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[Roland Perry]

In article <20041008164832.5bc90704@ickx.fenrir.org.uk>, Brian Morrison 
<bdm@fenrir.org.uk> writes
>>  Trying to keep this from wandering too far off course - wasn't the
>>  West Midlands Serious Crime Squad also a distraction, and not
>>  typical? I assume that both are true, as if there'd been a more
>>  recent or widespread repeat people wouldn't have to keep harping on
>>  about that one ancient example.
>
>No it wasn't a distraction, their behaviour was not one individual, it
>*was* a conspiracy that was actively aided and abetted by multiple
>individuals in the squad with connivance from those in authority.

But still a distraction (to any debate about *today's* police), and not 
typical, even then.

>There is also a different end game; doctors (including Shipman) are
>expected to treat and usually to cure people of illness. Police officers
>are expected to catch criminals and get them punished. It is more
>difficult to recognise a correctly convicted villain than to recognise a
>patient that is treated wrongly,

We are probably straining the analogy too far, but there are frequent 
medical "recalls" where patients are found to have systematically 
received the wrong treatment, or tainted blood transfusions, and so on.

All I want you to realise is that it's an interesting feature of the 
sort of debate we have here that the police are always given the *dis* 
benefit of the doubt, whereas every other flawed organisation it's the 
reverse.

>excepting certain carefully chosen
>categories of patient as targeted by Shipman.
>
>It is likely that there are other doctors who are negligent now, and
>other police forces too. But I suspect that the nature of the two jobs
>makes the police more likely to behave in a way that appears good on the
>surface in that they "solve" more crimes.

It's more about whether the failings in each case are the result of a 
widespread secret internal conspiracy, or just a few people dropping the 
ball.
-- 
Roland Perry