Boots on the ground

It's thirty years too late, but at last their is an acknowledgement from the police that their retreat from the streets has been disastrous for Britain. Or rather, there has been an acknowledgement from the man who inspects the police that this is the case - from what I've heard so far from the police themselves is the usual denial that there is a problem or, if there is, that it is their problem.

For me, this is one of the most frustrating things about the modern police force - not so much their inability to tackle the problems of crime and disorder or even the inability to recognise that the problems exist and are theirs to deal with. It is the constant denial that the problems of crime and disorder that we face as a society come as a result of deliberate decisions and policies made by the police themselves and their refusal to accept that those decisions and policies have failed - completely.

If the police were ready to admit their failings and the disastrous consequences of past policy decisions I could accept their current inability to deal with the problem of crime and, particularly, disorder. At least we would know they are, at last, getting serious about dealing with them. But they are not. They are still tied to the idea of the police being a primarily reactive force rather than a visible deterrent.

Part of the problem lies in the fact of creeping "newspeak" which infects modern Britain. Rather than calling disorder what it is - disorder - we label it now as "anti-social behaviour" and the police believe that anti-social behaviour is a problem for local councils, not the police. But they are wrong. Anti-social behaviour is just the pseudo-intellectual way of saying disorder but using more words - the common mark of modern jargon infested language - and the mission of the police is to PREVENT crime AND disorder.

Please note those words - "prevent" and "and". When Sir Robert Peel laid down his nine principles of policing these were the words he used to sum up the mission of the police force. They are not there to simply to detect or react to crime - although these are also important requirements - their main purpose is to prevent crime taking place and to bring order where disorder reigns.

This can not be done from the confines of a CCTV room or a tin box on wheels whizzing past at 30 miles per hour. CCTV can be fooled by a simple device known as a "hood" or a "hat" and everyone who has ever been either a passenger or a driver of car knows how hard it is to assess what is going on around them from a moving vehicle. No matter how hard you try to keep your eyes on the houses or the pavements your eyes are inevitably drawn back to looking straight out in front through the windscreen.

What is more, being inside a moving vehicle or a CCTV control room prevents police officers from having contact with the people they are supposed to be protecting and policing preventing them from making the connections which will reassure people and provide the intelligence that the police need. Attending monthly or even weekly meetings with the same bunch of community activists - many of whom have personal agendas and motivations - is not going to provide that connection.

The inspector of constabulary said that resolving this problem will require "boots on the ground" and that is the only way it can be solved - by proper police officers patrolling neighbourhoods on their feet by pounding a beat. It works. It is proven to work and it is the only way we will ever tackle the problems of crime and disorder that blight Britain today.

To the police - a reminder

The death of David Askew, hounded to death by gangs of youths, has brought out the police to tell us that they did "everything they could" to stop his tormentors. I believe that they believe they did - but I do not believe that they did.

The trouble is, the police have forgotten what they are there for. They think - or rather, the people who determine strategy think - that the job of the police is to report offences and, if possible, solve crimes. Although that is a part of what they do it is NOT the purpose of the police force. So, just to remind the police of what their job is, here - once again - is Sir Robert Peel's first principle.

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Did you notice that? In case you didn't let me write it again - this time with some emphasis.

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Get it now?

No. I don't think you did completely. So let me add a little more emphasis.

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Now you see it don't you? No - I can see that you still don't completely understand it so, one last time, here it is with some added emphasis.

The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

Now you get it - so what are you going to do about it? David Askew died because the police failed in their basic mission - to prevent crime and disorder. They might insist that they did everything they could - I know they did not because they failed to fulfil even the basic purpose for their existence.

Britain edging closer to a banana republic

The recent incident of a mother being followed home by an off-duty police officer who saw the mother chastise her children in a shop, a follow up visit by other on-duty officers to question the mother about the incident and the subsequent letter from the local council informing the mother that her brush with the law has now been recorded on council records where it will remain for the next fourteen years serves as a reminder of what a sorry state our police force is now in.

Just for a moment, try - if you can - and remember the police force how they used to be. For those of you under the age of fortyish, our police were once a tremendously well-respected organisation both at home and abroad. We used to take pride in our police force and how they were the "envy of the world". As a people we could rely on the police force to use common sense and discretion and to be on the side of the public at all times. Criminals feared the police and the public loved them for it.

