Police are not immune to Instagram culture

Back in Suffolk in the 90s I used to rough shoot with a bloke who’d bagged several empty Halls to market and sell; this was before City, pop-star and footie player money moved out into the country, and though just about every village had its Hall house, an astonishing number were empty and unwanted. Anyway, point is this gave him many hundreds of acres of rough shooting whilst he was agent. One morning after shooting the grounds of Mockbeggars Hall we stopped at the village shop for a couple of ham rolls. The cottage next door to the shop had been bought by a county copper, who had an irrational dislike of anyone parking outside his house. Not a great deal of foresight in that mind. Sure enough, while we were in the shop he was out there examining the Landy for Road Traffic Act breaches. In the (locked) back were our guns. He was pumped like a toad when we came out

“Do you know how many times I’ve had to face someone holding a shotgun?” he demanded

“Never” replied my mate,  a Countryside Alliance gun-rights star, with a hard light in his eye. He did actually know every single shotgun crime incident in the county for the past twenty years and was just waiting for the parking space bully to challenge him. The toad crumbled, mumbled a few words of advice about gun security and retreated into his cave.

Today of course, a selfie with the Landy in the background would be on Instagram within minutes. If there’s one myth plod loves to perpetuate about the Job it’s their contact with weapons. That and dead bodies. “Do you know how many bodies I’ve had to ….” must be the most popular opening police line in constraining human joy – and in most cases the answer will be, as it was with our plod, “None”.

So when two junior officers were tasked with guarding a murder crime scene recently, neither could resist taking selfies with the dead and posting them to Whatsapp. How many more officers have done the same, and keep the pics on their phones, so if anyone challenges them with a “none” they can provide evidence that they have, in fact, seen a human dead body? Police are no more immune to the Instagram culture than others of their age, background and education.

There is a serious question. Should we continue to allow police officers to go on duty with their mobiles? Or members of the armed forces, or the emergency services? Or should we just accept that these distasteful records are just a part of modern human culture?