Good Policing exists when you are surprised to see a Police Officer, or you don’t have reason to regularly have them in your day-to-day thoughts.
Clearly, I am not talking about what we see or hear on our news streams every day or each night. But the reality is that we have lost confidence in the police, and like the courts and legal profession we have already discussed, we now have good reason to doubt the impartiality and motivation of the decisions that police officers make.
The responsibility is not one that falls on the shoulders of police officers themselves.
The Police are only carrying out and following the instructions that they have been given by our broken political leadership after all.
The responsibility for the problem lies squarely at the feet of politicians, who have instigated and forced targets on a public service to measure the success of the Police, when that success should be defined only when there is nothing to measure at all.
A Police Officer or Police Constable should have the ability, responsibility and power to act using their common sense with the law itself offering the only framework that they use as a management tool.
The processes that have been added to uphold the rights of people who have at the very least temporarily surrendered their right to enjoy the full rights to which any member of society who doesn’t infringe the rights of others should enjoy, have made the laws which govern our response to and the punishment of criminal behavior nothing more than a joke for real criminals. Meanwhile they have cast a very dark shadow for those who have been caught up in very little and instead of losing massively, should have just been told off and then sent home.
Like the many who are practical in their awareness of life and their approach, good Police officers do not need degrees to understand and enforce the law efficiently and very well. They just need a lot of common sense and the moral grounding in any situation to discern what’s wrong or right.
The fear of the controlling few that others cannot be trusted to do such a responsible job without rules that account for every thought and for every action, is reflective of how sclerotic and neurotic our whole society has become.
The Police need the freedom to do their jobs. So that people respect the law again and then fear the sight of a Police Officer, as it was before all the political correctness began.
Adam Tugwell 