course, many foolish people will rally to Green’s call, because he has hit all the right buttons of existing prejudices and widespread irrational dogmas. But it remains to be seen whether his proposals will seem as rosy when the “decent majority” find themselves without rights at the hands of the state, and when they find their tax bills doubled and trebled to pay for endless prison building.
Andy
Comments
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notts police. me experience.....
25.07.2004 14:16
threats quickly followed. i was gonna get a good kicking! known sex offenders were gonna be pulled to rape me! amongst others things.
the police deliberately held me in the stationery vehicle for a few minutes, so a crowd would build up. next thing you know, as the vehicle i was in pulled away; 13 riot vans coming the other direction. what happened to me, i know, to others i can only relay second hand.
apparently, 70 or 80 riot coppers leapt out of their vans, proceeded to batter people and arrest about 70 or so people. of those i know who were arrested (including myself around about two dozen), i was the only one that did not get a beating at the station. it is most probable that of all those arrested at this incident; i was the only one who came out unscathed.
my good fortune was probably down to being able to calmly inform the officers that they can do what the fuck they want! i then recounted my visit to the doctor that morning; about how i always visit my doctor before going to such an event (this one being an rts). my chest problem! as my doctor checks my chest i ask him/her to note any bruising, or other such wounds. then i informed them bully boy (and one sole girl) coppers that i double this up by having a friend take a video recording showing in continum every part of my body. of course this is timeframed, innit!!!!
i have received more than one brutal police assault in my time, in several different constabularies. once the video tape went missing! but nottingham was perhaps my scariest experience. to have a van load of police reveal themselves as fascist, 'specially since big chief "naff tache" sargeant had told me earlier in the day about how "when it kicks off i'm coming for you first, is scary as fuck." my solicitor would later describe this sargeant as "having won his honours during the miners strike", "old school", "known to be violent".
when i got dragged into the custody suite i enquired loudly whether there was a solicitor present. one revealed himself, i gave him my details, asked him to represent me, which he said he would. i was then booked and held in an isolated cell block, on my own.
i was held for twelve hours longer than any other arrested indivual that day. for this twelve hours the police were denying that i was in custody. held in a six cell block, all on my own. perpex walls; camera'd to fuck. and if not for my precaution i really would not have slept that night at all (as it happens i had a good nights sleep).
however, it is not just the police in nottingham who are corrupted by a fascist tendancy, at least if i were to believe my solicitor in this matter, which i do (this one not being the dude who revealed himself at the station, he disappeared).
after a drawn out process in the courts that exposed police denial of evidence, officers at first denying their presence at the events then having to confirm that indeed they were there (but not being able to recollect any of the happening, of course) and the five crucial minutes of video tape going missing (which was showing the sargeant in the foreground being most violent and me in the background struggling to break free from an inspector; one of those at first not there then not remembering what happened. for two minutes i struggled before i broke free to confront the sargeant. his violence and my actions all on film. what a shame that on this one occasion it happened that it took five minutes to change this particular tape and not 30 seconds like it usually does. anyway, to cut a long story short. the day of my trial.
my solicitor had spent months ensuring me that there was not a court in the land that could convict me. it was just too dodgy, through and through. however, when i turned up for trial he informed me that "there are two fascists on the bench", "they are going to convict you". the crown prosecution had also made an offer. i can plead guilty to a lesser charge, receive a fine which i can forget about bothering to pay for and go home; or i can plead not guilty, "you will be found guilty", "you will recieve the maximum sentence of six months imprisonment".
i went home knowing that it was not just the police in nottingham where fascists lurk. they are on the bench at the magistrates court as well.
no body in particular
comment
25.07.2004 17:21
Notts Chief Constable Steve Green's open letter to Post readers
As the Chief Constable in a county with an above-average crime rate, and the highest caseload per officer in the country, I am well-versed in the conditions that are precursors to criminality. I am also well-versed in the stories told in court of difficult childhoods, poverty and abusive parenting.
I hear the sorry stories offered by defence solicitors in mitigation. I know that society has tried, for decades, to show that understanding and tolerance and rehabilitation improves behaviour in a way that pure enforcement of the law cannot. I'm sorry, but as a social experiment it has failed.
It is one of life's great ironies that the tolerant, understanding and empathetic approach which has marked post-war society has not bred tolerant children. The evidence is there every day: youths screaming four-letter expletives into the faces of police officers, youths yelling at pensioners to get off the 'f...ing' pavement because they want to get past on their motorised scooters; groups of youths intimidating shopkeepers by congregating outside their premises and chanting racist abuse; kids threatening violence against anyone who challenges their aggressive behaviour.
Firm policing can make an impact on all of this but the incidents that consume endless hours of my officers' precious time are events that should be exceptional. Unfortunately, they are very much the norm. The collective response to this behaviour should truly reflect the anger that communities feel towards these teenage tyrants who have bullied their way through childhood, certain of their rights and confident in the disinclination of the system to punish them in any way that really hurts.
Our legacy of disinclination to stop them in their tracks at a very young age has allowed them to arrive in adolescence uneducated, bad mannered, foul-mouthed and violently disposed - yet unashamedly demanding credit for their troubled start in life, as the system has taught them to do.
They have been indulged in their belief that their personal rights override the needs of the wider community. They have scant real knowledge of the law, but they understand fully just how well they are protected by it.
The result is that our police service is stretched to its absolute limits. Our criminal justice systems - full of fine, hard-working people - are creaking at the seams from the overwhelming burden of prosecutions which are the consequence of an indulgent society which has tried too hard to understand why people commit crime.
Prosecutors despair at arrogant thugs who think it entirely justifiable to punch another driver in the face for failing to indicate a right turn. Not even slightly shame-faced at their despicable display of uncontrollable temper, they argue that their brutality was justified because the other driver's error had obliged them to brake.
