Various Home Office spokesmen continue to deny recent changes in police practice have contributed in any way to a massive increase in violent crime recently witnessed in this country. They do so by citing a recent minor fall in the crime-rate as evidence violent crime has not risen, and hence as evidence the new methods are effective.
This reply overlooks two things.
First, the apparent recent ‘fall’ in the crime rate has largely been the result of excluding certain categories of crime from the computation. Second, what is at issue here is not overall crime rate, which may well have fallen recently due to extra-security measures taken by house-holders and car-owners, but the rate of violent crimes, largely committed in public places, which have gone through the roof in recent years.
Two valuable pieces of circumstantial evidence supporting the charge that recent changes in police practice have contributed to increased violent crime have recently appeared in the press. They take the form of personal testimony from senior policemen.
The first piece of circumstantial evidence comes from Sir Keith Povey, the outgoing Chief Inspector of Constabulary. It appears in a recent interview he gave weeks before retirement, reported in the Times last Monday.
Sir Keith here denies the need or desirability of police patrolling in pairs rather than singly, which they have routinely taken to doing in recent times, both on foot and in cars. Sir Keith said: ‘There is far too much double-crewing… whether on patrol or in vehicles. When you think officers have got sprays, side-handled batons,-- they don’t need to be in pairs most of the time’.
Sir Keith’s opinion receives endorsement from a second senior policeman, now retired, in a letter in today’s Times. The author of the letter is David Helm, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Operations of London’s Metropolitan Police, from 1974 to 1980.
As well as agreeing with Sir Keith on their being no need for joint patrolling, Mr Helm draws attention to a second recently adopted police practice he claims to be no less counter-productive. This is their recent change of accoutrement when on foot patrol that sees them garbed in brilliant yellow jackets festooned with two-way radios on which they incessantly chat with each other.
Mr Helm explains why this new apparel is counter-productive. ‘In my day we were given a pair of white gauntlets only when we were directing traffic. I have followed suspects using the cover of trees and lamp posts and arrested them, which could not be done in a yellow jacket.’
Mr Helm goes on to make the following interesting suggestion: ‘If the PC’s took off the jackets and patrolled singly, so that they could see what was going on and talk to the public instead of chattering to each other, I think we might have a better service.’
The Home Office might care to consider running some local experiments to test whether changing police practice in the suggested ways has any curbing effect on local violent crime rates. Sadly, I fear, the only response the Home Office is likely to make to such a commonsensical suggestion is to invite anyone making it to be on their bikes.
Comments (4)
An as yet unnamed elite, lawless organisation is actually running the country by stealth, in effect a silent insurrection from within. The control must be total, absolute, and lead top-down from the centre. What and who cannot be controlled must be destroyed by nulabor. An unelected cadre already runs the country, bypassing Parliament, the Judiciary, and all the institutional safeguards that were designed to ensure our freedoms.
Meanwhile, it is daily reported how our leaders lie, cheat, steal, bully and abuse, yet there is a reticence - for fear of retribution - to using the appropriate description - institutionalised corruption - that has repeatedly, relentlessly, ruthlessly, systematically and cynically destroyed the lives of anyone arbitrarily deemed to be a potential threat.
It is an expensive business to run an insurrectionist alternative power cult in parallel with what the ordinary decent citizen perceives as democracy. However, any perception of local democracy, people empowerment, or meaningful enagement in consultation to inform and contribute to the decision-making processes is a carefully engineered illusion.
It is necessary to create control structures, finance them, then train people to head these on behalf of the nulabor cult, to pay for fixers, and to employ the myriad of minions in the non-jobs. The money from this comes from both the current central government, and from the billions of Eurofunds. These created structures are used to facilitate the falsification of evidence of prior consultation and consensus needed for eligibility for the funds. To staff these structures, and to ensure placement of the chosen people in the right places, there needs to be a nulabor centrally controlled leadership training establishment, working as a charity. The truth is, the training establishment is not training leaders at all, it is doing the opposite, training automatons to do the bidding of their masters, regardless of morality, ethics or the law.
