Maryland
Well-Known Forumite
You do have a problem, don't you, with distinguishing between people who are actually supporting what you say, and people whom you can attack just because you can find something in what they say on which to pick a fight. Mote: eye. Find somebody else to have a spat with: I'm really not interested.
For what it's worth, and this is the only time I'm going to respond to you, police officers in uniform, shopping in Tesco's, and driving marked police patrol vehicles, do not look to me as though they're 'on a break'. They look to me as though they're using their access to marked police patrol vehicles, and the time for which they're being paid from the public purse to protect 'n survive, or whatever it is they do, to pursue personal interests. And on those occasions when I have access to publicly-funded resources such as vehicles for my own use on my official duties, I damn well have to account for every mile driven being in pursuit of those official duties, and that does not include diversions to go shopping. If a police officer wishes to go shopping, during nominal working hours, while he or she is 'on a break', then a police vehicle should not be used for that purpose. D'you see my point?
And also, since nits are being picked, police officers are not 'police staff'. Were they the latter, they wouldn't stand out in Tesco's like a person in a uniform and a high-vis jacket hung about with the various accoutrements of their on-duty constabulary status. Doubtless, were anyone arsed to do so, and in my experience self-justification is a highly-polished art in some professions, the argument could be advanced that the presence of on-duty uniformed police in a supermarket during a noticeably quiet time of day is, by its extreme visibility, nipping in the bud any potential outbreak of antisocial behaviour in the cheese aisle, and that they're encouraged to do it. Any purchase of doughnuts would arguably, in such circumstances, be incidental to the proper purpose of policing. But I bet the need to go to Tesco's to buy summat, in very nearly 110% of such cases, pops into the head beneath the helmet before the notion of going to Tesco's to promote the rule of law.
I'm proud of the British police as an institution. But I don't like to see anybody, peer of the realm or policeman, taking the piss at public expense. And in my opinion - which could very well be completely wrong, but on available evidence probably isn't - telling a member of the public, who's had a bike nicked, that simply nothing can be done to stop prolific and identified petty criminals from blighting the lives of others is taking the piss. As is going shopping whilst on duty in a police car.
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