Further context for those who may not be aware: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/30/sarah-everar...

Yes, that the hn headline does not have 'officer' in quotes (as the linked headline does) is quite misleading and a violation of hn guidelines. Is there a way to page @dang :)

Sorry, wasn't trying to mislead. The full headline was 6 characters too long; I did my best to keep the intent of the original.

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But a Met police officer is still a Met police officer, even if they aren't acting in any kind of official capacity. This isn't a situation where someone impersonated an officer and killed the lady - a real police officer did it.

The article title has 'officer' in quotes but the HN title does not. That dramatically changes the meaning.

Yes, but the meaning in the HN title is obviously the correct one. The concern here is not about a fake officer. It is about a real one. Why do you think that the quotes are justified?

If someone is subsequently charged with fleeing, having a reasonable belief that someone was impersonating officers could be an easier defense than merely fearing danger, however founded those fears may be.

Does it? If someone approaches you as single person, and claims they are an officer. What are you supposed to do? Ask for credentials and if they don't provide it, then run?

There should be no plainclothes officers in duty.

An officer uniform should be easy to identify exactly to prevent confusion in cases like somebody being arrested in the middle of the street.

Detectives and other “senior” police officers in UK generally work in plain clothes. They aren’t generally on the beat shaking people down, but are otherwise regular police officers, can and will arrest you if need be. But then this is UK, citizen arrests are rare but also 100% legal in appropriate circumstances so it’s not a biggie here.

The law says, IIRC that plainclothes officers must show their ID, without even being asked for it, when approaching people.

So it’s not like they are secret spooks.

There are legitimate cases for officers to be working plain-clothed — crowd monitoring and investigators needing to keep a low profile for example.

Do you think a potentially improved tweak to baybal2's

>There should be no plainclothes officers on duty.

might be "there should be no plainclothes officers with regular police arrest powers"? I agree that there are certainly cases where it's valuable to have officers working undercover. I also think there is a strong argument though that while they are in plain clothes, they should also have more restricted "plain clothes powers" more like a regular civilian. They shouldn't be able to arrest anyone or demand special recognition as police, or at least to no greater extent then what any random citizen can do in a Citizen's Arrest [0]. That could tamper a certain amount of abuse and room for mixups while still preserving the valuable investigative and monitoring aspects. Basically if they want to surrender some of the typical recognition and accountability they must also surrender some of the power that goes with it, so it's more self-regulating. Feels like a parallel with other areas of force like military, where in general legitimate combatants justified in full protection of the laws of war also must have identifiable uniforms and so on.

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0: Rules vary by state and country. In the US at least in general (though not all states) citizens may do arrests, but there are much stricter requirements. They need to directly witness the crime, they do not have qualified immunity and aren't entitled to the same mistakes of fact when it comes to personal liability, and are much more limited in use of force.

No, I don’t think it would serve a useful purpose. The police arrest power in the UK is already quite limited and unlawful arrests are taken seriously.

I don’t think there is much to gain here.