Only tougher penalties will stop criminals
More than 50 people have died as a result of violent crime in London this year and we are given the same old empty rhetoric from those in power – more support is needed, put a stop to gang culture… and so it goes on.
Can’t any one of these supposed intellectuals see what is staring them in the face? The real reason that there is so much violence comes down to the fact that no one is afraid of being caught because the penalties for such crimes do not act as a deterrent. What is the point of having laws if the penalties for transgressing them are so pathetic that no one has any respect for law and order?
We older people were brought up to know right from wrong and to respect other people. I am now nearly 76 years old and I was a police officer in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. I didn’t need a degree to do my job, just excellent training and supervisory officers who earned their stripes through honest endeavour.
We need harsh penalties if we are ever to feel safe on our own streets again. Frank Risby, Faringdon, Oxfordshire The police say they are too stretched to deal with street crime – but they are not too stretched to arrest and hold a pensioner for protecting his property and his wife from a burglar. Stephen Birds, Bury Proactive policing has been replaced by reactive policing. With Theresa May and Amber Rudd running this law-and-order shambles, be prepared for the natural progression to inactive policing. It’s a fiasco of massive proportions, and every household in the UK is now at risk.
We are going to end up with curfews and the Army forced on to our streets to maintain order.
Sounds far-fetched? I don’t believe so. Peter Bryant, Ramsgate Given that reintroducing foot patrols would be an almost certain way to win votes, it is odd that no party has promised to do it. Keeley-Jasmine Cavendish, London I have been shocked and saddened to see and hear that our great city of London has become like the Bronx in New York. I think it’s down to the collapse of community policing, with Government cuts to our boys in blue.
I hope Theresa May will see the light about the effect that savage cuts are having. David Courtney, Weston-super-Mare The Prime Minister’s extension of stop-and-search, which you reported last week, is all very well, but what she has to do now is get police back on the beat.
R. Hurley, Exeter The police do a brilliant job with ever-limited resources. I would like to see all those who moan about the police try defusing fights between drunks on Friday nights, telling people that loved ones have died and, every day, putting their lives on the line for the public. J. McLean, Manchester