It may be difficult for some to accept but it is nevertheless true that a civilised response to crime and anti-social behaviour does not necessarily produce a civilised response from the offender.
From early childhood, we start to show our character - and we are all different: some of us are by nature compliant; some are bullies; others are naturally aggressive and need firm rules to curtail their behaviour towards others.
An important part of growing up is learning that other people have their limits. That's why we have rules. To live together, particularly in high-density areas, we need to abide by rules which benefit harmonious living. The good of the wider community should be paramount.
From childhood we must learn to modify selfish behaviour. We need to be taught to share, to be considerate to other people. It is right and proper for certain selfish behaviours to be modified for the good of the whole.
Why should one individual blast their music from open doors and windows across the wider neighbourhood? Why should one person use the road as a race-track, disregarding the consequences of their dangerous driving?
How many people now entrenched in lives of crime, with long criminal records to their names and hopeless futures ahead - who have been given leniency, understanding and multiple last-chances - how many will look back and thank us for not having been tough on them before their criminal behaviour escalated out of control?
To put it into context, how many of us look back to our schooldays with admiration for the 'soft' teachers who let us get away with bad behaviour and poor performance? Probably none of us. The truth is that the people we remember with admiration are often those who curbed our rebellious instincts with their rigid enforcement of the rules, their iron discipline - which, not surprisingly, often got us through our exams, or at least allowed us to leave school able to read and write.
Today the picture is disturbingly different: teachers not only struggle to manage classes of unruly children, unable to restrain or effectively punish their worst excesses, but regularly become the targets of malicious complaints, having themselves been the victims of abuse, both physical and verbal, from pupils.
The injustice is driving many good teachers out of the education system. Teachers are the lifeblood of our nation. Our future depends on their expertise and commitment. We lose them at our peril.
What sickens so many law-abiding people is this disproportionate focus on the feelings and rights of out-of-control young people.
Surely the measure of a civilised society is how well we protect those who are vulnerable; our elderly; our children; those with disabilities, and how well we protect the rules which benefit communities?
Surely it is proper to put the rights of individuals to live a peaceful and considerate life above the rights of those who choose to shatter the peace, to bully children, to threaten old people and burgle homes and to stick guns in the faces of shopkeepers?
Surely it is proper that when you commit any of these offences against society, you actually sacrifice some of your own rights.
There are some who will dismiss my views as those of a right-wing fascist police officer. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But these experiences are shared by others.
Ask firefighters whether its appropriate that they should have to send two appliances to an incident -- one to protect the other from attack. You will find no finer bunch of people than firefighters. Many of us owe our lives to these people. What have they done to merit savage attacks by gangs of thugs as they douse the flames of another malicious ignition, or the hail of bottles and bricks rained on their heads as they tackle another house blaze?
I would suggest there is absolutely no motivation for these outrageous attacks - other than the knowledge that there is nothing to stop them. If effective deterrents existed, these attacks would simply not be happening.
Our residential estates are riddled with uncouth, out-of-control yobs, the offspring of often feckless, irresponsible parents, who demonstrate time and again that understanding and lenience has done nothing to reform their behaviour.
The bottom line is that rules are rules. Courts must listen to mitigating circumstances but understanding why someone has committed an offence should not prevent us from vigorously enforcing the law for the greater good.
If we are to regain any of the lost ground - and a huge amount of ground has been lost - we need to show less compassion for the criminal and more for the victim.
But courts are discouraged from passing prison sentences except in the most extreme cases. Prison numbers have become the subject of national debate. Numbers are irrelevant, they are a distraction from the real issue: if people are engaging in conduct of such severity that they deserve a prison sentence, then prison is where they should go.
We must all be brave enough to be tough. We must be tough enough to make people understand that the world is not built to revolve around a single person - and that we do not exist to indulge the whims of the selfish and the destructive.
Our softness, our well-intended kindness has won a few souls. Those successes do great credit to our many fine probation and social service colleagues.
Unfortunately, the gentle touch has created many monsters whose only interest is that their needs be met: if they can't afford to buy it, they'll steal it; if they want your mobile phone; they'll punch you to get it; if they're drunk, and pass a shop window, they'll smash it; if they don't want to pay their bus fare, the driver gets it; if they're bored, they'll lay obstacles across the railway track or drop bricks on car drivers from motorway bridges.
And when a police officer arrives to arrest them for any one of these offences, they will scream abuse, spit, punch, kick and refuse to co-operate.
Then they will demand their solicitor and their rights.
Do we really want to carry on like this?
Everybody in the criminal justice system now has to pull together, and adopt the philosophy that we will be tougher on crime and criminals.
We must make sure we charge everybody who deserves to be charged, and take tough decisions on bail. There needs to be tougher prison sentences - and offenders need to know if they have broken the rules.
By and large, I expect the public to be supportive of what I am saying today.
I don't want offenders walking round thinking they have got away with a crime.
--
Readers should at least be able to read the article that you are referring to first, or maybe you don't want them to read it because it makes the point so well.
Crime in this country has skyrocketted and theres no doubt about it, the only reason reductions are showing for some offences is that the figures are massaged, i.e 3 offences comitted in one go and only 1 (the worst) is actually logged, etc.
The criminals out there laugh in the face of law and order while innocent people suffer. They don't care about young offenders institution or prison and certainly not community service. They don't pay fines. I say we should bring back birching to the UK as thats the one thing that will sort them out.
thinblueline
bring back birching!!??
26.07.2004 11:27
Thin Blue Line? Piss off.
Jeez what a loser
Call it Justice? Call it Law?
26.07.2004 12:01
Sophie