Forty years of remorseless progressive liberalism later and the modern "police service" is a discredited and disliked organisation held in contempt by both criminals and the public alike. The police are ineffectual in dealing with criminal behaviour and, as a consequence of their own recognition that they are so ineffectual, the police take that out on the soft targets of the law-abiding public. The police despise the public and the public despise the police.

The sort of behaviour we now see from our police "services" is similar to that we once used to sneer at in banana republics which always seemed to be on the verge of revolution. We used to think "that could never happen here".

Well it could and it has.

The rise of fascism

As BNP leader Nick Griffin prepares to appear on BBC Question Time this evening I thought it would be appropriate to explore the phenomenal rise of fascism in Britain today.

And what better place to start than with the revelation that the Tory Party are to ban men from being candidates for election in certain constituencies. This was an arbitrary decision taken by a small elite of the Tory Party without consultation or vote by the ordinary members. How fascist is that? Fascism is alive and well and thriving in the Tory Party.

This is nothing new or unique to the Tory Party either. The former London mayor, Ken Livingstone, was prone to rejecting duly appointed personnel purely on the basis of their gender or their colour - those personnel being too white and too male for Red Ken to bear. Fascism is alive and well and thriving in London.

Meanwhile, the Labour deputy leader pledges to end "the nightmare of men only boards" suggesting that she will use the power of government to interfere in private industry purely to promote a specific gender group at the expense of the other gender group. Fascism is alive and well and thriving in the Labour Party.

It's not only in politics where we see fascism is thriving. Environmentalists are trying to close down power stations, thus depriving millions of essential energy at a time when they need it most, purely on the basis of their misguided beliefs. They have no mandate to do so - just their belief that they alone are right - and they have demonstrated that they are prepared to use violence and destruction to achieve their aims. The parallels with Nazi brown shirts are all too obvious. Fascism is alive and well and thriving in the environmental movement.

Then we have the police - once a respected and independent crime prevention organisation, but now nothing more than government enforcers. They arrest and imprison people purely on the basis that they hold views which the government object to or have said something which the government has decreed you are not allowed to say. How fascist is that? Fascism is alive and well and thriving in the police "service".

Fascism is alive and well and thriving every where you look in Britain today. The main political parties are as fascist as anything we have ever seen in this country come to power. And we worry about some minor party leader coming on to a TV programme once in a blue moon? The time to worry about fascism in this country is when the government of this country dictate who you can vote for and who you can listen to. Unfortunately, I don't think that time is far away now.

A lesson for us all

The mobile phone hacking scandal is getting a lot of coverage.

Let's just say that this should serve as a lesson to us all not to be as naive and gullible as this list of "celebrities" and politicians were.

If your average private investigator can hack into your mobile phone voicemail box, just consider how easy it would be for a professional.

On a wider note, if it is true that the police and CPS had evidence of this sort of thing going on, but saw fit to withhold the information from the Deputy PM of the time then just imagine what they are not telling you or I.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Above the law

I've been out most of the night enjoying some local hospitality so I missed the news, but apparently the BNP held a press conference outside the Houses of Parliament which was disrupted by a protest from a group calling itself "Unite Against Fascism" (obviously, they don't do irony).

What amazes me is that this group were apparently waving placards and chanting - which is fair enough as that is what protesters do - but I thought there was a law prohibiting protests within a certain radius of parliament?

As anyone knows, the Houses of Parliament is protected by a number of armed, uniformed police officers as well as a fair few of plain clothes milling about. It should not have been possible for this group to get anywhere near the Houses of Parliament with their placards - and on having done so they should have been arrested immediately.

The fact that they did get to protest where they did and that nobody tried to stop them tells me an awful lot about that protest - i.e. it must have been condoned by somebody in authority who feels they have the power to usurp the law.

That is more scary than any BNP press conference.

This is England?

A man arrested because his MOT certificate was a dubious shade of green.

Mr Cook, a self-employed roofer, was informed that staff at the centre in Gosforth, Newcastle, believed his new MOT certificate to be fake because it was a lighter colour than the old one.

He was taken to a nearby police station where he had to give a DNA swab, was fingerprinted and photographed, then placed in a cell.

I can't believe that this sort of thing can happen in England - especially as I know that the DVLA can check almost instantly whether an MOT certificate is valid or not. They must be able to do that because I renew my tax disc by phone and that process includes them checking my insurance and MOT electronically.

So the staff at this centre must have known that Mr Cook had a valid MOT, but still chose to call the police over a questionable piece of evidence - and the police must also have known that the MOT was valid, but still decided to waste time and persecute this man on the basis of the most flimsy suspicion?

