Steve Bray (better known to many as Mr Anti-Brexit) tweeted as follows, having alerted Twitter to the article we are now reproducing below:
“We never forget they are human too, following orders from a tin pot despot! Our protests must be peaceful, relentless & sustained. Riots & disorder achieve nothing but the destruction of the communities we fight for.”
What follows is reproduced by kind permission of Emergency Services News. WARNING: contains graphic images of injuries sustained by officers. We feel this is an important article to publish in the context of the campaign to preserve our rights to peaceful protest.
An unnamed police officer with 20 years of service has talked about why they have decided to quit the job after two decades of serving the public.
Generally, morale in the police is low.
Officers are having to endure policing the pandemic against a backdrop of never-ending overtly biased negative media coverage.
These factors, combined with a dramatic rise in the number of police officers who have been seriously assaulted, leave many officers contemplating leaving the job.
One officer captured the sentiment of many of their colleagues when they said:
‘I’m a cop of 20 years. I’m leaving. I’m done.
I’m done with the duplicitous liars and twisters of truth in Parliament, who have destroyed policing in order to further their own careers. I’m done with those charlatans and snake oil salesmen and women who spread their bile, whose acid eats away at society and its values and future. I’m done with the utter lack of consequences for their corruption.
I’m done with duplicitous liars and twisters of truth in the media and “journalism” with their spin, lies, misrepresentation and half-truths. I’m done with their 24 hours news, their Twitter echo chambers, their pile on tactics and agendas, in order to invent the next “big” story or extend the life of the old one. I’m done with their sickening pretence that they are on some crusade to make the world a better place.
I’m done with the socially corrosive special interest groups who want to be top of the victimhood ladder and are prepared to burn the world and anyone different to them, to ensure they are heard above anyone else. Their constant screaming for attention and ever more fantastical claims, that bear no scrutiny, but which they know they will never be challenged on, because, you know “cancel culture”.
I’m done with the public, their violence, their lying, their abuse, their spitting, their constant screaming for instant gratification and destruction of anything and everyone around them if they don’t get their own way, like a bunch of petulant adolescents. I’m done with their demand for every right real or imagined and their utter lack of personal or social responsibility to each other.
I’m done with the senior officers who will jump on any bandwagon, throw any officer under a bus for doing their job, do anything at all to get that next rank and more power. I’m done with them pretending to be cops, when they are just politicians in uniform. At least real politicians don’t seek to hide their stench and are there for all the world to see, in all their obnoxious, odious glory.
I’m done with the far left and far right, two sides of the same violent, socially corrosive and destructive coin, trampling over anyone and everyone, destroying anything in their paths, if it doesn’t conform to the “right” narrative or world view. I’m done with their red and black flags, their balaclavas, their violence, bullying and intimidation. I’m done with them calling themselves Nazis or Antifa and pretending they are any different to the opposition. I’m done with their anti locution and persecution of anyone that isn’t on their side. I’m done with their cheerleaders in the media, who adopt their cause but absolve themselves of any responsibility for the harm they cause.
I’m done with the Soviet era scale bureaucracy that stops me doing my job, the projects that strangely never fail, the nepotism in the promotion boards and the boys and girls clubs in policing that look after each other, no matter how incompetent and screw everyone else who isn’t in their gang. I’m done with their self promoting cliques and associations, they hide behind when they are professionally incompetent, but always useful for a photo opportunity to make the force look good with whatever group is having their week or is fashionable that day.
I’m done with the (few) corrupt cops who drag all our names through the mud and the false narrative that the vast majority of front line cops are tainted.
I’m done seeing my brothers and sisters on the front line battered, criticised, unsupported and demoralised. I’m done with their fortitude, inherent goodness and sense of service, that makes them run forward, knowing the armchair critics will crucify them after. I’m done with their false hope that things will improve, that society will value them. I’m done with them being lied to by our leaders and then lying to themselves, that, maybe, just maybe, this time those leaders can be trusted, I’m done with seeing those youngster suffer and age far too fast as a decent life passes them by as they waste their lives on this.
I’m done with grandstanding cops, dancing for YouTube, wearing rainbows as self promotion, kneeling for a twitter photo, lecturing the public about things that shouldn’t concern us, forgetting we are the law police, not the public morals police, Im done with them doing anything other rather than actual policing. I’m done with the false narrative that suggests this is the norm and that all cops are more interested in being woke social workers than doing their job. A false narrative we have facilitated by allowing this self indulgent, shameless self promotion of a few individuals, to proliferate.
I’m done with cops being told they are somehow lesser without a degree and that instincts are bias and bad. That experience and street knowledge is discriminatory. I’m done with the lies that the College of Policing is on our side. That the courts value and support us. That the IOPC isn’t an insidiously untrustworthy organisation out to get us. That the HMIC understands policing.
I’m done with the anxiety, the anger, the constant state of heightened arousal in case of danger, even when I should be feeling safe in my own home. I’m done with the corrosive damage to my physical and mental health, sacrificed for a country and public, serving both in green [army] and blue, for a country that couldn’t give a toss.
I’m done with the deaths, the suffering, the violence, the dishonesty, the predatory behaviour and all the other public faeces that you ask us to clean up.
I’m done with the the indescribable levels of frustration, rage, hate and despair that all the above has filled my life with, when all I wanted to do was look after the good people and lock up the bad. I’m done with the cynicism and distrust that it’s left me and the times I’ve put my family last, to ensure I was there for someone else’s. I’m done with the pain it causes them to see what this job does to us.
I’m a cop of 20 years service and I’m done with it. Sort your own mess up. Or don’t, and let it all collapse around you.
’I’m done, and really don’t care anymore.’
It’s not simple, is it? Some things we disagree with, some we sympathise with, but it helps to know that all these conflicting strands exist in one person and one organisation. It’s hard to think of many other jobs where there is a similar ethical and operational complexity.
We all know that, sadly, not all police officers are good people. Recent events have highlighted this. But we must not fall into the trap of dismissing them all and ignoring their issues and challenges. No doubt Patel and her ilk want us to hate and fear the police. This government relishes division and feeds it at every opportunity.
What we want more than anything is for the police not to feel so driven into an ‘us and them’ corner that they defend the indefensible and close ranks. We need them to care about our rights and to enforce the law fairly and sensitively. But you can see how they have become a political football, a punch bag, a victim of cuts. Do many of them want to be agents of an oppressive state? We must hope not. We need their humanity and constant vilification will squeeze that out of them.
Patel may think she’s Darth Vader to their stormtroopers but that is to reduce all of them to little more than androids, programmed to enforce the hostile environment and perpetuate the othering that is damaging this country so very badly. Transparency, accountability, honesty and honour are needed.
