This is really disturbing. Crucial report by @PeterKGeoghegan and @JennaCorderoy
I remember Cressida Dick from many years ago, when we negotiated with her as a mid-ranking officer in Thames Valley Police, during our Critical Mass protests. She was widely seen as a "good cop". But there's an institutional momentum within the police that sweeps all before it.
The personalities of individual officers are unimportant, by comparison to the personality of the force as a whole. As the police response in the US reminds us, the police can be all hearts and flowers one moment, and batons and pepper spray the next.
It's a power struggle. It always has been. The police constantly seek to expand the scope of their power over us. Sometimes they do it by pouring honey in our ears, sometimes by beating us to a pulp, sometimes by lobbying the government for even more draconian legislation.
All large institutions are power-seeking, and the quest for power generates its own momentum, regardless of what any one person at any one time within that institution might think. Eventually they will either leave or conform. Perhaps their objections were always half-hearted.
This passage from The Grapes of Wrath beautifully captures how institutional momentum works.
(My emphasis).
(My emphasis).
