Our PC police are too afraid to do their jobs
I AM A FORMER police sergeant of 21 years’ service. I had more than 3,000 prisoners, a crime prisoner rate of 12 times the average, and a 76 per cent detection rate Although many of the problems faced by police forces today are due to reduced numbers and lack of funding, their relative ineffectiveness (compared with before 1984) is primarily of their own making, with the help of generous dollops of political interference. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act (known as PACE) 1984 and the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 changed the culture of policing from ‘crime control’ to ‘due process’ — an innovation which the old guard failed for a long time to get to grips with. ‘Due process’ means tighter controls; on interviews, arrests, length of custody, etc. No longer was it possible for detectives to throw a suspect into a cell and leave them languishing for a few days to ‘soften them up’. Tape recording (or at least contemporaneous recording of interviews) reduced the chances of false or coerced confessions. The days of arriving at court with your notes on the back of a fag packet were over. Professionalism was needed. It was a long time coming for some. I remember as late as 1991 a Detective Superintendent saying: ‘I suppose we’ll have to try to get to grips with PACE now,’ after a piece of evidence had been (rightly) ruled inadmissible. Because the Crime Prosecution Service was 40 per cent underfunded and abysmally organised from the start, its introduction was a disaster for the police. Cases that should have ended in guilty pleas were thrown out wholesale. After one case, the defendant even commiserated with me, saying: ‘My brief couldn’t believe it either.’ A senior judge’s comment sums it up: ‘The CPS is full of lawyers who are afraid to go to court.’ All of a sudden, criminals realised their chances of getting away with it had increased exponentially. The Old Guard of the police were a bit rough and ready, but they knew their craft with some ace thief-takers among them. The New Guard who now run the police service are a different kettle of fish. Police have to be so ethnically, politically, racially, and gender sensitively correct so you won’t upset anybody. Until police forces are led by others, it will only get worse. Those at the top set an example the rank and file follow: keep your head down, don’t take chances and, most importantly, don’t upset anyone. But if you are going to ever come close to being an effective cop, you will upset people. Not gratuitously, but as a necessary function of your office.