Bobby's on the beat? or shut the barn door after the horse has bolted?

After hearing about 2 people my other half knows being mugged (robbed for the official term) in the local village, it frustrates and angers me. Partly because one is an OAP and the other was a recovering cancer patient - obviously picked on for the weak body language etc.

As a martial artist, and someone who has been involved in a fair share of scuffles and situations I know I am the least likely of persons to be 'chosen' because of my body language, but this doesn't help those less fortunate who may not have a choice but to go to the shop where the trouble makers hang out.

The current process to this is AFTER it has occured, it is reported, and the suspects are potentially found/arrested, potentially charged, but are then given lesser chargers because they are under 18.

I cannot help but think that if there was more of a Police presence then these would be far less likely to occur. I understand those causing the trouble have 'nothing to do' (which is bull because there is plenty to do) but they are less likely to get up to wrong doings if they are not expecting a Police presence to pop up at any time.

About 2 years ago they put Police in certain area's that there had been trouble, then followed by PCOS, but now the area's are reporting no assaults they stopped for the last 2 years as it was considered cleared up and safe. Unsuprisingly this is not the case, and people are being assaulted/robbed in the same location.

I will be writing to my local MP about this, but I know this happens elsewhere, so WTF do they not continue with this pro-active crime prevention until they have had a few unfortunate fall victim again? Am I going to be walking down the local shop in the evening to find a bunch of teenagers some openly armed with baseball/cricket bats like I did a few years ago?

 

New Labour has increased the number of Police Officers but increased the amount of work they have to do by a much greater proportion. Every police officer you see on the street is a police officer not doing paperwork, which is what they are paid to do.

PCSO's are a waste of money - the two female PCSO's we have in our area are known unaffectionately as Laurel and Hardy, because one is tall and skinny and the other short and fat. Quite what type of crime these two yellow jacketed peons are supposed to be preventing or detecting is a mystery to me.

 

New Labour (the Laborious Old Toads) love of bureacracy and time-wasting twaddle has no end in sight. They are not going to be in the hot seat much longer and we will almost certainly go back to the Tolley party.

Given the budgetary cuts that are frankly inevitable and the (time-factor*cost-of-changing-legislation+operational-procedures etc) to reduce all the pointless nonsense, I am not anticipating a) an increase in bobby presence or b) a peacefull stroll on UK streets.

 

If the amount of red tape was reduced, there would be more Police on the street with no extra cost. It should not take several hours to book a suspect into custody.

 

That's contracted out now. I think much of today's problems is there is so much petty crime choking the system. The reason they are not pounding the beat is they are dealing with a backlog of complaints and crime. Their diary's are full.

 

No disagrement on the principle hhj.

Its the reality of doing so legally and administratively that I dont see happening quickly. As far as I can determine a lot of Police concerns are to do with avoiding being sued by Criminals for mal-treatment during operational procedures - all this kind of khack is expensive with Lawyers, Training procedures etc.

Removing the red tape will require legislative changes which absorbs politicians time (and hence money) to make the changes as statute i.e. implemntable in law. Unfortunately this current guv has been in love with pointless legislatiion, procedures, red-tape and generally useless twaddle.

The next lot will be equally ineffective but in a different way - you are probaly too young (24?) to rember Mrs T's time in power - which will be chicken-feed in comparison to the economic and social costs we will all individually and colectivelly have to bear.

Subject of a new thread coming up on this and other associated topics later.

With regard to every day law and order, more should be done, but I jut cant see it being done some time quickly e.g. why we dont have armed police completly baffles me - everywhere else does (maybe not Ireland.)

 

The arresting officers still have to fill out a pile of paperwork in the name of 'accountability'.

They have become too target focussed and that is the fault of this government. The ways they measure success in the police is utterly ridiculous.

 

This 'Target' twaddle is bedevilling all of UK society and in particular anything to do with any aspect of the civil service e.g. the administrative and bureacratic nonsense of Teaching in schools.

As the public service budget will have to be cut - 10% being optimistically - 20% realistically, I fear we are stuck in a quagmire of bureacratic twaddle.

You can listen to the tripe of Gordo Gozon at the TUC conference yesterday , and believe his pious guff - or not. It will be exactly the same with the Tolley party i.e same circus, different clowns.

 

axel b posted

I actually couldnt agree with you more (Although i'm sure at least one person on here would be taling about big brother watching us) but its not as simple as that.
One cannot just put police officers on the street.

My training back in 2002 consisted on 15 weeks at police college, 3 weeks training at police headquarters and 10 weeks as a first stage probationary constable, before I could even deal with a crime unsupervised. thats 6 months training, which of course has an immense cost.

Next there is the cost of uniform, stab vests, handcuffs, radio, baton etc which is always getting damaged or lost.

On top of that you have cars, petrol, and behind the scenes staff such as police support which makes up about 3-4 times the number of police officers on the street.

So immediately you have a huge cost. So the idea of simply putting more poluce officers on the street is a very costly one and one that results in higher taxes.

