A former policeman has published a book to help people who come into contact with the police.
Edward Hope says the book, There’s No Justice, Just us: Understanding the Police and Knowing Your Rights, is a dummy’s guide on how to deal with the police and understanding their role in society.
After a career in the military, Edward, from Richmond, spent around 18 years as a police officer in Northumbria and Cumbria Constabularies.
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The author said the reasons for writing this book were twofold.
“Firstly, I wanted to try and realign the public’s perception on policing.
“There is a lot of confusion and contempt out there and a lot of it is unwarranted.
“In particular I’ve attempted to describe the incredible difficult job it is to be a 21st century cop during austerity and that the vast majority of police officers are decent, hard working, professionals, trying to do their best.”
Edward said the second reason was to highlight a warning when dealing with the police.
He added: “There is a deep rooted subculture that isn’t going away anytime soon.
“Infringing on the public’s civil rights have been common place and normalised over the decades.
“It leads to officers flexing powers they don’t have and getting away with it because the public are largely ignorant to what’s happening.
“My book is a kind of dummy’s guide on how to deal with the police and understanding their role.
“It also attempts to help the reader protect their civil rights. It’s something I feel very passionately about and in some small way I hope it drives up policing standards.”
Most of Edward’s career was spent in front-line uniform policing.
He received a Chief Constable’s commendation for bravery when he and a colleague tackled and arrested an armed robber who had just committed a robbery in a local store.
In 2005, he was also nominated as Cumbria Constabulary’s Community Officer of the Year and in 2012 was commended by Cumbria’s senior crown court judge for his investigative skills after the successful conviction of men involved in a sex attack.
For this he received another Chief Constable’s Commendation.
Edward said his career became untenable when he challenged some of the subculture practices described in this book.
Setting out to whistle blow, he managed to capture evidence of lying when he surreptitiously tape recorded a meeting and then took the evidence to his professional standards department.
But he said that rather than holding those involved to account as he expected, he faced a wall of resistance, nepotism and cover ups that led to disciplinary action against himself.
