Post by Brad Nelson on Aug 1, 2019 13:08:09 GMT -8
24 Hours in Police Custody is a reality TV program that is at the moment playing on BritBox.
I had briefly described the first episode of season 6 elsewhere. In that one, although the episode itself was interesting, it was a shock to my sensibilities that the police were so namby-pamby.
Since then, I’ve watched episodes two and three of season six and it’s changed my opinion slightly.
Car Attack: In short, a guy gets into a fight outside a bar. He’s beaten up by a gang. He comes back in his car and attempts to run over the people who attacked him. Things don’t quite go as planned.
This isn’t exactly news, but CCTV cameras are everywhere in Britain. Not just on some street corner or a lot of street corners. They are everywhere. So a show such as this isn’t quite the same kind of fake “reality” show that Americans have often been served up.
I think people have little understanding how people play up to the cameras if they know they are there. However, in this reality show, everyone in Britain knows there are cameras everywhere (but criminals often still don’t do much to hide their crimes). So when you see the cops in this show talking as if they know there are cameras everywhere, you can rest assured that they’re not faking it, per se. This is normal for them now. There are indeed cameras everywhere.
And wherever the police go, they wear a camera that films what is going on in front of them. Thus a TV show like this is less a product of a faked environment. All they basically have to do in this one (for the most part) is edit together the video feeds (CCTV and vest-cams) and provide a little on-screen context via commentary to make it into a program. And this really does give you a feel for police work in England (Bedfordshire), namby-pamby or otherwise.
This second episode of season six is less namby-pamby, for sure. The cops want to charge the guy with attempted murder even while explaining how difficult that is to establish motive. If the victim had died, then they (ironically) have a much better case. And if the perp had used a gun instead of a car, they’d have a better case as well.
But the prosecutors wimp out and charge the guy only with grievous bodily harm (GBH). The cops were more than a little disappointed with this. And you get that real old-fashioned sense that they were there to do justice for the victim (innocent, in this case) who was laying in a hospital bed, his life at that time touch-and-go.
Left for Dead: This third episode in season six is about a homeless guy found dead in a park. There are some suspicious circumstance, so police investigate.
What I got out of this episode are two things: First, anyone who proposes legalizing drugs has a hole in is head. Second, by allowing the “homeless” to exist as they do, we are dehumanizing them. They become just shadows. We accept their way of life as normal. And many do so as a sort of cudgel to use against “capitalism,” as if it’s Donald Trump’s fault, and not their own, that these “homeless” are all whacked out on drugs and alcohol. And any hope of gaining a greater meaning for their lives is all but lost in the secular state which only ever knows how to either ignore them, put them in jail, or put them in rehab. They are clueless as to any moral dimension.
There was a good example in this to illustrate how this supposed care and acceptance for “the homeless” is completely dehumanizing them. Someone in a nearby flat says the deceased was still alive in the park because he had his hand up (while laying on the ground) when a dog came up to him.
He actually had been dead for quite some time so the police aren’t sure what he saw. Rigor mortis may have frozen the arm in that position and the dog moved it. Or it was just a poor eyewitness account. But the point is, you can’t fault this witness for not calling emergency services for seeing a guy laying in the middle of a park. We’ve come to accept this degradation as normal. Some even see it somehow compellingly moral to have the homeless lying about like zombies because these “homeless” supposedly are a constant shame to those who need to be shamed.
Oh, and it's not just Americans who are slobs. It was hilarious when the cops were going door-to-door to find any eyewitnesses regarding the guy found dead in the park. Nearly every flat they knocked on was opened by a fat guy without a shirt on. Who lives like that? In Britain being an absolute slob seems to have become a normal things. It's things such as that that make this program interesting. They don't comment on that in the show, of course. Everything abnormal, queer, bizarre, egregious, or just completely sinful is given completely vanilla-neutral coverage and the most polite of namby-pamby language. But for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, etc. And that's not all that difficult considering they have cameras everywhere.
I had briefly described the first episode of season 6 elsewhere. In that one, although the episode itself was interesting, it was a shock to my sensibilities that the police were so namby-pamby.
Since then, I’ve watched episodes two and three of season six and it’s changed my opinion slightly.
Car Attack: In short, a guy gets into a fight outside a bar. He’s beaten up by a gang. He comes back in his car and attempts to run over the people who attacked him. Things don’t quite go as planned.
This isn’t exactly news, but CCTV cameras are everywhere in Britain. Not just on some street corner or a lot of street corners. They are everywhere. So a show such as this isn’t quite the same kind of fake “reality” show that Americans have often been served up.
I think people have little understanding how people play up to the cameras if they know they are there. However, in this reality show, everyone in Britain knows there are cameras everywhere (but criminals often still don’t do much to hide their crimes). So when you see the cops in this show talking as if they know there are cameras everywhere, you can rest assured that they’re not faking it, per se. This is normal for them now. There are indeed cameras everywhere.
And wherever the police go, they wear a camera that films what is going on in front of them. Thus a TV show like this is less a product of a faked environment. All they basically have to do in this one (for the most part) is edit together the video feeds (CCTV and vest-cams) and provide a little on-screen context via commentary to make it into a program. And this really does give you a feel for police work in England (Bedfordshire), namby-pamby or otherwise.
This second episode of season six is less namby-pamby, for sure. The cops want to charge the guy with attempted murder even while explaining how difficult that is to establish motive. If the victim had died, then they (ironically) have a much better case. And if the perp had used a gun instead of a car, they’d have a better case as well.
But the prosecutors wimp out and charge the guy only with grievous bodily harm (GBH). The cops were more than a little disappointed with this. And you get that real old-fashioned sense that they were there to do justice for the victim (innocent, in this case) who was laying in a hospital bed, his life at that time touch-and-go.
Left for Dead: This third episode in season six is about a homeless guy found dead in a park. There are some suspicious circumstance, so police investigate.
What I got out of this episode are two things: First, anyone who proposes legalizing drugs has a hole in is head. Second, by allowing the “homeless” to exist as they do, we are dehumanizing them. They become just shadows. We accept their way of life as normal. And many do so as a sort of cudgel to use against “capitalism,” as if it’s Donald Trump’s fault, and not their own, that these “homeless” are all whacked out on drugs and alcohol. And any hope of gaining a greater meaning for their lives is all but lost in the secular state which only ever knows how to either ignore them, put them in jail, or put them in rehab. They are clueless as to any moral dimension.
There was a good example in this to illustrate how this supposed care and acceptance for “the homeless” is completely dehumanizing them. Someone in a nearby flat says the deceased was still alive in the park because he had his hand up (while laying on the ground) when a dog came up to him.
He actually had been dead for quite some time so the police aren’t sure what he saw. Rigor mortis may have frozen the arm in that position and the dog moved it. Or it was just a poor eyewitness account. But the point is, you can’t fault this witness for not calling emergency services for seeing a guy laying in the middle of a park. We’ve come to accept this degradation as normal. Some even see it somehow compellingly moral to have the homeless lying about like zombies because these “homeless” supposedly are a constant shame to those who need to be shamed.
Oh, and it's not just Americans who are slobs. It was hilarious when the cops were going door-to-door to find any eyewitnesses regarding the guy found dead in the park. Nearly every flat they knocked on was opened by a fat guy without a shirt on. Who lives like that? In Britain being an absolute slob seems to have become a normal things. It's things such as that that make this program interesting. They don't comment on that in the show, of course. Everything abnormal, queer, bizarre, egregious, or just completely sinful is given completely vanilla-neutral coverage and the most polite of namby-pamby language. But for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, etc. And that's not all that difficult considering they have cameras everywhere.
