Unusual Suspects

In Exeter the police have decided that they have enough time to moonlight in a little lawbreaking of their own:

Officers have been entering private homes through open windows or unlocked doors, supposedly as a warning to residents about a lack of security.

Once inside, officers pick up any valuable items they see such as iPods or purses and leave them in a ‘swag bag’ for the owner to find.

Rather understandably, people are annoyed by this. They should be. The police have no greater powers than the ordinary person, other than those expressly conferred by law. When they engaged in this, they weren’t exercising lawful authority policemen, but as ordinary people who happened to be wearing police uniforms while on-duty. Bearing that in mind, you see the monumental arrogance of those involved: if you or I decided to break into a someone’s house to highlight its insecurities, it would be a safe bet that the police response would be less than sympathetic. Yet they, with the same authority as you or I, decide that it’s ok because they’re in uniform.

Unfortunately this isn’t an isolated incident; the police have been trying something similar in my borough.

I know some will treat this as a creative solution to the problem of burglary, but it really isn’t. There’s a reason we have burglary as a separate offence from theft: the element of trespass is a significant aggravating factor. Having your home invaded is a thoroughly unpleasant, shocking sensation: that’s the very reason why the police have decided to resort to it. The police have just been phenomenally lucky that nobody has suffered from it: for some the fact that the housebreaking was effected by a warrantless officer will only make it worse. The law does not go around creating large hurdles to lawful entry without the owner’s consent for some policemen to just break in because they’ve had a “bright idea”. Reasonable suspicion by a trained officer, the warrant of a trained magistrate, Article 8 of the ECHR, and tough standards for a civil search order exist to protect the sanctity of the home. You don’t go round upholding that by violating it.

This is the worst sort of patronising “protect you from yourselves” authoritarianism. If I carelessly leave my window open, I expect the police to make sure the burglars don’t break in in the first place, not wasting their time trying to break in themselves and lecture me on what a disobedient/stupid person I am. The same logic is on display here as the one that thinks if you wear revealing clothes and are raped, it’s somehow your fault.

The only people responsible for burglary are burglars, and the police should not be penalising the rest of us for getting on with our lives.

Tagged as: misconduct, police