What’s the point of the police if they’re scared of the dark?
WHAT would happen to an electricity company which failed to supply power? What would happen to a water company whose taps ran dry? What would happen to a phone company whose lines were dead?
They’d all go out of business and be replaced by better competitors. But what happens to a police force that fails to enforce the law? Nothing at all.
Last weekend the people of the pleasant Somerset market town of Frome were kept awake all night by the selfish thumping and yowling of an illegal rave party. Plenty of people called to complain, an estimated 400.
But they were wasting their time. The Avon and Somerset Police decided it would not be ‘safe and proportionate’ to do anything about it. Under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, the inconsiderate event was (rightly) illegal and the police had powers to shut it down.
But the paid guardians of the peace only managed to bring it to an end at 9.30 the following morning, by which time even the selfish morons taking part must have been sick of the racket they were making.
A police spokesman whined that they could have acted if they’d known in advance, but ‘if it has already started and there are a large number of people on the site, an assessment has to be made whether safe and proportionate action can be taken at that moment.
‘There were a large number of people in attendance and we needed to have the right number of resources in place to make sure they could leave without putting themselves or others at risk.’
Another spokesman snivelled later: ‘Our decision not to disrupt the rave earlier was based on a number of factors, not least of which was a concern that this was a very large, densely wooded area inside a former quarry with very uneven terrain, that was unknown to us.
‘There were more than 200 people at the rave, many of whom were intoxicated. It would not have been possible for officers to enter the site and seize the sound equipment in the darkness without serious risk of injury to those people at the rave and to police officers.
‘This decision was not based purely on health and safety grounds but also common sense – it was safer and more practical to enter the site during daylight.’
In other words, there were 200 people who were drunk, there were lots of trees, and it was dark. Someone might have got hurt. I am sorry, but my response to this is ‘diddums’.
Consider the grim-jawed face which the police now turn towards us, the public. They stand around scowling with sub-machine guns, stomp about in big boots, stab-vests and baseball caps, display their clubs, Tasers, pepper-sprays and handcuffs to let us know who’s boss, and generally act as if the high street is a warzone, on the rare occasions when they bother to visit it.
They love to dress up like Star Wars stormtroopers in body-armour and big helmets. They even have their own air force, which enjoys flying round in the small hours, blazing its searchlights into people’s gardens from 1,000ft.
But confronted with 200 boozed-up ravers in a West Country wood, they won’t face them in the dark.
We pay for this non-service. Avon and Somerset police’s annual budget for 2016/17 is £276,075,000. They employ 2,759 officers who cost us £146,383,000 in pay each year. They spend more than a million a year on their share of the ‘National Police Air Service’.
From July 2009 to May 17, 2016, they spent £51,000 on CS Spray (pepper spray) – that’s 5,180 canisters at £9.86 each. They also spent £31,000 on batons at £25 each, and another £1,249,000 on body armour.
BUT despite all this clobber they won’t go into the woods to enforce the law and keep the peace. I’m honestly not sure what they do do. They always say that if people like me, who criticise them, were in trouble, we’d call on them. But would they come when we did? Or might it be too dark?
They’ve all sworn an oath that they will ‘to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved’. Do they think they’ve kept it? And if they won’t fulfil their contract with us, why should we continue to pay billions for this unresponsive, arrogant bureaucracy which doesn’t need us, and expects the same in return? The country’s full of decent, dutiful ex-servicemen and women who have proved they don’t mind taking a few risks to serve their country.
Perhaps we should hire them instead.