It's late at night, and one of the only things on right now is one of those daft police shows that follows the police around.

God knows why they put these shows out. Presumably, the police want to improve their image. These shows merely encourage stereotypes about policemen and draw hatred towards the profession.

Even in a single episode, there are numerous examples of things that have become pet-peeves of mine thanks to these shows.

- Policemen assuming everything that's consumable is either a drug or contains drugs. Not every cigarette is a spliff and not every piece of white powder is LSD or Cocaine.
- Upholding laws that they themselves don't agree with. You may disagree with me on this, but there was a policeman who, in his commentary towards the camera, mentioned "what's wrong with pot? It's illegal, thats what" ... and WHY is it illegal? This reasoning is the same as saying "It's marmite that makes this cake taste good - and because this cake tastes good, the marmite in it must be what's making it taste good"
- The crappy, ignorant, egotistical jokes that come out of their mouths. Seriously. They're not funny, they just make you come of as a prat.
- A policeman took an ornamental sword hanging on a wall in someone's house (who turned out to be completely innocent) claiming "I see no reason for him to have this" and took it. That's not justice, that's theft - flat out theft, unless owning anything ornamental has recently become a crime without my knowledge.
- They put on the most annoying voices just to sound good on the camera - turns out just making them sound even more egotistical. Seriously, the phrase "Lack of evidence" for instance does NOT need more emphasis on it than the harry potter books had on magic.
- Pulling over cars based purely on "I have a feeling there's something dodgy about that car"
- Treating victims like criminals and, occasionally, treating criminals like victims. Oh how this reminds me of the time I was fined £40 for being attacked by a few insane neds that -did- have criminal records for doing the exact same thing.

I guess the point of this is that we should be allowed to vote in our police officers like we vote in our politicians. Then maybe the police will be less despised and more admired or respected.

And we should never allow policemen near TV cameras.