Frontline police officers are seeking extra powers to enter private homes to break up parties and prevent the spread of coronavirus but are expected to be rejected by Priti Patel.
The Police Federations believe there is a loophole in the coronavirus rules which means they cannot enter a private dwelling to stop a house party or even a barbecue at a private house.
They can only act if they are allowed in by the householders which they say has hampered efforts to combat such gatherings, a key source for the spread of the disease.
Err, yes. My home is my castle and all that. Agreed, it is rather galling to a certain mindset that things outside the State even exist, let alone that we encode them into what we call civil liberty.
And who does think that if the police ever do gain this power they’ll give it up?
My advice to Ms. Patel would be to line up and shoot the people asking for this power. Pour encourager les autres. After all, if we do it to Admirals for being less than the Best of British why exempt coppers?
See my comment on later earlier post about authoritarians consolidating power.
What’s particularly worrying here is the enthusiasm of the average person in supporting them. Its getting easier to understand how the Stasi was so successful.
The extraordinary scenes of police without PPE breaking into, an admittedly foul mouthed, man’s house and breaching social distancing guidelines to break up a non-existent social gathering suggests that we really are living in Clown World, but one with an increasingly evil face.
I saw that, and cheered his foul mouth.
I see signs that the tide is turning on the “do anything to stop the virus” front. I think that if elected officials (even in conservative areas) had done what is perceived as too little they’d be punished for not caring about letting people die. Now that people have had a taste of lockdown and are being told this might go on for a year or more they are getting more rational in a hurry – “hang on, your model says we’ll have a few more deaths unless I lose everything I’ve worked for the last 20 years and sit… Read more »