Another police failure - another dead dad

A father of two was kicked to death despite six 999 calls to the police.

James Straiton, 59, and his neighbours dialled 999 six times while the gang were threatening to smash their way into his flat.

But operators said the force was experiencing a ‘high volume’ of calls and suggested they call a non-emergency number.

Of course there is a high volume of calls - the police have retreated from the streets and the criminals moved in. Perhaps if they got some coppers back out there they wouldn't get so many calls!

The police seem to forget that their reason for being is to prevent crime and disorder - not merely to respond to it or to concentrate purely on crime. Disorder is the catalyst that leads to crime occurring and that should be as high a priority as anything.

But what do the police call a high volume of calls?

Superintendant Graeme Sims of Cheshire Police today said: 'At the time of this tragic incident we were dealing with 21 different incidents - more than twice the average we normally get at that time on a Saturday night."

So across the whole of Cheshire the Cheshire police force (or whatever they call themselves) can't handle more than 21 incidents at any one time? Don't they have 22 policemen? Or even 44 if they send two to each incident?

I know it's not that simple - most of the police are tied up dealing with drunks in the high streets - but it should be. The way to deal with the drunks is to close down the places where they got drunk and we've all seen those programmes on TV where the police adopt a softly softly approach to a foul mouthed, lagered up thug until they end up needing ten of them to get him in the back of the van while 20 more coppers deal with his six mates who are effing and blinding at them.

Next day it's a £20 fine, a "mind how you go" and it's business as usual at the stand up drinking warehouse that calls itself a "pub".

I'm sick to death of reading about these sorts of incidents and the continual failure of the police and criminal justice system to deal with them. They seem to have officers to spare to deal with "hate" crimes when some TV presenter says something that might be ever so slightly non-PC, but they can't be arsed to come out to protect the public they are actually there to protect.

I know the average copper is as sick of the situation as I am - and I know that as long as we have a police command structure which is dominated by leftist liberal graduate fast-tracked high-fliers nothing will change.

Peelian principles backed by a solid police command structure based on those principles will restore our society - as it did when Peel introduced them to counter the crime and disorder of those times.