Hugh Orde's comment to the BBC that chief constables will resign if the police come under democratic control is good news. The current crop of police bosses ill-serve the nation and our democracy. Whilst Orde and his ilk imagine a police service accountable to no-one but 'the law', a priestly caste divorced from the society that employs them, free to determine their own priorities whilst swallowing our taxes, this vision is a million miles from the sort of police most of us want.
Hugh, my dear; our nation is a democracy. That means that the people have control. We will not sede power to an unaccountable cabal of State police bosses. So go.
My own preference is for the return of local Watch Committees, mostly directly elected but with local magistrates co-opted, that directly employ and direct local forces for bread-and-butter policing. Cameron's plans are flawed, I think, but even they are better than the current arrangements. I want to see local communities 100% behind their police, to see the police back living in those communities, and beat officers free of the cloying Blairite micromanagement from old monsters such as Orde and his Home Office puppetmasters. This will never happen if Orde and his ACPO cabal get their way.
11 comments:
Dream on- they won't resign, they haven't got any principals to stand by.
Tend to agree with your approach (in my dreams. A further effect of which would be that the police would be drawn back from their current assumption that they have a right to a monopoly on law enforcement.
If only the conservatives could be relied on to keep their word! The opportunity presents not only to control our aweful police service, but to get rid of the present mob of police chiefs, property of, and fully owned by the aweful fascist NuLab go'mint. For twelve long years they have manipulated and shaped the gathering of crime statistics in a way that Stalin would have admired.
Anon 09:24 - I'm sure you can rely on Cameron. No doubt he had made a cast-iron promise to implement his reforms.
What? Oh.
"our nation is a democracy. That means that the people have control. "
Uh-huh.
See also under Lisbon, Treaty of.
' We will not sede power.' The Botogol should be along shortly.
a priestly caste divorced from the society that employs them, free to determine their own priorities whilst swallowing our taxes,..
Nicely put. Time for a bit of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
"...the return of local Watch Committees,..." Ah, yes. I well remember the Chairman of my local Watch Committee taking delivery of his nice new Austin Cambridge, coincidentally just about the same time that a small fleet of such vehicles was delivered to our small borough force.
Happy days.
Oh, and, "I want.... to see the police back living in .....communities".
Hear, hear, and R.I.P. PC Bill Baker who lost his life directing motorists away from that bridge in Workington.
Where did you leave your brains? We are not a democracy. We never have been a democracy. We never will be a democracy.
"If only the conservatives could be relied on to keep their word!" Too true.
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