Next time someone tells you that if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to fear from the proliferation of intrusive databases, monitoring and surveillance by the state - think about this incident. A man arrested because they didn't like the colour of his paper.

For Christ's sake - this is England! We're not living in some satellite state of the USSR, but it's increasingly starting to feel that way. We're fast becoming a nation where we're constantly checking over our shoulders to see who is watching us - like the old East Germany where there was a state police snooper on every street corner, in every office and often in every family.

Why did the police have to arrest this man? Was that really necessary? A bit of common sense and a couple of phone calls would have sufficed to determine that the MOT was genuine, but I'm not convinced that they even had to go that far.

As soon as they arrived at the DVLA centre a quick word with the staff, a 30 second check on the computer - problem solved. Mr Cook gets his tax disc, the police get on with something more important and the DVLA staff don't get to look like complete dickheads in a national newspaper.

CCTV fails where police on the beat works

Home Office research has revealed that CCTV has little or no effect on deterring crime.

Cameras in town centres, housing estates and on public transport 'did not have a significant effect', a report concluded.

This won't come as a surprise to many of us who've thought this for years. One of the problems of CCTV is that criminals can use technology to circumvent it. This technology comes in the form of a cloth attachment to an upper garment known as a "hood". The hood covers the head and makes it very difficult for the CCTV to distinguish the features of a criminal. This device is often used in conjunction with another device known as a "baseball cap" which features a large peak further obscuring facial features.

It is believed that many of these devices are easily available to the criminal underworld through a system of outlets known as "shops" and can often change hands for as little as a pound or two.

Further research has revealed that even when a criminal commits a crime and is captured doing so by CCTV they can escape justice by employing a measure called "running away" completely fooling the police who arrive at the scene ten minutes later - after negotiating the heavy traffic, road works and traffic calming measures that surround town centres - expecting to find the criminal waiting patiently to explain their actions.

It's actually quite astounding that apparently sensible people can believe that a static device mounted 50 feet above the ground on a pole can replace a constable patrolling the streets on foot.

Ranting Stan's Sunday Drive: Wolseley 6/90

If you've ever watched an old British film from the fifties that featured a police car in some way, chances are that the elegant lines of the Wolseley 6/90 are familiar to you. Although not quick by today's standards, the six cylinder, 2.6 litre engine wafted the big Wolseley along briskly enough to make it a popular choice for thief takers up and down the country - and also provided a comfortable and typically English interior of wood and leather to make the experience just that little bit more dignified. With the clanging bell on the front and the absence (at this time) of the flashing blue light mounted on top of the roof, the big Wolseley marks a discreet contrast to the lurid flashiness of the modern police car and seems to epitomise a time when the police were more concerned about doing a job effectively rather than being seen to do the job.

Of course, the 6/90 wasn't just popular with police forces. The graceful styling, spacious interior and effortless performance made the car a popular choice for the aspirational middle classes who wanted something a little more distinctive from the average Austin/Morris fare, but couldn't quite stretch to the likes of Jaguar.

By the way, I know it's not Sunday but I rarely find the time to post at the weekend now and I really want to keep this series going (even though I can't get the bloody posts to format properly with photographs!)

What the police have forgotten

The head of the IPCC (no, not the UN one - the other one) has serious concerns about policing. Join the club, mate - you and about 50 million others.

He also said police needed to remember that they were "servants, not masters" of the people.

Here's a simple guide for the police to remind them of their purpose.


1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

Hmmm. Seems simple enough - I wonder why nobody thought of it before? Oh yeah - they did, but the modern police think they know better than some ancient old Tory duffer.

Now what?

So Damian Green has been cleared of charges following the very high profile invasion of his office in the House of Commons by police acting on a tip off from the Labour Party.

Not only that, but the "mole" behind the leaks has also had charges dropped.

There are some very serious questions to be asked and answered by the pathetic Home Secretary and her boss. They may not have broken any laws, but they have certainly breached a code of practice and this calls into question many aspects of Parliament and the impartiality of the police.

Surely Jacqui Smith cannot be allowed to remain in her position?

Who knows. In times gone by an MP as inept as Ms Smith would never have attained one of the most senior posts in government - and even if they had done, they would have done the honourable thing and resigned a long time ago.

Things have got to change.

Useless police

It seems the two young child thugs who nearly killed a pair of children in Yorkshire had form and were well known to the police.

