Assistant Police Commissioner of New South Wales, Michael Corby, who heads the Education and Training Command, said he believed visible tattoos, particularly those above the neckline, were a blight on the Police Force and asks the question;
"Does the community want someone knocking on their door with a Mike Tyson tattoo on their face or neck?"
Hell no, Mr Corby, Sir. I don't want some tattooed oafs at my door...
I'd much rather some gentlemen carrying semi-automatic weapons, billy clubs, pepper sprays, electric torture devices and handcuffs knocking at my door in the dead of night because I'm kind of fucked up in the head like that, see?
Another interesting observation was made by Paul Carey, head of the Professional Standards Command who says;
"Other aspects of the policy deal with specific types of tattoos, including tribal tattoos which could be seen as 'culturally insensitive'...There are a lot of tattoos written in another language, and who knows what they say? So that's something we also need to address."
Oh my good Lord. They haven't really thought any of this through, have they? If they had then they would have realised quickly enough that not only will people fluent in a language a tattoo is inked in always know what that tattoo says, but also that there is a slight hypocrisy about promoting the Police as being all multicultural and sensitive like, whilst at the same time putting the opposite into legislation.
Back to the drawing board perhaps?
2 comments:
I'm sure this is to keep the bogans out of the police force but you're right about the cultural tatts and how they haven't thought things through. So if, say, they decide that actually cultural ones are okay after all how does that affect other open displays of culture or heritage. Specifically I'm wondering about the Maori guy who moved to Queensland cop, became a cop, and got it in the neck for joining in a haka in uniform last year. Maybe the Queensland Police will be smart enough not to do what NSW Police have done and avoid the problem altogether.
I was thinking along the same lines of keeping the bogans out of the force, AE, and I suspect "tribal tattoos that could be seen as culturally insensitive" may have more to do with the over-popular Southern Cross tats than any Maori-like ink.
But for Plod to ask 'who knows what tattoos written in another language mean?' is just fucking laughable. I mean, they only need ask one of the thousands of taxpayer funded interpreters we employ to deal with non-English speaking crims to help them answer that.
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