Mark Steyn: Thames Valley Police living in Neverland

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 06/14/05 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

What is "Thames Valley"? Where is she? To those of us who do not gambol within its borders, "Thames Valley" seems ever more of a fantastical fairyland. I hasten to add I don't mean "fairyland" in the eighty-quid-fine-for-homophobic-hate-speech sense, though I'll come to the matter of the "gay police horse" in a moment. Rather, "Thames Valley" seems a state of mind - like Neverland: "It's not on any chart / You must find it in your heart."

Yes, yes, I know there's a river called the Thames and the strip of land running along each bank qualifies as a valley, but as a legal entity "Thames Valley" appears to have been conjured out of thin air. Back in 1968, some fellow abolished the constabularies of real places like Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire and decreed that henceforth these ancient counties were now mere provinces of the "Thames Valley Police Authority": "It's not on any map / You must enter its speed trap."

The ambitious Home Office bureaucrat is very partial to these fictional jurisdictions. One thinks of "West Mercia", which is around the Welsh border somewhere, just west of "East Mercia" presumably, which they're keeping in reserve for the next pointless constabulary reorganisation. Everywhere else I've ever lived, the police forces bear some approximation to reality: the New Hampshire state troopers don't patrol Vermont, the Surete du Quebec don't do drug busts in Labrador.

When you want to call the cops, you don't need to think, "Hang on, am I in South Mercia or West Avon?" The invented identities of British administration seem to be part of a conscious decision to emphasise their remoteness from the citizenry, if not their wholesale secession from the real world.

Secure in their fairyland federation, "Thames Valley Police" patrol a wild fantastical landscape of the imagination that intersects only fitfully and awkwardly with reality. Exactly a year ago, thousands of Royal Ascot racegoers were stuck in sweltering heat for hours on end due to Thames Valley's new improved state-of-the-art "traffic management".

Royal Ascot's been going on same time, same place for a couple of centuries, but in Thames Valley's capable hands it was transformed into one of those freak natural disasters no one saw coming. This year's meeting, due to building work at Ascot, will be taking place at York, beginning today. But no doubt Thames Valley Police will still lock down the whole of Berkshire all week as a security precaution.

When they install speed cameras, serious accidents increase. When an estranged husband threatens his wife, they send round helicopters and "armed response vehicles" and contingents of officers in full body-armour, and then let them sit around at a safe distance until the estranged husband has finished killing everyone in the house.

That's what they did when Vicky Horgan and her sister were shot and bleeding to death in Highmoor Cross, declining even to enter the village, never mind the house. And that's what they did when Julia Pemberton called 999 at 7.10 one evening, racing round in response, arriving at 7.50 and then waiting until 1.20 in the morning before deciding it was safe to enter. It was: Mrs Pemberton and her son had both been dead for some hours.

As we now know, if you require a less desultory response from Thames Valley Police, the best advice is to speculate about the sexuality of the officer's horse. As my colleague Sam Leith reported yesterday, late in the evening on Bank Holiday Monday, Sam Brown, an Oxford University undergraduate, inquired of a mounted policeman on Cornmarket Street: "Do you know your horse is gay?" Also, "I hope you're comfortable riding a gay horse."

Within minutes, young Mr Brown was surrounded by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, handcuffed and tossed in the slammer overnight, after which he was fined £80. A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police told the student newspaper Cherwell that the "homophobic comments" were "not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area."

"Offensive to his horse"? Well, you never know. If any constabulary is keeping a full-time equine psychologist on staff, it's bound to be Thames Valley. Even now, the horse may be on one month's stress leave at home on full pay, with his feet up listening to Judy Garland on his iPod. Whoops, sorry. We don't know whether the horse in question is, in fact, gay. It may be just the way he trots. Whoops, there goes another 80 quid. What I'm getting at is that, even under a generous interpretation of "homophobia", it's hard to see why simply identifying the horse as gay should be a criminal offence.

Mr Brown didn't say: "Tell your gay horse to stop coming on to me" or "I couldn't get near Royal Ascot last year because those gay horses were queening around and backing up traffic." Few of us would appreciate inappropriate speculation about the sexuality of our mounts, yet even in Thames Valley the offence of hippophobia is surely a stretch.

