Golden age of bobbies is gone for good
I READ Peter Hitchens’s disparaging views on the police service in general and the Metropolitan Police in particular (Mail) with interest.
It would be grand if we could go back to those halcyon days when every town had its own police station and every village its own bobby, when you could see smartly dressed officers patrolling the streets and interacting with the public, giving them a feeling of respect and protection.
I disagree strongly with Mr Hitchens’s proposal to effectively defund the present police service and start again from scratch, though.
This country is now a far more dangerous and nasty place in which to live. Criminals no longer fear the police and the law, whose authority has been complained away by vociferous minorities and the watering-down of sentences for convicted offenders by political tinkering: amendments to the criminal justice acts and the hamstrings of the Human Rights Act. Back in the day, most crime was committed by unsophisticated local criminals who had no access to modern methods of communication. Police officers didn’t have mobile phones thrust under their noses, filming their every action or response, ready for a complaint that the Independent Office for Police Conduct could seize upon. And Mr Hitchens also failed to factor in the vast increase in population fuelled by uncontrolled
immigration, and the diversity that accompanied it, with no commensurate increase in police numbers.
He is ‘tilting at windmills’ if he believes we could return to the days of Dixon Of Dock Green and a population that mainly respected the police and the law by starting from scratch.
The police service recruits from the society it polices. If there is to be change, then it should come from the legislators and judiciary.