As for that event i do not know i am quite inactive at the moment. Although this police force idea i have no idea where it has managed to take hold.
Yes we do scans in tau space for a good reason. It weaken's enemy economy, it is that simple. From my idea of RP this seems quite reasonable. The thing people don't like is that it isn't strictly OUR space. True there are a large number of groups with presence in the tau systems. However same can be said for any system in the game. Even house systems have a large amount of different NPC's in thier systems.
Put it this way if the CR tried to trade through Alpha or systems close to it we would expect to be pirated as a lotta people around there might not have a good view of us. They would want to weaken us. Which is fair enough. They would do this by either blowing our ship to hell. Or forcing us to drop cargo. Possibly with a financial levy.
What we do in tau space at last look is similar to this. It is just that we can do the same thing in a more organised fashion. This may give us a look of a police force from some peoples point of view. But we only stop a group of goods which we can be very sure is enroute to the Outcast forces. Simply hoping that they will run out of funds to operate thier fleets, by targeting thier main income source cardamine. Which just happens to be a highly addictive substance. It would not matter to us if it was H-Fuel from this standpoint. We would still want to cripple our enemy (Although of course we couldn't attack due to rules). As In-RP we have a lot less vessels then them we are using guirilla style warfare (I am Including all player ships + NPC's. As they would all be the same in such an arguement. If you think of it this way CR is outnumbered by Outcast shipping). Taking out thier supplies.
So to finish Police force no... Colonial Military attacking in a considered manner yes.
