Coppers need to get fit – and get tougher

APPARENTLY special constables are now going to be issued with Tasers. OMG! A lot of people I’ve met who are special constables really should not be given a Taser, but then a lot of professional police officers shouldn’t be allowed any kind of sharp instrument without adult supervision.

I’m being sarcastic but only slightly. Too many of our police are not fit for purpose and couldn’t catch a criminal if their lives depended on it. They are much happier going after those of us who might have parked in the wrong place, or having a quiet word with people demonstrating about the end of the world.

As I’ve said before, either on my TalkTV programme or in these pages, we need to scrap all the different constabularies based on counties and have just one UK police force, with one chief constable and one assistant chief constable. And that force should get on with catching criminals, not wasting its time investigating “non-crimes” and whether someone had a bit of birthday cake during lockdown two years ago.

And rather than pussyfooting around and giving people water when they have glued themselves to a road, they should be unglueing those people and taking them away.

The cops also need to be fit. I don’t want to see a dumpy little person running around in a highviz jacket expecting to be taken seriously as an upholder of the law.

I know this is pretty contentious stuff but our police force – sorry, police service – seems to have been turned into an arm of the social services when what we need is a proper, efficient crime-fighting organisation.

Boris Johnson was right to tell his Cabinet to concentrate on “crime, crime, crime”. If we had a referendum on whether or not the judicial system is too soft, and if we had another one on capital punishment, I’m pretty sure most of you know the way they would go.

So let’s begin to try to make those who break the law really regret it.