Not Bang to Rights, Nor a Fair Cop, Guv

Here, I deal with the sample criticisms of me which I have featured in the previous posting.

 First , as a contrast to the intemperate and often incoherent attacks I posted earlier, here’s a different response:

 

Lanca Lad said:

‘Peter is dead right about the clowns masquerading as policemen. I was a 'bobby' for over 25 years - not an 'Officer' or 'Community Patrolman' but a British Bobby. I was armed with a piece of Lignum Vitae and was fully prepared to use it on any thug who wanted it. Bobbies need courage, the ability to talk others out of some disastrous chosen path and above all, a sense of humour and perspective! The dependence on tasers, CS gas and Japanese batons really displays a mentality alien to me and my generation of bobbies. Our uniform was our pride and our badge of office. Then along came a cadre of social engineers pretending to be policemen and what do we have now? Trousers tucked into boots, T-shirts and those ludicrous yellow coats. Who decided that the colour 'Yellow' should EVER be worn by a British bobby? Yes, I know there are guns out on the streets. But wake up! There were in 1829 and bobbies were shot then! We choose this way of life and we know the dangers. Only a total fool doesn't or imagine they are entering a 'safe' job. As the old saying goes "If you can't take a joke, don't join". Time for a Campaign for Real Policing, Peter?’

 

I have to say that I have over the years received many similar letters from serving and retired officers. It was because I had begun to feel a deep sense of unease about my country that I embarked, in 1999, on what would be a series of books about what had happened to it. The first, ‘The Abolition of Britain’, explored the cultural revolution that had transformed education, broadcasting, the countryside, transport,  and the relations between the sexes. Very few people have actually read it,  but they have read hostile accounts of it instead, often written by others who had not read it -  as I gather frequently from the comments they make about it.

 

As I wrote it, I realised that there was something else that specifically needed explaining, What on earth had happened to the police? I had been out of the country for more or less the whole of the period 1990-95, and on my return I found that they had almost completely vanished from foot patrol. The process, as I now know, had been going on for many years. But absence from your own country is like separation from a  relative or old friend. It is when you meet them again after a long absence that you realise just how much they have changed, in ways you would have missed if you had daily contact.

 

I had, as it happened, some knowledge of what modern policing involved.  In answer to all those who screech:

 

‘Why don’t you go out on patrol and see what it’s really like?’ ,

 

I have done.

 

I have been out on what is called ‘patrol’ with police officers in West London, in Johannesburg and in Dallas, Texas. All these exercises were more or less the same, a dispiritingly futile amount of hurried, noisy driving, only to arrive at places after incidents had taken place.  I went to bed after each of them feeling that their approach was completely wrong.

 

I later found that my misgiving had been largely borne out in the ‘Broken Windows’ theory of policing, which states that once the police cease being a presence, deterring so-called ‘minor’ crime, such as broken windows, graffiti and kids riding bikes on the pavement, wrongdoers assume that the law in general is not being enforced and a general deterioration in behaviour ensues, ending with severe violence and knives, not to mention the powerful drug gangs which now operate in many of our cities. The drug gangs are helped by the certifiable policy of failing to pursue the purchasers of illegal drugs, and instead concentrating entirely on the sellers. If the product is evil (and it is) surely its possession and use are what make it evil. Yet the modern police are now one of the main advocates for letting people off for possessing illegal drugs, claiming ( baselessly ) that this will 'free up' officers to pursue the evil dealers and the 'harder drugs'', whose possession is also effectively decriminalised.

 

But of course reactive, fire brigade policing with its helicopters and go-faster stripes, its obsession with arrests as a measure of success and its pursuit of 'targets'  is useless at dealing with possessors of drugs.

 

I think this deterioration in the atmosphere on the streets has been the experience of millions of British people as the police retreated to their computer screens, their cars and their helicopters. It is precisely because they have lost their direct personal contact with the streets that the police now need their cars , their tasers and their stab vests, because when they appear, nobody knows them, and they have become so separate from the public that the public no longer sees them as friends, and they don't see the public as allies.   

 

These incidents, which we rushed by car to deal with,  were ‘minor’ in police terms, like most crime. But they were major, often tragic, in the lives of the victims.It is minor, disorganised crime and disorder, intimidation and selfishness, that most people fear, not high-glamour gangsterism.

