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Most of what people think they know about the police comes from television, and a fair bit of it is American. This book sets out what officers in the UK can actually make you do, on the doorstep, in the street, in the car and in the custody suite, and what they can't, with Scotland and Northern Ireland getting their own say wherever their rules part company with England's. It covers stop and search and what the figures do and don't prove, arrest and the right to silence, why your burglary probably won't be solved, the rules on force from batons to firearms, and the law of protest as Parliament has rewritten it since 2022.
It's also the history the police don't always tell: the inquest jury that found a constable's killing justifiable in 1833, the Peelian principles Peel never wrote, Orgreave, Hillsborough, the Birmingham Six and the remaking of the RUC, and the Couzens and Carrick cases that forced the bad-apples question. There's room too for Dixon of Dock Green, Line of Duty and Hot Fuzz, and for live facial recognition and the plans to merge forces. Appendices sum up your rights in each part of the UK and how to complain. The law is as it stood in October 2026.
Most of what people think they know about the police comes from television, and a fair bit of it is American. This book sets out what officers in the UK can actually make you do, on the doorstep, in the street, in the car and in the custody suite, and what they can't, with Scotland and Northern Ireland getting their own say wherever their rules part company with England's. It covers stop and search and what the figures do and don't prove, arrest and the right to silence, why your burglary probably won't be solved, the rules on force from batons to firearms, and the law of protest as Parliament has rewritten it since 2022.
It's also the history the police don't always tell: the inquest jury that found a constable's killing justifiable in 1833, the Peelian principles Peel never wrote, Orgreave, Hillsborough, the Birmingham Six and the remaking of the RUC, and the Couzens and Carrick cases that forced the bad-apples question. There's room too for Dixon of Dock Green, Line of Duty and Hot Fuzz, and for live facial recognition and the plans to merge forces. Appendices sum up your rights in each part of the UK and how to complain. The law is as it stood in October 2026.