Caligula made his horse a consul but only Thames Valley has made its horses' sexuality a hate crime. Had Mr Brown gone on to slur one of the police cars as obviously homosexual, would Thames Valley's spokesperson have complained that the homophobic comments were deeply offensive to the officer and his vehicle?

Pondering Mr Brown's query about whether the copper was "comfortable riding a gay horse", Sam Leith wondered whether the Balliol man was suggesting the officer was an "unreconstructed homophobe". But the point is that, though the "homophobes" and "systemic racists" of the constabulary have metamorphosed virtually overnight into the most gung-ho celebrants of diversity, they are indeed "unreconstructed" - thus, the somewhat unpleasant heavyhandedness that has long been a feature of British policing is now deployed in the service of zero tolerance homophobia crackdowns.

In these touchy times, are Thames Valley Police really the people you want enforcing the more nebulous sections of an already poorly drawn "Incitement to Religious Hatred" Act? With that in mind, remember that the mounted section use mostly Irish Draughts. Things could have gone a whole lot worse for Mr Brown if he'd said: "I hope you're comfortable riding a gay Arab."

[Pokey78]

Steyn ping!

[Mears]

Poor old Morse is rolling over in his grave!

[ken5050]

This piece, while superb, has soooo many local refeences that one should be half plotzed before attempting to wade through it..i'm considering running it through Bablefish..(g)

[eureka!]

Continuing thanks for the Steyn pings, Pokey...

[hattend]

Not one of Mark's better columns, but...

Steyn BTTT

[expatpat]

Well, 'quid' is pound sterling, a draught horse is like the horses that pull the Busch beer wagon. They got rid of the county organization of police forces, putting them into larger segments with these weird names like Thames Valley, Humberside, West Mercia (a name from King Arthur's days). Any other help?

[45Auto]

When an estranged husband threatens his wife, they send round helicopters and "armed response vehicles" and contingents of officers in full body-armour, and then let them sit around at a safe distance until the estranged husband has finished killing everyone in the house. "

"That's what they did when Vicky Horgan and her sister were shot and bleeding to death in Highmoor Cross, declining even to enter the village, never mind the house. And that's what they did when Julia Pemberton called 999 at 7.10 one evening, racing round in response, arriving at 7.50 and then waiting until 1.20 in the morning before deciding it was safe to enter. It was: Mrs Pemberton and her son had both been dead for some hours."

That's just frickin' great: disarm the law abiding citizenry to make sure that criminals can go about their business without fear that some irate homeowner will blow their damn brains out or that a fearful battered woman might be able to defend her life and then set up a police force that is either powerless to act to too damn afraid for their own miserable lives. Whatever happened to "Protect and Serve"?

[ken5050]

THanks....I think the Horgan and Pemberton cases resonate over there, but have no relevance here..but are obviously powerful examples of the errors that SDteyn is trying to point out. Same reaction if you ask any NYer over 50 about the Kitty Genovese case..

[FreedomCalls]

TVP home pages here:

http://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/

http://www.tvpa.police.uk/

[ken5050]

Thanks...a far better read thank all the MJ crapola..

[alwaysconservative]

Thanks for the ping, Pokey!

[stands2reason]

I think the Horgan and Pemberton cases resonate over there, but have no relevance here.

see: Columbine

[ken5050]

Ah..thanks, that's what I meant in my original comment..I didn't connect with the refeences..

[1066AD]

Sounds like Columbine HS response.

[nothingnew]

Thanks Pokey.

FMCDH(BITS)

[Gritty]

After reading this, I can see why the ruling elite in Britain have completely disarmed their subjects.

This civil war wouldn't be between the Lancasters and the Yorks...

[rogue yam]

Within minutes, young Mr Brown was surrounded by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, handcuffed and tossed in the slammer overnight, after which he was fined £80. A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police told the student newspaper Cherwell that the "homophobic comments" were "not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area."

Hey guys, how about again telling all of us stupid Yanks about the comprehensive right to free speech enjoyed by the lucky subjects of Her Majesty the Queen?

[Renfield]

"Yer 'orse is a Poof!"

"Roight!...Off to gaol with you, then!"
(Mental images of Graham Chapman in a police uniform...)

It would be worth the effort to become a credentialed diplomat from our delegation to Britain, just so I could taunt their police like that, and have diplomatic immunity....

[Tax-chick]

Bttt