Drone farce erodes our faith in the police

WHAT a farce over the Gatwick drones. The police arrested a couple and held them for 36 hours when all along the suspect had a cast-iron alibi – he was working as a gutterer.

A simple phone call to his employer would have established this. It took the police a long time to do this. Why was this person arrested in the first place? Where was the professionalism from the police?

It is incidents like this that make the public lose faith with the police. And it shows that it is not enough just to throw more money at the police – they need to be much better organised.

It beggars belief that local officers could not bother to check a person’s account.

Understandably, the suspects are very aggrieved and say they feel “violated”. No wonder. This is not to say that the Avon and Somerset police would act like this, but it makes you wonder if things are going on, or have gone on, where other innocent people have been wrongly accused of offences when in fact they are completely innocent.

All of this corrodes public faith in the police. Police officers need to exercise sound judgment and common sense, or the public will rapidly lose faith. Chris Watson

Bristol