Man arrested for making coffee in own home while naked

An American man who made coffee in his own home while nude is facing charges of indecent exposure. This is a bizarre case indeed. The police who arrested him, Fairfax County Police Virginia, said they believed he wanted to be seen naked by the public. He faces up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if he is convicted. He is fighting the charge and seeking damages from police. Quite right too.

If police officers can arrest people because they think someone is going to do something or wants to do something, it's definitely turning into a police state world. This is not the same as a conspiracy to commit a crime. That is when there is evidence of pre-planning but without commission of a crime.

Police officers could arrest someone sitting in a car because they believed they might drive off at an illegal speed. Or they could arrest someone entering a store because they thought the person wanted to shoplift. It could go on.

We live in a society now, or at least the so-called western world, where any innocent occurrence immediately has impure connotations placed on it. This man claims he did nothing abnormal in his own home. Just got out of bed, naked, and went to make a cup of coffee. Unfortunately he now faces the prospect of a court case with people mulling over whether he is a sick pervert or just a naked man making coffee.

Some people get their lives turned upside down in a day. It just goes to show that we do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Obama cops out as the cops complain

President Obama has just had to make a grovelling apology for a comment he made about the arrest of a Harvard professor by the keenly motivated police officers of Cambridge, Massachussetts. The professor was a "man of colour" and the police officer was white in the arrest that happened outside the professor's house.

Obama said that the police had “acted stupidly” but he was relying on reports. It now appears that they were just doing their duty. They were very offended by all this. “The president should make an apology to all law-enforcement personnel throughout the entire country,” said one Cambridge policeman. “Cambridge police are not stupid.” Maybe they are not, but I think there are some failings in the US police pysche, and this incident brings them to the fore.

My experience of the USA is that police officers are hyped up to believe that they may not come back alive from a day's patrol. That's the first bit of bad news. Then, when they've got a suspect, they delight in handcuffing the alleged miscreant. Anyone accused of a crime in the USA is certainly going to go through the humiliation hoops well before they get to see a judge and jury.

I've had a few casual encounters with US cops. One was over an out-of-date license plate. I heard the siren, saw the police car and duly stopped. I saw the cop get out of the car. Then he appeared to see my car as some sort of sexual object. He started from the trunk end and slithered slowly towards the driver's door. I had wound the window down. He kept his head from getting too close. "Good morning, officer", I said, in a very non-Southern voice. "What is the problem?" He was momentarily quiet, then told me about the license. As he spoke, he came towards the open window. I chatted about going back to England and that it was not actually my car, whereupon he said, "Don't suppose there's much point in giving you a ticket, then." "No, not much point," I said, leaving him slightly non-plussed. He then smiled broadly and wished me a good journey home.

My thoughts about that, and other meetings with the police (on a porch visit once too) is that they try to do a good job, but that there is a constant current of tension, no doubt from the thought of being attacked. This, I think leads, to groups of people being sterotyped and every arrest having to be carried out as if being carted off to Alcatraz.

With the professor, it seems that a neighbour was rustling the curtains, got all neighbourly and called the cops. It would be interesting to hear a tape of that call. They turn up, the professor is tired after his trip and annoyed at not being able to get into his house. The cops start asking questions off a crib sheet and the professor snaps. They go into autopilot and within less than a minute the professor is handcuffed and removed from the premises.

Now if there had been a slightly less tense standoff then none of this may have happened. Instead, we have the whole racial thing rise up like a phoenix in a jack-in-the-box. America is a racially tense country. For heavens sake, Obama can't even be president without someone commenting on his "blackness". The same to a different degree in the UK and no doubt any country with a mixed population.

I know a bit about being involved in racial issues. I had a black friend in Atlanta and travelling in a car poses problems in certain areas, from black as well as white. It can lead to difficulty. Rather pompously I said that I wasn't going to be told who I could be in a car with. My friend suggested that reality was far better than philosophy in a crisis.

I would hope that the reality is that the police in America could police without fear and that neighbourhoods could have policing without stereotyping (from both sides).

Cop kicks runaway driver's head in!

A suspected traffic violater is in custody, after leading police on a high speed chase in El Monte, Southern California. The driver failed to pull over after a violation, driving at top speed before trying to make a run for it. On arrest, he was kicked by the policeman. Not only that, another policeman cuffs him violently and a third lets his dog bite the guy's feet.

Rough justice or what? I'm all in favour of getting dangerous drivers off the road, if that's the case, but two wrongs don't make a right. Surely the police of California have got that message by now?

Armed police held down innocent man on train and put a gun to his head!

In another story of the "If you have done nothing wrong you've nothing to fear" department, here comes one describing a disturbing day out for one young man.

As the Daily Mail reports "Guns pointing at his head, a train passenger is forced to lie face-down on the platform in a dramatic police swoop. Officers then dragged him to his feet and frogmarched him away to be searched and interrogated. Minutes later, however, he was released without charge after it became clear that they had seized entirely the wrong man."

Luckily they didn't shoot him. Dorset Police have shrugged off the incident. They don't appear that concerned. Pity. I like the stoical remark "'Inquiries into the circumstances of the arrest are continuing. No shots were fired and no one was injured." So that's OK then.

I still think all this gives us an impression of policing on the cheap, lack of proper intelligence, and a police service driven by crazy results charts. Let's remember its a service, not a bonus-led, profit-making plc!

In the comments from the Mail's report, Andy from Essex helpfully says "It's the way it has to be. Well done to the Police." If you ever find yourself face down on the sweet-smelling floor of Liverpool Street station, Andy, be sure to compliment the officers, won't you?