Do we want PC Pcs?

HOW depressingly predictable that Matthew furlong, a highly qualified young man from a police family, was turned down for a job with Cheshire Police because of an action plan to recruit more officers from perceived minority backgrounds.

Over the past 20 years, senior ranks of police forces across the country have become populated by dogooders with a mission to change their perception of a mostly white, male police culture.

Encouraged by the liberal establishment that appointed them, they have proclaimed that a police force can only be acceptable if it mirrors the gender, racial and sexuality profile of the population.

‘Positive action for a diverse’ police force is shorthand for discrimination against white male candidates.

Why has this soppy, misguided and divisive idea that the police must reflect every minority taken hold? The police require intelligent, energetic, honest, courageous and determined officers to do their job.

A Royal Commission on the police is needed to take evidence from the backbone of society — ordinary, hard-working taxpayers — not single interest pressure groups zealously promoting their own agenda.

It is time to decide if the police service is to be a force for the protection of life, the prevention of crime and the preservation of order or a laboratory for social experiment.

As a proud former senior officer with more than 30 years’ service, who despairs at the direction in which the police is being taken, I know which option the public would choose.

FRED McMANUS, Paisley, Renfrewshire.