Why a charity? Because charities do not attract the same level of cycnicism and scrutiny as public authorities, they are not subject to freedom of information laws, they are easy and naive prey for the nulabor elite, and charities are easy organisations for strategic positioning to exert influence, interest and control far beyond their legal remit. In addition, where the chosen leaders are placed in a charity positioned for strategic control, they form the perfect base for money-laundering. Where existing charities can't be taken over, they are destroyed, and new charities created. Where charities prove themselves to be providing a needed service, they are targeted for privatisation, and the tax-liable jobs falsely claimed to be employment creation. There is no job creation, just transfer.
The secretly chosen recipients of 'training' are to be found in highly lucrative positions of many of the decision-making quangos with financial controls. They also ensure that the nulabor social-re-engineering projects are funded in preference to any other, whilst refusing any applications not in keeping with the nulabor agenda.
Once the right steps are in place, the nulabor project can continue unfettered, having control of people, publicity, processes, and pecuniary pursuits. Threats are destroyed. All this being done covertly, with the cadre elite of the cult even deciding who can have what information.
This nulabor government is corrupt. The nulabor corruption is absolute, lead from the top down, imposed through all tiers of social and government control, down to street level. Being rotten to the core and from the core, everything it touches it taints. Having neither the ability nor inclination to correct itself, outside intervention is indicated.
This statement can be extended to democracy itself. Perhaps it is not only the government that must be replaced, but the style of government, as the current flavour leaves such a bad taste. Our leading politicians, to whom we are entitled to look for behavioural guidance, have failed to make the distinction between what is legal and what it right. Finding a loophole to do something does not make what is wrong, right. The very act of looking for a loophole is evidence of intent to act amorally. It is no use saying that no rules have been broken, and therefore the behaviour is OK. Those not acting in the spirit of the law, or not capable of making the distinction between right and wrong, have no place in our society, and certainly not as our leaders or representatives in any government.
In the UK, democracy is dead. Despite the claims to devolve democracy, empower people, or derogate decision-making, what we have seen is the creation and maintenance of an illusion of consultation, followed by false claims of concensus. In truth, central control is tightened, as so-called community leaders are politically placed and imposed, and so on upwards through every control tier to nulabor HQ.
SO now we have described what we have today, and how we arrived at this sorry state.
The next question must be, WHY ? and Where is all this leading us?
Posted by martin | August 11, 2008 7:57 PM
Posted on August 11, 2008 19:57
How did we reach this state - where the ordinary
person in the street has the impression that we no
longer have a police force?
for some thoughts on this see . . .
http://uk.msnusers.com/POLICEHISTORY
Posted by NORMAN CLARKE | October 8, 2005 3:05 PM
Posted on October 8, 2005 15:05
Civitas has highlighted what we in Sheffield have known for a long time.
The whole crime reduction scheme by this government is a charade, held together by rhetoric, falsification of documents, and the creation and maintenance of the illusion that its policies are working.
In terms of money fraudulently obtained and subsequently unlawfully disposed of, coupled with false claims of success which lead to 'roll-out' of failed pilot schemes, there can be only one applicable word - corruption.
Posted by Martin Brighton | January 11, 2005 10:54 AM
Posted on January 11, 2005 10:54
Professor Conway's points go to the heart of the problem. Police numbers count, but police numbers are a horrendously expensive snare and delusion if policing policies and--the only thing that counts, finally--policing practices are not right. English cultural conditions of law-abiding decency (not so long ago) permitted officers to patrol singly in ordinary uniform. To take only one of Professor Conway's points: with police officers generally working in pairs, the result is effectively to cut police numbers in half. Two officers are now needed to do what one did before. What a tremendous difference that makes to police effectiveness on the ground!
Posted by Norman Dennis | January 10, 2005 7:24 PM
Posted on January 10, 2005 19:24