maximus otter
Recovering policeman
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2001
- Messages
- 13,980
...the more the police try to control things, the worse crime will get. It is a lose-lose situation.
However, my use of the word "sick" above was deliberate. By that I mean that I think those who commit crimes should not be treated as criminals. Instead I think they should be treated as if they are sick and shown a little more humanity i.e. not automatically banged up in prison where all sorts of abuses are perpetrated.
I would suggest that the police are allowed to spend more time walking the beat as they used to and with a more friendly face i.e. less intimidating.
My father and I spotted a policeman some distance away. The machine was making so much noise that we could not shout to attract his attention. My father gave a piercing whistle which the policeman did hear. And the look on his face when he approached was thunderous. That is the only word for it. With hardly a word to us, he managed to switch off the vehicle, and then he turned away and walked off. he didn't even thank us for being responsible citizens.
My sister had an experience with the police where she had found a wallet with some money in it and took it to a police station to hand it in. Again, instead of a "thank you", my sister said that she was treated with great suspicion and made to feel that she had stolen the wallet, rather than being honest and handing it in. She has said that she would never, now, do such a thing again given how unpleasant that experience was. So, the police do need to work on their behaviour and show a more friendly face to ordinary citizens.
In addition to walking the beat, I suggest that the government severely cut-back on the amount of beaurocracy police have to contend with - ...The amount of paperwork police have to contend with must leave them no time to do the really important stuff.
...the police seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on "cold cases". Perhaps police energies would be better spent on the contemporary, not the historical.
Finally, as to "grassing", I think there is a danger of looking at this from too simplistic a point of view. Living in a society where citizens are invited to grass on each other, where no one can trust anyone else, will lead, I suggest, to severe even worse mental health problems than there currently are. And, of course, mental health is a big issue right now and mental health is going from bad to worse. I suggest that perhaps a little undetected crime will be less damaging to people's minds, will be a smaller price to pay, than living in a state where neighbour informs on neighbour, child informs on parent, siblings inform on siblings, pupils inform on teachers, students inform on lecturers etc, etc.
Whew! Where to begin...
At least you and I agree on two things:
a) Bureaucracy and paperwork are the curse of the job, and;
b) It would be great to have the luxury of time and resources to have officers walking beats. (Even though beat walking is 99.9% reassurance, and is a very poor use of officers' time in terms of catching criminals. The statistic I saw published in one of our in-house magazines is that an officer could only expect to happen on a crime in progress on average once every seven years. My experience roughly confirms this).
You suggest that police intervention causes crime. I'd be fascinated to hear how you think that the police investigating murder, rape or burglary, for example, causes more murder, rape and burglary; also, what you think the alternative should be. (Not investigating murder, rape and burglary?)
You seem to think that imprisonment is a common, automatic response to crime. It isn't. As I've stated before, on average a criminal has been been through the court system nine times before he's finally sent to prison. Factor in the warnings, reprimands, cautions etc. he'll have received previously, it transpires that you have to work long and diligently in order to be sent to prison.
Treat all criminals as though they were sick, and not just dishonest or violent? In the same way that the NHS now regards obesity and drug addiction as "diseases", and not as I believe, lifestyle choices? We'll have to agree to differ on that one.
"...of course, mental health is a big issue right now and mental health is going from bad to worse." Again, I disagree. It's fashionable to "medicalise" all unconventional behaviour. In my opinion, this is just a way to allow criminals to get away with it: "I can't help beating people up: I have Oppositional Confrontational Disorder, and there isn't a pill for it on the NHS, so I'm the victim here!"
You present two anecdotes of alleged incivility; one first-hand, one second-hand. Out of the ~125,000 police officers in the UK, multiplied by the length of your lifetime, even if both anecdotes are 100% correct, I'd call that a pretty good performance. I would, however, like to hear the stories of the officers concerned... I know that if a member of the public tried to attract my attention by whistling at me, l would probably have ignored him completely until he learned some manners.
maximus otter