I watch a lot of crime documentaries mostly about here in the UK and America, and the policing is SO different you cant match the two together.
One of the main differences, obviously, is in America, everyone has guns, So the Police have to police their territory, very aggressively because they just do not know who is and who isn't armed, but, as humans, a little bit of authority seems to go to their heads and it seems that they do not get reprimanded in any way at all when it all goes wrong. I think the only reason why things are changing and its very slow, is all down to mobile phones being able to film what is going on.
Though here in the UK and the US, they all wear body cams and it seems that in the US that that really doesn't matter, they still break the law, knowing that nothing will come back on them. Which is shameful.
In this country our vile government are right wing and they recently allowed ‘Stop and Search’ which, of course affects our Black community more as it seems to in the US. “March 2021: there were 646,292 arrests in England and Wales – a rate of 12 arrests per 1,000 people. black people were over 3 times as likely to be arrested as white people – there were 29 arrests for every 1,000 black people, and 9 arrests for every 1,000 white people.” That can not be a true representation as 82% of people in England and Wales are white, and 18% black, this makes no sense, that the figures are so much more toward the black community.(source) For me, this is part of white privilege.
America - White crime 4,729,290 Black crime 1,815,144 (source and breakdown)
So, if the police stopped white people as much as they did the black community, by the FBI figures, white crime and arrests would be much much more.
Here in the UK our ‘Homicide’ detectives, detect. They go into everything, The SOCO (Scenes of Crimes Officers) go in, suited up, masks on and if a body is there, they put screens around it so no-one can see and no one is allowed to touch the scene until they've finished. In America, it seems that all sundry walk around the crime seen, touch evidence which negates all that is found.
When people are arrested in the UK, obviously you get those who fight it, as you do in all countries, they are taken to the police station and interviewed, In the UK, you are entitled to a free lawyer, if you haven't got your own and they are with the arrested person from the beginning, then, when being questioned, they also have the right to answer the polices questions with ‘No Comment’ which of course puts that over to the detectives to go and find out exactly what happened. It seems in America that they expect the answers to come to them, which is quite comical, from what I have read and watched, they stay in their office waiting for people to phone and tell them lol if they do go out and investigate, its the bear minimum. When they interview the, maybe, perpetrator, they almost expect these people to sit there and just tell them the truth, which in a lot of instances, they do! Which is fascinating. And if they ask for a lawyer, that's it, the end of the interview, which again is peculiar.
Also, we treat those with massive mental health issues, psychopathy and a like, and its been confirmed by multiple psychologist's, they go to a place like Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital. Where as, having just watched a documentary, in the US, they are treated as those who haven't got severe mental health issues.
The one thing I do agree with is the sentencing in the US, You do the crime, you do the time. The sentence's, if multiple, run on top of one another, so you finish one, you start another, Here in the UK they run concurrently. Life in prison here means 25 years, the judge may add years to it, but certainly not every time and some may get a full life term but it is rare. Rape normally gets around 7 years, Paedophilia, 4-5 years, maybe less and in some cases they don't get a sentence. Its shocking.
Our government are underfunding, and have been for their 13 year tenure, the Judicial system, including the Police, so all our services are understaffed drastically (NHS, Schools too) where as in the US, they are probably over staffed with so many different departments that can be called on to help.
Ok, I'm done lol thank you for taking the time to read :)
Joanne, AKA Wasbella102
