Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
However you dress it up, force risks becoming a joke
HARRY BELL
Sitting in traffic on the ring road was the last place I thought I’d encounter the latest piece of evidence which proves that the authorities are stark staring mad.
As I reached the Riding Gate Roundabout, this garish multicoloured monstrosity rolled past me. Before I had time to react with an appropriate expletive, I realised that it was in fact a police car.
Yes, a police car. Kent Police has admitted that it now has three Ford Fiestas decked out in the colours of the Pride rainbow.
This prompted the accusation from a man in Maidstone that the cars look “ridiculous and unprofessional”. They do. They look like something the cops would drive in an episode of the My Little Pony cartoon.
But this is worse. Much worse. First, however, let’s hear from the policeman put up to defend spending taxpayers’ money in this way. I say policeman, but Ch Insp Tim Cook is titled as “the head of partnerships and communities”.
Can I assume therefore that he does in fact do very little actual policing and is instead paid a lot of our money to sit around in meetings concocting rubbish like this.
He tells us: “We are proud of our county’s diversity, and are committed to engaging with people of all races, religions and sexual orientation.
“While the rainbow theme is most closely linked with the LGBT community, its use on three of our newly designed police cars is to demonstrate pride in all aspects of Kent life, and not one group in particular.”
Christ almighty. It’s proper pass the sick bag stuff – trite, facile and obscenely stupid. The authorities’ obsession with politically correct nonsense is not shared by the wider public who simply want police forces to patrol the streets, keep us safe and nick criminals.
As I argued two weeks ago, tawdry bandwagon jumping like this shows how the outlook of law enforcement increasingly diverges from the public it is supposed to serve.
Ch Insp Cook’s second sentence tells us that one aim of the cars is to “demonstrate pride in all aspects of Kent life”. Really? Pride in people who burgle homes or jack up heroin in the road or smash windows on council estates.
This corny platitudinous drivel is the lingua franca of the state in which all meaning has been drained from words.
But his assertion that the Pride colours do not relate to
‘Tawdry bandwagon jumping like this shows how the outlook of law enforcement increasingly diverges from the public it is supposed to serve’
one group of people is rubbish. Of course it does – as he concedes, it’s tied inextricably to the Pride movement and “LGBT community”. You only had to attend the Pride event at the Dane John this summer to see it.
The only word Ch Insp Cook hasn’t fished from his stagnant pool of PC clichés is “inclusive”. Because this isn’t inclusive. It’s exclusive. It lauds one type of person or lifestyle above others.
Where, for example, is the car for white heterosexual middle-aged men? Where’s the one for the elderly? Or French-born hairdressers with a club foot? Or any other label anyone might want to apply to themselves?
The sign on the car also states that the police are “valuing difference” – whatever that is supposed to mean. But this contravenes one of the most important tenets of justice: namely, that the law is applied without reference to a person’s status, identity, or any other characteristic. The statue of Lady Justice atop the Central Criminal Court wears a blindfold for a reason – she does not see difference.
Kent Police should ditch gimmicks like this otherwise it runs the risk of looking like a joke.