The Police
The latest report from the CIC highlights public disquiet on police performance in regard to anti-social behavior. He suggests police in many areas have withdrawn from the streets. Senior police officers have been quick to defend their record, pointing out the many and diverse nature of their duties ranging from terrism and organised crime to arguments between neighbours. The words resource and bureaucracy fly across the airwaves, mostly hand in hand with cuts.
The solution is relatively simple, yet beyond the imagination of most politicians. The deterioration in the relationship between the police and the public on the ground, which has been mirrored by a deterioration in public order, began in the eraly sixties when the police were taken off their bikes and their feet and put into Panda cars, as the little blue and white vehicles were known. From that day the police ceased to be of the community. They became strangers out of the loop, reacting and enforcing but not preventing and certainly not maintaining a high standard of public order so as to give life everywhere a civilised quality.
They had done this hitherto. This was what Sir Robert Peel, who invented them, wanted them to do and they did it well. He saw that law was one thing but order was another. Crime was sporadic whereas order was universal. Detectives, aided in serious cases by Scotland Yard, solved crime. The function of the police was to prevent it. Life has moved on, crime has grown into a mega commercial enterprise, terrorists plot unseen in the shadows, Parliament, binging on ever more legislation creating ever more crimes, ratchets up the complexity and volume of the demands placed upon the police.
The time has come to call a halt. A simple but revolutionary reform is required. We need three distinct police forces; a national police force for solving crime, a national traffic police, and a community police service for keeping oder in every street and location throughout the length and breadth of the land. This latter force would be organised by county as at present, but would be foot and bike bound and resident in the community in which it worked. When I was young I knew by sight every policeman in the town in which I worked and my own village policeman by name. There was no such thing as anti-social behaviour.
There has been too much science and too much reform. This is needed to solve crime and combat the crime syndicates and the terrorists. It is not needed to keep communities socially cohesive. That is a different skill needing a different style and approach. It has to be of not at.
Finally traffic. We all know how frustrating it is to have one’s shed broken into and one’s mower taken or ones car vandalised or graffiti squirted over the bus stand. The police award us a crime number, offer victim counselling and ignore us thereafter. Then comes a traffic accident. Not a slaughter but a bump. They come in minutes from all directions with sirens blaring to deafening levels. The road is shut, a ‘crime scene’ is declared and motorists are left to pick their way through unfamiliar routes. Well that must stop. The equivalent of the U.S Highway Patrol is needed as a quite separate force with different skills to keep our roads and motorways safe and to apprehend motoring offenders.
Nothing less will work. Moreover the present replication of a unique, complete, force infrastructure in every county for every element of policing is the most expensive way to deal with this. If cuts are in the offing, and they are, this is where to begin.