Our police force needs to get back to first principles
IKNEW a police sergeant who used to deliver a homily to every new probationer who passed through his station on the absolute need to “know your enemy”. doubt very much if his friendly but deadly serious message about getting to know the active criminals in the local area would be welcomed or even tolerated now.
There is a safety first, boxticking element that has crept into modern policing which is a far cry from a culture when being regarded as a “good thief taker” was the highest compliment an officer could receive from his or her peers.
Law enforcement means just that – officers are there to enforce the law and the police service is not some quasi social work organisation that is either equipped or designed to deal with all of society’s ills.
So when people complain that the police have lost control of the streets it is a rallying call for the boys and girls in blue to return to the principles of their founding fathers and go back to doing what they were established to do nearly 200 years ago – to protect life and property. No fewer than 97 per cent of police themselves say there is a need for more bobbies on the beat.
There is nothing new about the rise in violent crime, stabbings, shootings, street robberies and random violence that has prompted the recent headlines about lawless Britain.
THE police service has always been engaged in a war to stay one step ahead of criminality and criminals have always been adept at finding new methods and new types of offending in order to evade detection and arrest. Every era sets a new challenge for the “thin blue line” and the police service will always complain that it is under-resourced, needs more powers or is being swamped by bureaucracy.
Policing is a finite resource and there will always be shifting priorities, some of them politically imposed. But the public are becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that more officers are being deployed to investigate the growth industry in hate crimes and the long list of inquiries into historical abuse offences.
They would rather see the police rolling up their sleeves