Police chiefs' association accused of profiteering
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Independent Minds
The private organisation representing Britain's top police officers faced demands last night for reform – or even disbanding – over allegations that it was being run as a business with a multi-million-pound budget relying heavily on public funds.
Civil liberties campaigners and opposition politicians called for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to be "stopped in its tracks" amid growing concerns over its burgeoning powers.
ACPO, a private company, is paid millions of pounds a year by the taxpayer to, in effect, run the nation's police forces. It has been viewed as providing a vital public service in writing the rules on police operations, advising ministers, and campaigning on issues such as the proposed 90-day detention of terror suspects and the DNA database.
But a newspaper investigation has raised concerns over "profit-making" activities, including selling information from the police national computer for up to £70 a time – when ACPO pays just 60p for the details.
The organisation also markets "police approval" logos to firms selling anti-theft devices and runs a separate private firm offering training to speed-camera operators.
ACPO, set up in 1997 to replace an informal network of police chiefs who decided national policies, is headed by former Sussex Chief Constable Sir Ken Jones, who earns £138,702 a year. In the past two years its influence and public role has expanded and its annual income from "project" work for the police and the Home Office has risen to £15m, from £1.3m in 2005. But its growth has taken place without any parliamentary debate or public scrutiny, and its decisions are largely taken in secret.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the civil rights group Liberty, questioned whether ACPO's role as a company with increasing national powers was legal. "ACPO is many things," she said. "It advises government, it sets policing policy, it campaigns for increased police powers, and now we learn it is engaged in commercial activities – all with a rather shady lack of accountability."
The shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, questioned ACPO's role. "Is it an external reference group for Home Office ministers or a professional association protecting senior officers' interests?" he asked. "Is it a national policing agency? Is it a pressure group arguing for greater police powers?"
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Comments
One has to consider here in the UK such names as the Illuminati, the hidden upper echelons of the Freemasons, the Europewide "Circle", Bildeberg and consider what they are really up to.
Certainly there is a hidden and sinister agenda afoot, the sudden move towards a totalitarian state, removal of centuries old rights, the introduction of ID cards, identity databases and surveillance, things that Hitler suddenly moved towards in the 1930's and used to great effect against his perceived targets.
1984 was written by Eric Blair/George Orwell as he was shocked at the governmental power invested in the BBC aware at the total intrusion the government gained through a media and also the effect his own work with the MI was having on him psychologically, it is often quoted as a means to understand a true totalitarian state BUT it is also a very very useful manual for any politician that has aspirations for a total control state.
Yet, 1984 is here, the government spies on us continually, its agents are above the "law", the two tier state becoming more and more apparent, the media tells us like in the book, who the "enemies" are and what we must do and accept to keep us safe, that failure to obey leads to indoctrination, incarcaration and in the case of the police, failure to obey can mean death.
One day they are going to take the velvet glove off to reveal the iron fist, as in Germany in the last century, it will be swift, complete, the nation stunned and paralysed, inable to react or resist.
A violent inssurection is something that the public would lose at a great cost. The reality of rebellion is a damn sight nastier, chaotic and less appealing than many people seem to accept.
Our "brave boys" would be back from their Ramboesque adventures in far flung, oil-rich wastelands in a flash if anyone so much whistled in the general direction of Westminster. They may be flag waving patriots now, but they wouldn't show their own people an ounce of mercy if civil war descended.
But it won't come down to that. They depended on secrecy to succeed and they've lost it. It's only a matter of time before things get out of their control. It may be a long time coming, but it'll happen.
Don't despair, we'll turn it around.
Are all the above correct or are we being indoctrinated towards negative ideology ?
People have jokingly stated that New Labour would postpone the general election if they thought they would lose, but the privatisation of government is, in essence, nothing less than the abolishion of democracy.
We would still have elections, there would just be no point in them.
Obviously we are only at a low-level at the moment, but this sort of thing can only happen slowly in a democracy. Sneakily you might say.
It's already pretty bad, if unchecked where will we be in ten years?