From here:

A police leader has called for officers to sport their tattoos at work – claiming it could be an ‘icebreaker’ when dealing with the public.

All 43 police forces in England and Wales ban their officers from having rude, lewd, discriminatory, violent or intimidating tattoos that could cause offence to colleagues or the public. Even innocuous tattoos are expected to be covered from public view and body and facial piercings are banned.

But Ian Pointon, chairman of the Police Federation in Kent, has slammed the official rules, saying the Kent force needs to ‘get over’ its problem with tattoos and allow officers to show off their body art.

As Theodore Dalrymple has noted, tattoos are an emblem of the criminal class and those who enjoy exuding an aura of dangerous criminality without having to actually take the risk of committing a crime.

In fact, more than 95 percent of imprisoned white British criminals are tattooed. The statistical association between tattooing and criminality is very much stronger (with the exception of that between criminality and smoking) than that with any of the more conventionally investigated factors, such as broken homes, drug addiction, low intelligence, and poor educational attainment.

I’m sure a police officer exposing his tattoos will be a real icebreaker when mingling with criminals; but why don’t the police arrest them instead?

What next, police nipple rings?