Police are looking into reports of at least five other incidents involving two similar aged boys in the Edlington area of Doncaster in recent weeks, The Daily Telegraph understands.

Worse still, the week previously they had attacked another child in similar circumstances - but escaped punishment by simply not bothering to turn up for an interview with the police!

Callam Reynolds feared he was “going to die” after he was lured to the same spot where the boys were left for dead a week later.

He was punched, kicked and stamped on by two youngsters who allegedly told him exactly how they would kill him. But when detectives were due to question two brothers over the beating the pair failed to show.

Failed to show? So a child gets attacked, beaten and threatened with murder and the police response is to invite the perps round for a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive? Still, the police know all about failing to show - something they are pretty good at themselves.

I'm afraid the situation with the police is worse than we thought. They are useless. It's only through sheer luck that we're not talking about two deaths rather than just an assault - the trouble is, for far too many people, their luck runs out.

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.

Theft by finding?

Over the years as an adult I have found a range of things which I've handed in at police stations - they include wallets, purses and even cars (OK, I didn't "hand" the cars in, but I informed the police and they informed the insurance company). Never - not once - have I been arrested for "theft by finding" - nor would I expect to be.

A college student who found a mobile phone while out celebrating his 18th birthday was arrested after handing it in to police.

Teenager Paul Leicester was arrested for 'theft by finding' and detained for four hours.

What on earth are the police up to these days? Have they completely lost the plot? Who, having heard about this, is going to take something they have found to the police station?

And the police wonder why the public are losing faith in them!

The shaming of the police

JuliaM on Ambush Predator reminds me of the story of the family left to burn to death while police prevented would-be rescuers from trying to help.

As I was travelling between clients yesterday I heard a lot of comments from so-called "experts" on the Jeremy Vine show claiming that the police were acting correctly by stopping people from going in to help as "untrained" people have no idea what they are getting into and could have ended up dead themselves.

This is a very stupid thing to say as very few of us are aware of what we are getting into when faced with a life-threatening situation. The thing is, those people who the police were stopping were adults capable of making their own decisions - and like any decent minded adult they were not prepared to stand by when children's lives were at stake.

Personally, I consider that those people were prepared to risk their own lives to try and save those kids something to be proud of - they can all hold their heads up high - but I find the behaviour of the police utterly reprehensible. Once upon a time the police would have been the first ones in there leading the rescue attempt - now they are prepared to sit and watch children burn to death. Worse still, they'll stop anyone else trying to save them!

As a father and an adult I believe it is the responsibility of EVERY adult to put themselves in harms way when the lives of children are at stake. To sit by and do nothing while children die in front of you is disgraceful and the police today should be hanging their heads in shame.

The thin hi-vis yellow line

The Telegraph wonders whether single beat patrols as re-introduced by the new Met chief is going to be enough to win back public support.

It is rare to see a bobby patrolling alone, yet it used to be unusual to see them on the beat together. It is heartening, then, to learn that London's new police chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, intends to require his officers to patrol as singletons except when it would be patently dangerous to do so. This would double police visibility and make officers more likely to communicate with members of the public instead of with each other.

To be honest, around my way it is rare to see a bobby who isn't in a patrol car. In the last fortnight I can only recall seeing one policewoman not in a car - and she was in a garage buying sweets while her colleague waited on the forecourt in a large Volvo estate with the engine running. We have PCSOs of course and they patrol in pairs as they swoop on the evil wrongdoers of Slough who dare to park adjacent to the cash point for two minutes.

The Telegraph also refers to something I feel strongly about.

There will be arguments, especially from the Police Federation, that the job is more dangerous than it once was; and in some inner-city estates this may well be true, though that owes much to the loss of authority that has come with changes to the way the police act and dress.

The way the police act and dress is vitally important. First off, the way they act towards the general public is often, at best patronising and at worst down right rude and aggressive. But the way they dress is my biggest issue. The purpose of the uniform was to establish authority without appearing threatening to the general public and the reason the police used to wear those strange pointy helmets was to make them visible. It worked - you could spot a policeman in a crowd a mile off and when you met him up close he came across as a reassuring authority figure.

Now they stroll around in peaked caps and wearing luminous hi-vis jerkins which give them all the authority of a motorway maintenance worker. Add on the stab vest and the jumble of equipment hanging around their waist and the first thing that strikes you when you come across a modern policeman is that they are all set for a spot of violence. If the police go around always looking as if they expect violence to erupt at any moment is it any wonder that the general public have a raised fear of crime?

