‘Excuse me Chief Constable, reports just coming in of a spate of burglaries in Lucre Street, shall I mobilise all units?’
‘Don’t be silly, laddie, I’ve got a far more important task for you. An old lady has just fallen down in the middle of Broad street, need you all to get down there right away’.
‘To administer first aid until the ambulance arrives?’
‘No, laddie, book her for obstructing the traffic flow.’
Where has all the common sense gone? Almost every day we read of people being arrested for dropping crumbs, inadvertently displaying an upside down disability badge, letting go of a helium balloon at a charity fete or leaving the lid of a wheelie bin 4 inches open. Yet major crimes remain unsolved.
Get mugged, burgled or get your vehicle stolen and there’s not a copper to be found anywhere. Throw an apple core out of a window and a swarm of bobbies are all over you like a rash.
It’s the ‘target culture’ gone mad. Targets are great when it comes to businesses, private ambitions or archery, but not when it comes to policing. Unless, of course, the target is a simple ‘let’s make sure this town is crime free’.
League tables are fine for sports, but again, not for policing. The effect of the league tables can be quite negative. To get a higher position in the league, it is far easier for the police to go out and book a load of people for littering or letting go of balloons than it is to solve a real crime. But what is also does is alienate the police force within society and, subsequently, makes people less likely to cooperate or even bother to report a crime. Good for the crime statistics, but not good for society.
But what do the league tables actually signify?
Lower Crimesville on Thames is wallowing at the bottom of the league, possibly even facing relegation, having only made two arrests this month. There’s talk of the government bringing in a new manager to try and turn things around, maybe even someone from abroad like the ‘special one’, Juan Mourintheclink.
On the other hand, Tranquility in the Wold is top of the league and looking championship material, having made 200 arrests this month.
So which team is actually the better of the two? On the face of it, Tranquility in the Wold is the place to be at the moment.
Or is it?
Lower Crimesville on Thames has recently introduced the radical concept of policemen on the streets as a means of crime prevention and, as a result, only two arrests were made this month. One was an attempted burglary, the other involved a domestic dispute which was dealt with by a passing patrol before it got too out of hand.
The police officers are becoming quite well known within the community and crime has dropped dramatically.
Meanwhile, in Tranquility on the Wold, the police have made 200 arrests this month, so the place should be pretty safe.
Well, a bogus charity collector was arrested for obtaining 140 pounds under false pretences and, as he collected one pound from each of 140 members of the public, that counts as 140 crimes, 140 charges and 140 cases solved.
The vicar and 29 of his parishioners were arrested for holding a charity balloon race, 20 children were arrested for feeding the birds as it constituted littering and 10 people were detained for various wheelie bin offences.
However, residents are too afraid to go out at night for fear of being burgled and too afraid to to go out during the day for fear of being mugged or infringing some bizarre local bylaw. Real crime is rampant, but they’re top of the league and that’s all that matters…..
It is not only in the UK, of course, it happens elsewhere in Europe, especially in those countries where the police receive a share of fines etc.
I remember when I was living in Holland we had a spate of car break-ins, the cars being parked in a car park at the bottom end of the street. We asked the police if they couldn’t have a patrol car pass by every so often, but they said no, too busy.
After about the third break-in, I brought my car up to the house and a neighbour, whose car windows had been completely smashed, parked his vehicle right outside his apartment where he could keep an eye on in until the morning. Within about ten minutes, a van with around eight policemen crammed inside arrived on the scene…….and gave us parking tickets!! Weren’t interested in the break-ins at all, even suggested that if it bothered us then the solution was simple, move.
But, maybe the tide is turning as some police officers are now beginning to question the targeting system, some even going so far as to say they intend to disregard or ignore targets, although whether they will get away with it remains to be seen.
Surely, some semblance of common sense has got to prevail, eventually.