According to a new report by the right of centre think tank Civitas, public dissatisfaction with the police has never been more widespread. Well, that at least is the headline the media has latched onto and the blogopolis is discussing.
But as with so many public dissatisfaction stories, the real villain is clearly the Government itself. While the police are getting a good hammering in the comments pages for concentrating their time on minor crimes at the expense of real social disfunction, the report itself correctly identifies this as a direct result of Labour’s use of government by targets.
If the red tape and political correctness imposed on the police by Labour makes investigating real crime too arduous, of course overworked and harrassed policemen are going to turn to easier targets to make up their government defined monthly numbers. Wouldn’t you?
Forget the bleating from the middle class about the lack of respect they get from the police and instead put the blame solely on Labour for substituting metrics for common sense, as clearly summed up by Disheartened Rozzer on the Telegraph’s website:
“I’m a serving police officer with 12 years service and I have seen the way we police dramatically change, unfortunately not for the better. I tried to fight the target driven culture and refused to play the detection game. Unfortunately I was threatened with action plans and unsatisfactory performance procedures so in the end I had to toe the line. (I still refuse to give someone an £80 pound ticket for urinating in public though. A good old bollocking does the trick).”
Tags: civitas, government targets, labour, police, policing, uk
