I have blogged on bad police behaviour before and am doing so again at least in part because I also happened to see one of the programs where police are videoed dealing with traffic offenders - not my normal viewing. The program made me wonder whether there is a culture within the police that makes incidents like this one, and like the others I highlighted more likely. In the TV program - which I presume came with police approval - we saw mostly young people being stopped for driving offences, and the police were overwhelmingly sarcastic in their dealings with the offenders. There seemed to be a lack of respect for the other person and it is this lack of respect that I find worrying. It is perhaps a double concern as when I was stopped for speeding the policeman was very polite (I was driving a Jaguar at the time but wasn't yet ordained) - is the lack of respect based on their perception of positional power as described here?
Either way I find it worrying if the police feel that they do not have to show respect to people.
