Thursday 26 April 2007

We are the angry mob...

In recent weeks I've read stories in the papers about various miscreants.

There've been tales of rampaging youths on rooftops vandalising property and causing criminal damage whilst being fed McDonalds by police officers too scared to act in case human rights are infringed.

I've seen articles about ordinary citizens being arrested for standing up to yobs and being advised not to confront them for their own safety.

I've read about the BNP starting off their own patrols in Wiltshire as a response to local people's concerns at the lack of police presence

All of this is depressingly familiar to most of you I'm sure and a damning indictment of the way this country has gone downhill in the last ten years. However, the opinion piece I've just read in a national newspaper has rankled with me enough to post this response (because of course all of the main politicians and newspaper editors read my blog! Ha).

The article states that 'a police officer is attacked every 20 minutes in Britain' and quotes the home office as saying that 'Assaults on those serving the public will not be tolerated'.

Now having read that, please imagine the following scenarios :-

Q. you're one of a pair of coppers (they go nowhere on their own) walking through a housing estate at night and a group of youths start rampaging down the street you're in, smashing car wing mirrors off, screaming and shouting and threatening violence to all and sundry.

What do you do?

A. You radio for back up obviously and have a tense couple of minutes standing off the said youths with your array of weaponry (Baton, CS Gas, Tazer etc.) your mates arrive promptly and you're a hero.

Now let's have that scenario again but this time you're not a pair of coppers, you're a couple of mates coming back from the pub. This time you're attacked as you remonstrate with the scrotes but manage to hold them off with some hastily acquired fence posts.

So do you think there'll be separate outcomes to those two scenes or will the bad guys get their comeuppance no matter what? Errm...I think we all know the answer to that one.

If the police aren't busy on an outreach course for young offenders or nicking people for blatantly putting their bins out on the wrong day then they may turn up, if they do you'll be arrested for assault on the poor kiddies and criminal damage to the fence. Once you go to court you'll end up paying compensation to the lads who were just about to use your head as a football and get some kind of community punishment (the only upside to this being that if you don't turn up no one will care anyway and nothing will happen).

If the police want public support then surely it works both ways, they have to start protecting the public again as they used to without just paying lip service to it and trying to hit targets. Otherwise I'm afraid that we'll all turn into passers by whenever an officer is being assaulted not wanting to get involved for fear of arrest ourselves.

One final thought - wouldn't it be nice if the original home office quote had been 'Assaults on the public will not be tolerated' ...after all we pay their wages.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a very friendly copper round my way called PC Gatso, he never gets involved in any aggro, just takes photos of my car and charges me 60 quid for it.

Anonymous said...

If you knew the actual number of officers protecting a 35 mile radius as you sleep...you wouldn't sleep at all.
If you knew the guys protecting you could converse fluently in Urdu and had a degree in pre Hellenic earthenware, but were totally opposed to physical manhandling of suspects of crime you would sit up all night with a baseball bat and a steady supply
of Nitall.....guess what?

I stay in and do paperwork, and I'm not allowed to officially comment.

Anonymous said...

As your not answering your email.
BBQ tomorrow. hardened drinkers only as I expect it to be a late one!! Late afternoon - Early hours.???

Excuse here please............
..............................
..............................Shad

Rivs said...

Tel, try driving slower or do what I do and use your little brothers name!

Anon No.1 - nothing about the police force in this country would surprise me any more. However, having read through my original post again I must just point out that I think the cretins in whitehall are mainly to blame for the breakdown of law and order in this country.

Anon No.2 (ie Shad) I haven't been to work today hence the email thing and also the stack of comments for me to moderate. I would love to come to your BBQ but I'm meant to be going out with Big Al so I'll have to check with him what the plan is.n

I'll let yer knar charva!

Anonymous said...

It's the government and their human rights bill that's to blame for the state of this country. I'm sure i read somewhere that in Italy, once you break the law you are no longer protected by the law. This would solve a lot of our troubles, with bigger jails and tougher judges solving the rest.