Interesting question : If they'd entered your house without your permission (and without a court order), possibly by what would be classed as B&E for anyone else, and they had found something illegal would they have been able to prosecute you?

Jon

Yes - you're the only one. Thieving, work-shy bastards. Although CC will be along in a moment to say how every cop he's ever met was delightfully pleasant.

Well if they vacuumed and put the rubbish out.

No - the evidence would be inadmissible as it hadn't been obtained properly.

When my neighbour was burgled many years ago, she said the worst thing was knowing somebody had rifled through their stuff, not what was actually taken.

Also, I know a bloke that had his house raided by the police (procedure thing just), and he said he hated the thought of someone else picking their way through clothes and documents etc, even though he had nothing to hide.

If those instances are anything to go by, it's more the feeling that your privacy's been breached than anything else; it doesn't seem to matter who's done it....

What if they decided to do this to anyone, find some drugs or something else and then charge the owner with various offences?

As has already been stated, they can't do that by law as the "evidence" would be inadmissable, and if they had to have a warrant then the whole thing would be recorded.

Though if they had a warrant then it was recorded that will basically lead to mass break ins in order to get evidence.

It's kind of sad that so much of our nation has this impression that the Police are working continually to find ways to "go after innocent" citizens. If you break the law and hide the evidence in your home, you're still breaking the law, even if nobody knows about it. I find it really hard to believe that the entire Police force is working soley for the purpose of "finding" evidence in any way they can, to prosecute people who are effectively doing no harm.

In this case (which is the point of the OP) the Police are trying to demonstrate to people, in the only way they can think of that will get their attention, that their home security is not good enough to prevent a crime. I have absolutely no problem with that (and I don't mind being the only one who doesn't) because as I said, if my house is going to be broken into, I would much prefer that it was the Police doing it, than someone who will actually steal all my stuff. I wouldn't feel "invaded" in that instance because the point of the exercise is not to "rape my personal space" it's to educate me and it's done no real harm, unlike a real burglary.

I'm not saying that all Police are wonderful, I have met some pretty terrible ones, but the concept that they have nothing better to do with their time than make stuff up and sit around coming up with ways to break into peoples homes to "find" evidence as proof of wrong-doing is frankly laughable. They have more than enough "real" crime to keep them occupied which is one of the reasons they attempt these awareness exercises to try and reduce the workload, not made any easier by the random beaurocracy they have to deal with daily.

With that kind of public attitude against you from the start, I wouldn't be a copper at any price.

I would be more than happy for a Police officer on the beat to notice open windows/doors, see if anyone is home, and if not then drop a note through the door suggesting improved security.

Unfortunately, the "beat" Police are far too busy doing paperwork and fending off abuse prosecutions to actually walk the beat any more, so they've employed Community Support Officers to do that job instead...oh, but not actually given them any powers or authority to do anything

I'm sorry, this is just stupid. The police don't inform people that knife crime is on the increase by going round stabbing people. They don't inform people speeding is harmful by crashing their cars. Pulling stunts like this is not going to do anything other than what it has done - make the police look like a bunch of idiots who have no idea what the hell they're doing.


Well, to a degree the public support for the police has eroded due to police behaviour. Go back to them not taking any responsibility for the deaths at Hillsbrough and their deployment during the miner's strike for example and there are a continuing stream of events where the police have acted against what the population considers their interests to be. I don't personally blame the bobby on the beat for this, generally speaking the beat coppers I've interacted with have been fair and conscientious and if i saw a street copper in trouble I'd still go to help them. However the overall policing policy, which was set by government but is now increasingly set by the ACPO quango has led to a systemic breakdown of the relationship between the police as an organisation and the population as a mass. They can't really expect a lot of public support when all the public hear is they're arresting people for taking photographs of London monuments.

There is also a degree of it from our side - since the 60's British society has become more anti-establishment than it was and the Police are one of the main 'public faces' of the establishment. However I think it is more down to bad policing policy (rather than bad policemen, generally) that has led us to the state we are in.

Something similar happened to me. A bloke broke into my house, setting off the alarm. As he was trying to stop the alarm, a police patrol car drove past the street. Copper heard the alarm, came to have a look. Bloke spotted copper through the front window, did a runner out the back empty handed (he'd gained entry by basically kicking a big hole in my back door). Copper got my neighbour to give me a ring then stayed in the house until I could get someone there to make sure everything was OK.

No problem with individual coppers at all. As far as I can see, they're as much the victim of a system that's utterly broken as we are. Beyond the odd one whose not up to the job - which there always has been always will be - they seem to me to be doing absolutely the best they can.

Jon

S'true. You know what regular police people call PCSOs?

Completely Hopeless In Most Policing Situations.