When did the Police become the oppressors of the People?

I have noticed a very worrying trend within the UK and Ireland: the spectre of oppressive policing. Things have changed significantly over the last number of years and if truth be told things have become quite ugly.

Let me start by stating that I am not (or was not) inherently anti police. I remember back when I was a child a neighbour attacking my Mother. Being a child of perhaps 4 or 5 I looked on in horror. My Mother fought valiantly until fine Officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary arrived and put an end to the attack: arresting the Culprit. These were fine Men and Women: tough but fair and always willing to intervene to help the defenceless. Admittedly there were bigger political questions at hand during those times. Importantly though I never got the sense that as a whole they were interested in terrorising local people over the most trivial of issues.

Fast forward 30 years or so and we are presented with a very different picture: a very worrying picture. Now that the bombs and bullets have stopped (mostly) reigning over Belfast we have a Police Service that routinely terrorises and oppresses the People they said they would defend. Drive around Belfast and you will see police vehicles parked up at the side of the roads waiting to pounce on any motorists, children wearing tracksuits or generally any low lying fruit that they deem to be an easy collar.

The Police in Northern Ireland have become a bumbling bureaucracy: focusing their concerns on annoying and oppressing the communities in which they “serve”. I have been stopped driving to work 5 times within the last year and prosecuted for the most erroneous traffic offences such as “34 miles per hour in a 30 mile zone” “defective tyre” and so forth. Prior to this I had absolutely no criminal convictions and “was” a respectable person.

This process made me question the concept of authority in general and read widely in anarchism: leading me to this site.

I fully intent to document this oppressive policing and will be videoing every encounter I have with the police from here in. I fully believe that they have become something they were never intended to be.

I am also quite grateful that they have woken me up to the myth of Authority.