OPINION:
I have known the drunks, the cheats, the liars, the corrupt, the womanisers, the thugs, the racists and the downright dishonest.
And I have known good coppers too.
But good, bad or just plain ugly, these people are put on this earth to protect us.
And in a real crisis they do it very well indeed.
In fact, at the police bravery awards earlier this year there was a Lincolnshire officer who arrested a double murder suspect despite being stabbed himself,
There were four Merseyside Police officers who disarmed armed and violent young men.
A North Yorkshire officer had been nominated after she risked her own life to rescue both her colleague and a member of the public from a river.
Bravery Award Nominees 2022 (polfed.org)
Yep, hero cops still walk our streets at night and jump headlong into the mire of our lives to pull us back to shore.
And they do it for an average wage which wouldn’t make a McDonald’s manager look twice… better to toss burgers than people in jail for that kind of money.
The average for a copper is around £36,000 a year.
Burgers or b*st*rds then? Which would you choose to put in a little box?
So, let’s compare coppers to hacks!
Over the decades I have known many drunks, cheats, liars and womanisers within my own profession. However, not many thugs, racists and liars.
I have also known many good hacks.
We are put here to protect people, just like coppers. And we go out on a limb, go to war zones, riots, protests, boardrooms – and we go undercover to tell people what is going on.
The average pay for a journalist in the UK is around £26,000 a year…
Journalist salary in United Kingdom (indeed.com)
What price security and truth heh?
At least us coppers and hacks work together for the betterment of our society don’t we?
I worked closely with them on everything from the Yorkshire Ripper to Fred West. And those dogs from hell got what they deserved by law.
The law took them to court, they were sentenced and they were EXPOSED.
Yes, the media told the world what they’d done.
But now the police have decided that people like me should be treated like dissidents.
A police guidance has been found telling officers to look on journalists as criminals and extremists.
This edict can only serve to undermine police-press relations and obliterate the public’s right to know about crimes and how they are being investigated.
Look at Merseyside Police, they held briefings to escalate the hunt for the killer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel.
Yet this advice to forces says officers should regard professional journalists as a potential ‘corrupting’ influence.
The College of Policing advises that officers must declare whether they have friendships or associations with people such as criminals.
Today this includes recommendations about journalists. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has recommended police officers disclose associations with ‘journalists and extremist groups’.
Because of complaints the inspectorate has agreed to change the wording. But that doesn’t change the sentiment.
It is clear that the dogs of law are attacking the pack that roams the streets day and night looking for the bits of lives that make people happy, sad and angry. We write about everything from Golden Weddings to twisted prime ministers and the horrors of war.
The police are deliberately undermining the freedom of the Press in the UK at a time when, because of the size of the job and the lack of people to do it, their backs are up against the wall and they are seen on the streets less and less, unless they are nipping across a car park into MacDonalds or Gregg’s. .
Earlier this year, this was reported: “HUNDREDS of serving police officers have been convicted of criminal offences – including assault and robbery, an investigation has revealed.
More than 300 cops currently serving in forces across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are guilty of crimes, according to data released under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Ruth Smeeth, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, said “The tendency to see reporters as a threat rather than an asset is something we are more used to seeing in authoritarian regimes than advanced democracies.”
The Society of Editors said: “ A successful working relationship between the police service and journalists is vital to policing legitimacy in the UK.”
So, there we have it … the police authorities – our government – want to treat people like me as if we are politically motivated activists. And they are advising a powerful organisation, the police, to ‘snitch’ on us and enforce it…
So, dog eats dog and the very bones of the truth are turned into nothing more than sh*t.
#police #policedog #news #newshounds #journalists #society #truth #honesty #thugs #lairs #cheats