We shan't even talk about the low wages that police officers get paid for their role.

Secondly there is what is called crime pattern analysis. Let me explain, one day i'm walking on foot patrol in a small village when a person approaches me and tells me about a crime. Then after dealing with that one another person comes and tells me about a crime and then another. In the space of about 2 hours i had recorded bout three crimes.

All of them remarked to me that they never saw a police officer in the village. I asked them the same question.

"Did you report this crime to the police"?

"Oh no" they said.

"Then how do you expect the police to know where the crimes are happening then" said I.

And this is a fact that many crimes go unreported. In fact only a week or so ago at about 11pm i heard some breaking of glass. the next morning I went out and found two broken windows in my street which were both shops. I went in and asked the owners if they had reported it to the police. They said they were not going to bother.

But you can bet that the next time their windows are broken they will be asking where the police were.

Finally statistics have shown that police officers very rarely see a crime happening. In fact in 4 years in I never did. Also the way to stop criminals is via the car. People always moan that they get stopped by the police but criminals use cars and if you stop a car you can often get the person for drugs, going equipped, burglary, dealing, offensive weapons, wanted by police, etc etc.

In fact targetting vehicles is one of the most effective ways of catching criminals, and I can tell you that from experience having both caught a bank robber and and ATM burglary ring just from stopping a vehicle it really works. Which is incidently exactly how the yorkshire ripper was caught.

Also it really peeves the criminal off when he loses his car because he has no tax, insurance etc. And criminals use pool cars so we get them off the street.

And lets not forget that if they become a banned driver as a result of a stop (Many criminals dont have any documents), the next time they may get caught for a burglary and get a suspended sentence but driving whilst disqualified almost always carries a prison sentence.

So if you cant get them off the streets one way with one bit of law, you can always use another bit of law.

Garth

 

It's just so bleak; Brown is leaking credibility at an absurd rate and the only realistic alternative we have is Blair 2.0.

 

Mr Cameron may have used the 'Blair 2.0' factor a while back to catch the public's attention. He will not be able to smile sweetly at the cameras and yack on about 'reform' etc - he will HAVE to deliver savage and painfull public sector cuts AND raise taxes significantly (which will be as popular as a bacon sandwich at a barmitzvah with the Torry/Tolley faithfulls.)

 

We should instigate a new tax that pays for new "three strikes and you're out" prisons.
This new tax will build the prisons and pay the wardens handsomely for having to deal with all the scum.

Basically anyone that commits three serious crimes is in nick forever and removed from the population (and we should probably tot up lesser crimes too and put them in for accruing 7 or something).

As I see it a minority of people are causing the majority of crimes.
Remove that minority and crime will decrease out of all proportion to the number of people removed.
Everyone gets the chance to commit crime, be punished and learn the error of their ways once or twice.
But if you keep doing it you are clearly a career criminal and/or not fit to be around nice people.

What baffles me most (and must annoy the cops no end) is when you watch these cop programmes and they are arresting the same people they arrested the year before. Usually for the same stuff. The cops know who the criminals are and steps shoud be taken to remove these people from our midst.

 

Who will pay the scumbag-tax? the sumbags cant pay for it - they dont have the money (their motivation diminishes to be scumbags once they have some dosh)- its us who will pay any new scumbag taxes.

Keeping scumbags in prison is not cheap. The repeat, no-hopers, clearly guilty of henious crimes :- execute them - what purpose to they serve society?

 

I'd gladly pay a little extra to keep the scum in check. A penny in every tenner I make or something.

And we can't kill them either...that's barbaric and unsuitable for a prgressive and evolved society.

 

It costs more to execute someone due to all the allowed appeals than it does to keep them in prison for the rest of their lives, IIRC.

Here in Canada, the problem is that there aren't enough cops, and that punishment is not "swift and sure".

At least in Calgary, the number of beat cops has been drastically increased, with a predictable decrease in crime in the affected areas as a result. The previous police chief's "hug a thug" policy has finally been tossed into the dustbin where it belongs. Now you'll find that of course crime migrates to less patrolled areas, but if you have enough VISIBLE cops things generally improve. What's also needed is judicial reform so that crooks are punished swiftly and surely.

Best regards,

-Mark

 

Fair point Mark.

I still dont know how we will pay for the management of the sumbags. Maybe dump them onto an island and put a wall up around it? Kind of drastic.

 

Normal prisons will be fine. Just build enough to house maybe 10,000 scum?
Remove the 10,000 worst crims in Britain and you'd decrease crime by maybe 50%*?

Other governemnt agencies should join a big database as the people that commit crime are also getting benefits, assaulting NHS staff, abusing their animals and having chip pan fires.

* All statistics are made up but they convey my point. Remove the bad apples and the hole barrel will benefit.

 

Bring back corporal punishment, common sense, bobbies on the beat and clips round the ear. Maybe proper bedtimes for kids, education. That'll do for day #1.

 

Dont forget national service