Have police lost control of the streets?

IT WOULD appear the police have lost control of our streets (Mail). We have lost 20,000 police officers since 2010 thanks to cutbacks. Odd that during the Royal Wedding and President Trump’s visit there were thousands of officers on the streets.

A. McGRATH, Wallingford, Oxon. I HAVeN’T seen a police officer on the beat in my area for 11 years. I met one who told me he can’t wait to retire. He says that the force is run by politicians’ puppets who come straight out of university, none of whom have come up through the ranks. It’s all about political correctness and health and safety.

J. RUSSELL, Wokingham, Berks.

THEY never had control. I was a police officer during Manchester’s Moss Side riots in 1981 and the same thing was being said back then. It is ordinary people who keep control. They stop at traffic lights and generally don’t steal, cause a breach of the peace or assault one another. The law is created not with a power to prevent it being broken, but to provide the means for prosecution when lawbreakers defy it. Bobbies on the beat didn’t work that well, while police on mountain bikes is a good option. Increasing their mobility and visibility, along with having just one or two beat bobbies, would boost public morale.

PAUL SELLERS, Abingdon, Oxon. THe main deterrent against crime is the certainty of arrest, conviction and punishment. The police are not helped by having fewer officers on the streets, but I place a heavy responsibility on courts to lock up the guilty. Why waste the police’s limited resources on catching the same criminals again and again? PHIL SOSKIN, Rickmansworth, Herts.

THE police only tick boxes to record a crime, not solve it. Unless it could be considered a hate crime, such as wolf-whistling.