Safe Speed Forums

Ruralshire Constabulary, along with most of the rest of the UK Police, have decided to adopt a new strategy to deal with criminals and crime. It’s based upon the “Let’s ignore it and hope it goes away” principle. This is similar to the “Let’s ignore it and hope nobody notices” principle.

With the exception of what the bureaucrats call “Serious Acquisitive Crime” (stealing expensive things) “Hate Crime” (crimes perceived by someone to be, well, hateful) and “Night-time Economy Violent Crime” (crime which makes the licencing laws look bad) police officers have been instructed to “focus on” incidents which make life annoying for the average citizen.

Please note the introduction of the word “incident”. It doesn’t have to be a “crime” to be an “incident” they cry. This means; we know what has happened does not constitute a criminal offence, but we are Nanny and besides, people can’t solve their own problems any more in case they get kicked to death.

I prefer to call this strategy “Dog Mess and Wing Mirrors”.

An ACC recently told us “this is as much about telling people what we can’t do, as what we can do”.

In line with that advice, here are a few things we can’t do:

1. Charge criminals (the CPS decide).

2. Lock Up criminals (the prisons are full).

3. Chase criminals who drive away in a fast car (Health & Safety decide).

4. Deal properly with more than about 2 incidents at once after 4.00 pm (everyone has gone home).

5. Do anything outside our individual “remit”.

What can we do? well, we can endlessly telephone victims of certain crime types to check and recheck that they have received a good service. We only do this in certain geographical areas. The areas which are due an HMIC inspection.

We can pull yet more officers off the streets to sit behind computers “detecting” petty crimes all day. And we can spend £ thousands publicising Black History Month, apologising for slavery and holding Gypsy Traveller “cultural induction workshops” (true story).

Our Divisional Commander is trying to concentrate on getting police officers back on the streets; but I wonder if most of them have ever been on the streets in the first place!