The Battle of Orgreave, the Rotherham Sex Scandal and the Hillsborough saga are three shocking cases that the 'higher ups' in the South Yorkshire Police Force have badly dealt with.
Are they simply unlucky in having these three incidents on their patch or is there something on a wider scale that is wrong with the South Yorkshire Police force?
Will The Sun ever publish the headline 'South Yorkshire Police: The Truth'?
Are there other police forces with such a bad record in this country that the wider public should be aware of?
I can't recall Greater Manchester Police having such bad light thrown on it.
Interesting that you mention Greater Manchester Police (as not having such a bad light), but also the well documented abuse in Rotherham.
I don't know whether similar abuse in Rochdale was on a smaller scale(?), or it's just that Rotherham made national headlines first (?), but it seems that this kind of thing has been going on outside South Yorkshire too.
Orgreave? I'd treat that as a "national" issue - coppers from South Yorkshire were certainly in the minority (those on the side of the miners who were in attendance that day had significant numbers from outside SY too).
It was the setting for a Government v Miners battle that was always going to come to a head somewhere. From what's been released since, it seems that Thatcher's government wanted a flashpoint, encouraged one. Given the clear hand of Westminster, I think we'd have had the same brutality and cover-ups if it had been in the coalfields of County Durham or Fife or Glamorgan. That's not to exonerate South Yorkshire, just to give a little context.
Hillsborough? I think there are two aspects to it. The error of opening up the gates to allow people to rush through into the terraces and the subsequent coverup/ excuses/ "blaming the victims".
I certainly can't defend the first, but I think that a chunk of the blame for the second lies with local MP Irvine Patnick, who seemed to have been responsible for twisting the facts to suit a narrow political purpose.
In short, I don't know, but I think that a lot of the same mistakes/ coverups would have happened in other counties; I'm not convinced that South Yorkshire Police's actions after Hillsborough and Orgreave were done without at least some involvement of the government of the day though.
As for the "are the police getting worse" argument... they always seem to be, whenever people have this debate. As people grow up they realise that the police aren't always the infallible heroes that they grew up believing in and are affected by the same political interference that affects health/ education etc.
I'd like to take the political aspect out of policing, but what's the alternative? A police that isn't subject to democratic control?