 

 

Why don’t you do any research? You don’t know what you are talking about

 

Well, I have done, and I do. I wrote a substantial book, called ‘A Brief History of Crime’, later updated as ‘The Abolition of Liberty’. Any good library will get it for you. This involved long hours of research.

 

I found out how, when and why foot-patrolling had been abolished. I researched the history of police radios, the brutal mergers of smaller forced, the setting up Bramshill, the invention of ‘Unit Beat’ policing and the switch to cars, the history of the 999 service(even then, hopelessly overloaded) . I found that there had never been any good practical reason for abandoning Peel’s principle that the police were there to *prevent* crime and disorder. I grasped the real nature of crime figures. I looked into the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and its codes of practice, the new rules of evidence, and all the other ways in which the police had their discretion removed.

 

I looked into the strange way in which it had become a serious offence for a British person to defend himself against thieves (in his own home or elsewhere) , and the modern police force's special zeal  (quite lacking in their pursuit of burglary itself) which was applied to householders who did defend themselves.

 

I examined the dilution and abolition of the principle of due punishment of responsible persons who broke the law, and its replacement by an excuse-making, relativist view which blamed crime on social conditions and cod psychology. I visited a major English prison and saw how the warehousing of criminals had become the main purpose of these places, now that punishment has been abolished.

 

I examined the curious Scarman report into the Brixton ‘riots’ (actually, like the more recent so-called ‘riots’, an outbreak of mass criminality) and its use to introduce politically correct ideas into policing. I then examined the Macpherson report, following the Stephen Lawrence case, and noted that this astonishing document was the foundation and licence for a politically-correct inquisition aimed at wholly transforming the police, and removing the remaining influence of conservative officers. I examined the real significance of the death penalty and of ‘gun control’ (these chapters are only in ‘A Brief History of Crime’). I also charted the increasing enthusiasm of police officers for pursuing offences against the speech codes of political correctness, particularly the strange case of Harry Hammond, and elderly preacher arrested and successfully prosecuted after being pelted with lumps of mud in the centre of Bournemouth by some homosexuals who disagreed with his conservative views on homosexuality. In a fascinating footnote, the two officers sent to the scene disagreed about whom to arrest . The older one wanted to act against the people throwing mud at an old man. the younger one wanted to act against the old man. Guess who won.

 

I have since examined the police’s role (in my most recent book, ‘The War We Never Fought’) in the dilution and effective abolition of laws against the possession of dangerous drugs.

 

I write often about all these subjects. Any regular reader of my column or blog would be aware of this.   I understand that the police are subject to outside forces and did not in many cases decide perosnally to behave as they do. 

 

 But I have noticed that police officers up to quite high ranks are ready to make public protests, even mass demonstrations, on matters of pay and working conditions, as they are rightly free to do.

 

And I have yet to notice any parallel protests about the imposition of ‘Equality and Diversity’ codes on the police, which make it very difficult for them to operate effectively, and often turn them into enemies of free speech.  Indeed, I noticed one complaint about my article said it was ‘hate speech’, the language of the Politically Correct thought police. When I see such demonstrations, I’ll believe the protestations I get at such times that officers are chafing angrily against the imposition of these rules upon them. My suspicion is that the older ones are just hanging on for their pensions (and who can blame them?) knowing that protest will get them into big trouble. And that many of the younger officers are themselves very politically correct.

 

Now, in the enraged and bilious response to what I wrote, I’ve seen no attempt to address the matters I actually raised. Why should a police force which was intentionally unarmed from its beginnings now be so heavily armed? Why are police uniforms swaggering, overbearing and paramilitary, with their big boots , baseball caps and prominently displayed handcuffs, clubs , sprays and tasers?  How much use is all this panoply of force against terrorism, or crime?

 

And what about the wholly wrong use of the sad deaths of police officers on duty (an event which has absolutely nothing to do with my argument at all) be used to try to suggest that I am wrong? I mourn them as anyone else does. That does not mean I ahve to abandon my critcisms of modern policing.

