UK Police - A Problem With Systemic Abuse?

Right: Orgreave in 1984. Left: Nothing has changed...

Do the police have a problem with systemic, pathological abuse? A recent Lexipol study found that 76% of male officers and 84% of female officers divorce, compared with about 50% in the wider public. Many believe the police are solely there to protect and serve the public - but that statement couldn't be further from the truth.

What is the true purpose of the police? To guard the rich? To break strikes? To criminalise dissent? They may hold a monopoly on force. We may call them servants of the public. But the basic truth is, they are there to serve the state and protect private property. They answer not to the poor but to ministers and to boardrooms. This chain of command shapes every beat, every arrest, every baton.

New recruits learn to obey without question. They learn to see neighbours as threats. They learn to back each other and keep silent. This builds a wall between the public and the force. It makes abuse routine and dissent risky. With the thuggish military style uniforms, intended to intimidate rather than be seen as approachable in line with community policing.

Psychology shows how power warps the mind. In 1971, Zimbardo’s prison trials found that students in guard uniforms soon used force and humiliation on “prisoners”. In the 1960s, Milgram found that 65% of volunteers would turn a dial to send what they believed were fatal shocks when told to do so. These tests warn that unchecked authority can turn ordinary people into monsters.

At home, the same drive for control takes its toll. Officers leave the station on edge. They lock down their feelings and sharpen their orders. Partners and children see a boss, not a spouse. Fear and control break trust. A safe space becomes another front line.

In a recent case a Greater Manchester Police officer murdered his wife for challenging him over debt, dumping her body by a lake. Was this an isolated incident that happened in a vacuum, or symptomatic of a deeply disturbing culture of control, intimidation, and systemic abuse?

A 2022 joint investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and the College of Policing found “systemic deficiencies” in how police forces handle allegations of domestic abuse against their own officers. Only 9% of such allegations led to criminal charges, and a significant portion of investigations were deemed inadequate.

The report highlighted that officers often used their position to intimidate victims and deter them from reporting abuse. This underscores a broader issue where the police, as an institution, may prioritise protecting their own over ensuring justice for victims, reflecting a culture that can enable and perpetuate harm.

This isn’t just a case of individual failure but of institutional design. In recent years, police across the UK have been involved in suppressing protest movements - from Extinction Rebellion to Black Lives Matter - with excessive force, surveillance, and legal repression.

A 2021 report from Netpol (the Network for Police Monitoring) concluded that the policing of dissent in the UK has become increasingly aggressive, authoritarian, with police treating protest as a threat rather than a right. Academics like Alex Vitale have long argued that modern policing is structurally aligned with the defence of property and power, not with care or community well-being. When authority is built on coercion, abuses of power are not anomalies; they are inevitable outcomes.

These ingrained attitudes can be especially harmful to neurodivergent individuals who come into contact with the police. Police forces routinely misinterpret neurodivergent behaviours through a neurotypical lens, leading to deeply harmful outcomes. Behaviours such as stimming, flat affect, rapid speech, or disorganised responses are often perceived as suspicious, aggressive, or non-compliant.

This is particularly true for autistic individuals and those with bipolar disorder, whose symptoms - like agitation, pressured speech, or emotional dysregulation - can be mistaken for criminal intent or defiance.

A 2022 study by the University of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre found that only half of autistic individuals were recognised by police as vulnerable adults, with over a third being denied an appropriate adult during interviews, in violation of their legal rights. Meanwhile, research published in Psychiatric Services (2019) found that people with bipolar disorder are significantly more likely to have negative police encounters, especially during manic or depressive episodes.

The Brain Charity’s “Another Sign” report revealed that fewer than 30% of criminal justice staff had training in neurodivergent conditions, contributing to frequent misjudgements. The police’s rigid, command-and-control structure is fundamentally incompatible with a population whose episodes are often triggered or worsened by stress, lack of empathy, and coercion.

Rather than diffusing crises, the police often escalate them - through shouting, force, or detention - thereby endangering vulnerable people and worsening their condition. This reflects not just a lack of training, but a systemic failure to adapt to the diverse needs of the people they claim to serve.

Anarcho-communists state that anybody with the right to use force will oppress. They reject all hierarchies and deny any need for a state arm to keep order. They back community patrols run by volunteers who know the street, and mutual aid groups that meet each other’s needs. They call for restorative justice that meets harm with constructive dialogue, not guns, tasers, CS gas or a police officer with a pathological obsession with their own sense of power, and a slightly dodgy attitude.

Leon Trotsky, in his writings on permanent revolution, advocated for building bridges across oppressed groups to create a united front against capitalist exploitation. He recognised that solidarity between workers, peasants, and other marginalised groups was essential for overthrowing the existing social order. However, this vision must be critically adapted in today’s context. While Trotsky’s call for unity is still relevant, it is essential to reject top-down approaches to power, which often reproduce the very hierarchies they seek to dismantle.

The police, as an institution, function within a deeply entrenched top-down power structure, one that ultimately serves the interests of the capitalist class and the state. The solution isn’t about reforming the police or trying to make them more accountable from within, but about dismantling such institutions entirely.

True solidarity can only emerge when communities are given autonomy, when they are empowered to organise for their own safety, well-being, and liberation, without relying on hierarchical systems that uphold oppression. Instead of bridging gaps through coercive state power, we must forge connections based on mutual aid, shared resources, and grassroots organisations that seek to eliminate power imbalances from the ground up.

Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution called for the working class to seize state power to dismantle capitalist oppression. But Trotsky was also deeply critical of how the state could be used to consolidate new forms of authority, particularly under Stalin’s bureaucratic regime. His vision, therefore, was not about replicating the oppressive structures of the state but about transforming them. This demands a rejection of top-down, state-imposed solutions that enforce control and hierarchy.

Instead, we must advocate for a radical decentralisation of power, building autonomous, self-organised communities that resist the power of the state and the coercive institutions it sustains, like the police. Only by dismantling these structures and empowering communities from the ground up can we achieve the solidarity necessary for genuine liberation.

Under this model, we could drop armed patrols in city centres - and fund housing, health and schools instead, reducing poverty and training people in care and conflict de‑escalation. Meeting harm at its source; that's how we build bonds of trust and help. We replace fear with consent.

The police do not protect the proletariat. They enforce a system that lets the rich thrive. Their power is no accident but a tool of bourgeois oppression, power and rule. We can choose to end their reign. We can build a new form of society based on safety. One that heals, not hurts. One run by neighbours and community, not by badges or bullets. One based on trust, not coercion or domination.

Peace to the huts — challenge the system of palaces. No war but the struggle for justice. We fight not for flags, but for freedom. No masters, no slaves or subjects — only equal Comrades in revolution.