Getting the police back on the streets, getting them back in proper uniforms and behaving properly towards the average citizen would all be good moves, but the single most important thing they could do is reacquaint themselves with the 9 principles of policing as laid down by Peel. They are as relevant today as they have always been.

Cuts to the police reveals the leftist mentality

What public services do you use? No, roads and streetlights don't count - they are public utilities, not services. You don't "use" the guys who mend the road, the council does.

I mean what public services do you directly use?

I reckon I'm like most people and all I really use to any regular sort of degree are the bin men, schools for my kids, our local GP and the Royal Mail. I've never had any need to use countless hundreds of other services that the government provide - drug counsellors, five-a-day co-ordinators, youth offending outreach workers and so on. I've also been quite fortunate to never have needed to use the Labour Exchange - or whatever it's called now - but I suspect over the coming months and years millions of Britons will find out what that is like for the first time.

Bins, schools, health, post. That's about it for me and most people as far as "front line" public services are concerned - plus one other.

The police.

Whenever people like me suggest that the public sector has grown out of control in recent years the lefties always counter with the "what schools and hospitals will you cut?" question. The answer for most conservatives is, of course, none - there is ample scope for the public sector to make cuts without touching the services that most of us use on a regular basis.

I now realise why they ask that question. They are not being disingenuous as I originally thought - they genuinely believe that the first place you need to make public sector cuts is in the services we most use.

Why is this? Well, socialism is all about victims as groups rather than victims as individuals. Hardly surprising I suppose, given that it's all about "collectivism". The whole leftist movement is based on identifying various victim groups and then supporting their cause.

Originally it was the cause of the working man, but leftists soon cottoned on to the fact that any "victim group" is worth supporting - it's not about the who, it's about the how. The more victim groups they can identify and support, the more support they get in return. The more support they have the more they can build the society they envisage.

The trouble with that is, once you've exhausted the basic victim groups - working man, women, blacks, homosexuals and so on - you start running out of victim groups to support. So they invent new ones. Drug abusers are no longer self-harming idiots - they are "victims" who require "front-line" services. Criminals are not morally reproachable, but victims of their circumstances and in need of "front-line" services.

All this means that when a recession strikes and there is a need to cut public spending, they just can't bring themselves to cut spending on their favourite victim groups - firstly because they really believe their own bullshit, but also because that is where their key support now lies.

So instead of cutting the myriad of services which most of us will never have any reason to use, they cut the services which we will.

Here comes the summer

The Telegraph reports that the police are preparing for a "summer of rage".

Supt Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan Police's public order branch, said he feared there could be "mass protest" at rising unemployment, failing financial institutions and the downturn in the economy.

Well, he should know.

Mr Hartshorn, who is regularly briefed on potential causes of civil unrest, singled out April's G20 summit of the leading developed nations in London as one of the events that could kick start a series of protests.

As The Telegraph points out, there have already been mass demonstrations across Europe while we, in dear old Blighty, have been relatively restrained. While tens of thousands took to the streets of Dublin to protest and a million or more went on strike in France we managed a nothing more than a relatively minor kerfuffle which wasn't even related to the economic crisis per se - just about the injustice of importing foreign labour to do fill jobs while British workers are left on the dole.

Given that we're in this mess as much as anyone (and more than some) one wonders why it is that these mass protests haven't materialised already as they have all over Europe? My view is that the government know that this whole thing has barely even got started yet - but they know that come the summer things will have snowballed considerably.

One out of three

The BBC and others decided to celebrate 10 years of the Macpherson report by considering whether the Met police is still "institutionally racist" with former Home Secretary Jack Straw concluding that they are not.

Mr Straw told the BBC: "If you are asking me whether I believe the Met as a whole is still institutionally racist, the answer is no."

Instead, Mr Straw suggested that there are "pockets of racism" in the force, but that it is not institutionalised. Actually, for those of us who never bought into the "institutionally racist" claptrap that's all there ever was - pockets of racism - just like as there has always been in society in general. The Met - being a product of society - reflects that.

What nobody bothered to ask is whether the other two issues the Macpherson report highlighted have been addressed as well. Along with "institutional racism" the report suggested that the Met also suffers from "professional incompetence" and a "failure of leadership".

Ten years on and they still do. Two out of three ain't bad - one out of three is pretty bloody awful.

Lies, damn lies ....

The latest crime figures are out along with the usual spin.

Good or bad, up or down, whatever these statistics might appear to say does anybody believe this crap anymore?