sunny-dave
/// When the police begin to demonstrate (at all levels) that they are returning to being Public Servants rather than an often out-of-control, partial, unaccountable, paramilitary then I'll revise my current low opinion of them. //
So just from a very few isolated incidents you are prepared to state that out police are an out of control unaccountable, paramilitary?
On a minute by minute basis our police are expected to maintain law in this country in a way no other police force in the world is expected to do, the ordinary police officer does not carry arms and the majority do not wish to do so, and yet they face injury or death each and every day.
Unarmed officers like Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone are killed in the line of duty,Sharon Beshenivsky, shot dead during a robbery in 2005, or of the three plain-clothes officers murdered by Harry Roberts in west London in 1966, or the killing of PC Sidney Miles in the Derek Bentley case of 1952.
But a known gangster who was carrying a gun and who was shot by an armed police officer, and the whole of our police force comes open for criticism of being murders and paramilitary by such as you.
Travel the world and see how those other police forces administer their 'justice'.
For decades there have been incidents that have led to calls for issuing all officers with firearms. Cases like those of Sharon Beshenivsky, shot dead during a robbery in 2005, or of the three plain-clothes officers murdered by Harry Roberts in west London in 1966, or the killing of PC Sidney Miles in the Derek Bentley case of 1952.