I WONDER if London’s top cop, Sir Ian Blair, will have some explaining to do once again.
From the Chicago-mob shoot-out tactics employed in Chelsea’s Markham Square on Thursday, his boys seem to have thought Jean Charles de Menezes had risen from the dead, giving them an opportunity to see if their aim was as good as last time.
We must wait and see, which is all too often the lackadaisical response you get when reporting a burglary or any property crime. Meanwhile, a multitude of nonsense cases clogs the courts as fundamentally law-abiding citizens are prosecuted for piffling infractions of nanny-state rules and regulations. This week alone, I saw five vintage examples that explain why real criminals are laughing all the way to the bank. They go scot free because law enforcers are too busy producing material for this column to go after them.
Just look at these! A disabled woman asleep in her car was fined because her disabled parking disc was upside down. A father was threatened with prosecution for putting a Jolly Roger flag on his house as part of a pirate-themed party for his eight-year-old daughter, supposedly contrary to the Town & Country (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992.
An arch-bishop’s secretary was prosecuted for inadvertently travelling on a London bus with an Oyster card 20p short of the full fare. A driver has just won a four-year battle against police in Bury, Lancashire, who nicked him for playing a Riverdance CD in his car, allegedly too loudly. A headmaster with an impeccable record was dragged through the courts and fined for fishing with a licence he had forgotten to renew. He now risks being banned from teaching after a government check designed to spot child abusers identified him as having a criminal record.
Meanwhile, in a leaked memo, Norfolk police have been told not to record incidents such as car vandalism as a crime because one of this year’s “targets” is “keeping recorded crime down to 1,500”.
Jan Berry, chairman of the Police Federation, says: “Scrap targets. Crime statistics have become a science in their own right. They have never been a true reflection of crime.”
Ian Johnston, head of the Police Superintendents’ Association, says: “Not recording a crime is wrong but I can understand why that’s happening. Everyone is under pressure to come up with the right results.” England gave birth to Common Law, which was a case-led codification of community wisdom. Sadly, that has been largely replaced by statutes that either defy common sense or are applied in a nonsensical way by jobsworth officials.
Kent police have told Sevenoaks residents they must wait until dawn to break up illegal raves because officers might hurt themselves in the dark. Poor lambs! There is also the safety of the public to consider. After all, ravers under the influence of drugs and drink could be involved in accidents as they drive home if police are too heavy-handed.
It won’t be long before they are issued with foam-rubber truncheons. A joke? Remember, you heard it here first.
I remember Dixon of Dock Green. Things have changed since the days of “mind how you go” and the clip on the ear – more’s the pity. One of the depressing features of modern Britain is the wrecking of the police’s reputation by political correctness, idiotic priorities and the stupidity of many police chiefs.
Take North Wales’s Chief Constable Richard “Brainstorm” Brunstrom who is so obsessed by speeding cars that he has turned Snowdonia into a surveillance clone of North Korea. Meanwhile he thinks the answer to drug crime is to decriminalise it then we won’t have any. Is it any wonder many people have given up in despair? He would be less of a public menace if he spent his time like his colleague in Dyfed-Powys, who spent his office hours sending saucy e-mails to his mistress.
What are we to do? Why report crime if nothing can be done about it? Worse still, try to defend yourself against villains and vandals and you could wind up being arrested.
Boris, here is your chance to become a national hero. Grip the Met as an example to others.
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