Do people in the UK see the police as adversarial, like they do in the US? No. Ordinary police officers that you might meet day to day are mostly just decent p

Do people in the UK see the police as adversarial, like they do in the US? No. Ordinary police officers that you might meet day to day are mostly just decent people who want to be approachable and have good relations with their local communities. The collective organisations that represent those officers within senior management and to the wider government often defend these principles. Policing by consent remains the foundation of our system, at least for now. I fear this will change over time, though, not because of the generally decent people working on the front lines in policing, but because of the authoritarian measures pushed through by their government masters and the bias in how they are used, the perception that if something does go seriously wrong then the police involved will not be held accountable, and probably also some element of having a lot of US TV shows and films where we see a theatrical portrayal of a very different kind of relationship.