There's a difference between dressing like a cop and dressing like a martial artist. Dressing like a cop is illegal, at least in the UK (obvious fancy dress excluded, obviously). Dressing like a martial artist isn't. There's also a difference between wearing clothes because one wants to (for whatever legal reason), and wearing them in order to deceive and commit fraud.
I've heard the same argument (and
much more aggressively) over the wearing of military (ex/style) clothing. Especially certain 'elite' issue patterns of camouflage. I'm not talking about wearing insignia, etc, just a combat smock or trousers. Some seem to think one must
earn the right to wear even that.
Frankly, I think that's utter rubbish. And I have 'earned the rights', several of them, even though I think it's a completely stupid thing to even say.
Edit to clarify: stupid outside of a context where the clothing does matter, for instance in a dojo, since outside is what we are discussing.If someone is daft enough to see a guy or girl wearing hakama, or karategi, or combats, and make any assumptions further than that one guy, they are being daft. Daft, I tell you.
Now, the person wearing it might also be daft, if they are wearing it somewhere that people are going to see them and form opinions. Or, in the case of a combat smock, shoot them. That's about as far as I personally would think of the person, if anything at all.
There are too many restrictions in life, because someone, somewhere, decided to make them. Most of them punish the vast majority for the crimes of the minority. It's a pet hate of mine, especially in the UK where that seems to be in our very culture.
At the end of the day we're talking about bits of cloth. Let people wear what they want. Who cares? (well, I don't, obviously).
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A relevant true story: I was once driving along a busy main road, when a car shot out of a side street right in front of me. I saw it coming (I'm advance trained) and was sounding my horn as he ignored it and cut me up and made me stop for it. As I pulled up behind him in the now-slowing traffic, I saw him glaring into his rear-view mirror and I gave a sort of shrug at him and shook my head. A dumb thing to do but I'm not perfect either.
He slammed the brakes on, stopped, and jumped out. He was wearing a full gi and 1st Dan black belt. He stalked up to my car carrying his wallet, and flashed a police warrant card from it at me, motioning me to wind down my window. Quite amused by now, I did so.
He blurted on for a minute. I sat in silence looking at him, wondering if that was all he would do. It was. Then he stomped off, not having got a rise out of me that would give him the excuse he was clearly looking for, and drove off. I guess he had had a really bad day!
What did I think of him, after all that? Well, about him personally, I'll let you guess, but it's not complimentary
About his karate school? Nothing at all. I recognized the school (I went to a better* one) but a school can't control its students outside.
About the police? Nothing worse or better than I already thought. People are what they are, whoever they work for.
If anything, I had to try not to laugh during his monologue, at the blustering idiot who clearly thought he could intimidate me while wearing his gi, rather than having the sense not to do something so stupid while wearing it.
*I can say better because we
always beat them in the open competitions.