Police & the law

Three items:
1. Two PCSOs do nothing to prevent a boy drowning in a pond in Wigan. Senior officers say they acted correctly, in line with health and safety rules - though such rules are applied less fastidiously, it seems, when it comes to people dying in custody.
2. The Cambridgeshire police force that claims it can't afford to fight the rising crime caused by immigrants spent £500,000 on luxury cars for senior officers.
3. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is refusing to cooperate with a US inquiry into corruption at BAe Systems.
There's a link here.
Let's say your Bayesian priors were Marxist-cum-public choice ones. The rule of law is a fiction which advances the interests of the powerful - hence the failure to investigate allegations against BAe. The notion that the police are public servants is also a lie, which serves to legitimate laws which repress ordinary people whilst allowing wrong-doing in boardrooms. In truth, the police are agents of the ruling class who aim to split the working class by stirring up racism whilst feathering their own nests.
Don't these stories strengthen these priors? What contrary evidence weakens them?

Comments

[Max Mitchell]

I can't believe I actually agree with something Ann Widdicombe says:

"Damn being a PCSO, what about being a human being?"

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Personally, these events reinforce my beliefs that the police service is run mainly to benefit the police service bureaucracy.

None of these events show the police putting the interests of “capitalist boardrooms” ahead of those of the “working class”, because none of those events put these two groups into conflict.

That said, I have always been intrigued by the small number of people who apply the Marxist analysis to the police, who then go on to apply it to the education system, the NHS, the benefit system etc.

[other Jim]

Sad to see you join the other armchair heroes cheerfully slandering the two PCSOs in the Jordon Lyon case when it's far from clear that there was anything more useful they could have done - and no, aimless splashing about does not count as more useful than making sure properly trained people could locate the site. And I'd say Anne Widdecombe should go fuck herself for her shameless opportunism, but then I am against cruel and unusual punishment.

[VS]

The obvious point no one seems to have asked is whether the PCSOs could swim. Diving in to help someone if you yourself will then get into difficulty and drown yourself is hardly going to be useful to anyone, is it?

[dearieme]

PCSOs who can't swim? That would be a triumph of Blairismo.

[William McIlhagga]

other Jim - "it's far from clear that there was anything more useful they could have done"

well, yes, but it was far from clear that there wasn't too. The only way to decide that one way or the other was to enter the water and thrash around trying to help, not to stand idly by.

PCSO's aren't blessed with perfect information, and like the rest of us must find out the limits of our ability by experimentation.