Police to Serve Public at Long Last...

You'd think that some clever plant geneticist would by now have developed a crop plant that outgrew and smothered the weeds, the constant removal of which instead presents an ongoing chore for every gardener.
Until then gardeners like Nosher and me will have to spend time carefully weeding out the miscreants from the plants we wish to keep and nurture into being fully productive.
The alternative - just declaring the whole lot to be miscreant weeds (a weed is merely a plant in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing - highly culture specific...) - would be to banish the whole lot indiscriminately and bung them all on the compost heap.
'Our current incompetent Government are rather like that sort of incompetent gardener' announced Nosher one lunchtime as we retreated to the comfort of our deckchairs in the shade of his old allotment shed. 'Over the past ten years NuLabour has imposed a risible target-culture for policing, which has enforced meaningless targets on local police forces, requiring them, along with other stupid things, to arrest everyone at the scene of a disturbance, and caution or charge as many a possible, irrespective of whether the individuals were actually involved in any criminality.'
'I guess no one except deluded NuLabour supporters could describe the results as anything other then completely predictable' I commented 'since the result has been a dramatic drop in public confidence for the police in the Dis-United Kingdom, because so many innocent people (who are actually victims of crime) get treated in the same officious manner as those who actually deserve such treatment.'
'I suppose that good policing' Nosher was getting nostalgic now 'should involve the making of informed and intelligent decisions as to who the likely victims of a suspected crime are, and taking a stab at the identity of their oppressors used to be a task requiring astute judgement. But under NuLabour we've all been recategorised as criminals, irrespective of actual guilt, due to their moronic target culture.'
'It's even more sinister than that' I said 'because another result is that hundreds of thousands of innocent people have had their particulars entered into the national crime database, and many have acquired criminal records due to them naively accepting a police caution without realising that resulted in them acquiring a criminal record. The beginnings of a police state. Far better to refuse a caution and insist on having your day in court. At least then they have to produce some evidence and make it stick. Chances are they won't be able to - unless you actually did commit the crime they're accusing you of. But at least you'll get to see and hear the evidence against you in open court.'
'Well, the good news' Nosher said 'is that last week the think tank Civitas published a report by Harriet Sergeant describing the police as being close to being incapable of functioning effectively due to beaurocracy and the target culture. And then the Chief Constables of four forces, Surrey, Staffordshire, Leicestershire and the West Midlands subsequently announced they were abandoning the target culture imposed on them by NuLabour. They are returning to a true values of community policing: their priority henceforth will be to serve the public rather than to a generate politically-driven statistics on behalf of the Government.'
'Let's hope the revolt grows and we all end up with policing that serves the community instead of politicians and their allies' I said.
More from www.overthegardenfence.blogspot.com soon
Find out more from www.paulsturdee.co.uk
and www.PGSBooks.co.uk
Paul Sturdee's book Is God a Terrorist? is available from all good booksellers. Please support your local bookshop - if you don't,it may not be there next time you visit!
If you have any difficulty obtaining a copy, contact the PGSBooks website.
Best wishes and happy gardening.