 

Do I have to point out here that journalists, too, sometimes die bravely in pursuit of their jobs, and note that this does not in any way counter or overcome criticisms of bad behaviour by other journalists?

 

I am told that I will complain about ‘response times’ if police officers are put back on foot(or bicycle, another excellent form of police transport neglected these days). No, I won’t. In most cases, there is very little a police officer can do after a crime has been committed, unless he or she is good at first aid (and paramedics are better at that) . I don’t want police officers *responding* to crimes. I want the crimes prevented in the first place, by preventive foot patrolling. Why foot patrolling? Because officers on individual regular foot patrol genuinely know their beat and the people on it, and their vigilance and presence encourages the good and discourages the bad. Because a person driving down a street in a car will miss a dozen things a walking officer would see or hear.  

 

What if I or a family member were attacked or burgled? Well, what if they were? My fundamental desire is to ensure that they are not. A crime number, or a ‘restorative justice’ procedure, or ‘victim support’ or any other measure will not restore the security of the burgled person. I believe that following the Peel theory of policing prevents burglaries. I believe that the reactive, fire brigade style does not. I have not, as it happened, been particularly impressed with the police response as it . I recall one occasion when my house in a respectable suburb was vandalised, and I caught up with and corralled the culprits. The police , though called, never came because they had so little local knowledge that they could not find the location. So I had to let the vandals go. I remember that by then my main concern was that I should not under any circumstances lay a finger on these rat-faced little creeps, in case the police chose to charge me with assaulting them. Most of us were aware of *that* possibility even then, 20-odd years ago.

 

A few years  afterwards the same force, at three in the morning, scrambled a helicopter from 40 miles away to circle endlessly over my suburb, shattering the sleep of thousands, and shining its searchlight into our gardens because a security guard *thought* he might have seen someone jump off the top of a 50-foot building (nobody had, and of  course anyone who *had* made such a  leap wouldn’t have been able to get far, unless it was Superman). I calculated later that it would have taken a constable on foot the same time to reach the location from the city centre police station as it took the helicopter to get ready to fly and make the trip. Give people toys, and they will use them, and think of excuses afterwards. My book , by the way, also explored the surprisingly early origins of this daft form of policing, and of CCTV cameras, which form the start have been a very poor substitute for a real police officer.  

 

 

To the person who writes : ‘'And further more I draw your attention to Robert Peel’s principles of policing, numbers 7 and 9 in particular; Number 7, in short that the Police are the pubic and the pubic are the police. I’m sure it did not cross your mind to remonstrate with the driver jumping the red light yourself.’

 

He is quite wrong. Of course it did, and I did so, and it was as I did so , and the driver, a look of alarm on his face that he had been spotted, slowed and hesitated, that I saw police officers, in their own car, nearby and appealed to them.

 

I might add that, as it happens, I (and more importantly my wife) have confronted a man with a knife. My wife and I, walking (on foot patrol, as you might say) home late one night along Adelaide Road in North London, saw a man beating up a woman and ran across the road to her aid.  I doubt that a police officer in a car would have noticed it, but it was absolutely obvious if you were walking. It is not true that bullies are all cowards. When I told him to stop, he turned and punched me hard in the face, knocking me over,  and then produced a knife. My wife, far braver than I, stood her ground while I ran to a nearby phone box to call the police . They were profoundly uninterested (and never came)  but I dashed back and claimed they were on their way. Luckily, this was still credible in those days, and the knife-wielder (who had been waving his blade in my wife's face as she tried to keep him calm)  thereupon fled. These days I am sure he would have laughed. And I am not sure I would now cross the road.

 

Finally, a special prize to ‘Tom’, who wrote : ‘In addition, your suggestion that the Police should be treated more like 18th Centruary servants is quite astonishing. I'm surprised a newspaper employs someone who writes such poorly constructed, and unsupported arguments.’

 

Since he chose to claim I had said something I hadn’t, and then said that I used poorly constructed and unsupported arguments, I have abandoned my usual merciful habit of correcting the bad spelling of my opponents (I have also declined to correct the spelling of anotehr of my assailants, who has trouble with the word 'public'). I did not say ‘that the Police should be treated more like 18th Centruary servants’. Nor did I say anything like it. We really would get on a lot faster if my critics would only read what I actually say.