England UK

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:30:36 +0100, "Steve Frazer"
<stevefrazer@spamfreeworld.com> wrote:

>"joe" <JOEPARKINchinese@BTINTERNET.COM> wrote in message
>news:MPG.1d7f0186da51d58a9897f1@news.individual.net...
>> This is a big problem, police cannot change perception from one decade
>> to another. Now, I have no reason to question your integrity and
>> honesty, but when I hear, the police were crap then and not now, I think
>> back and remember the police at the time, saying the police were bad
>> then, but are all right now, IYGWIM.
>> I can also listen to ex plod saying they do not believe any police can
>> do wrong, and think nothing has changed.
>
>It is improving. Anyone who thinks the police can do no wrong are living in
>cloud cuckoo land!

I won't improve until policing is brought back under some semblance of
local control.

If I may quote from Peter Thornton's book 'Decade of Decline'

"This Structure which holds responsibility for the police is set out
in the Police Act 1964. It comprises the police, the Home Secretary
and the police authority. The Act gives 'direction and control' of the
force to the chief constable but makes the authority responsible for
an 'adequate and efficient' force. The Home Secretary's role is less
clear. He alone is the police authority for London and he has
considerable influence over policy making. In a case about the supply
of plastic bullets to a police force without the Consent of the police
authority , the High Court ruled that the Home Secretary had a
Statutory power to override the wishes of police authorities.

The tripartite Structure ought to provide true accountability. But it
has failed to do so. First, the law itself is inadequate. It has never
given police authorities sufficient powers to make the tripartite
structure a reality. A police authority is not permitted by law
(Police Act 1964) to act like any other council committee, with the
chief officer advising the committee and implementing its decisions.
As the Royal Commission on the Police expressed it: 'In the case of
the police these positions will be reversed. The role of the police
authority will be to advise the chief constable on general matters
connected with the policing of the area, but decisions will be the
responsibility of the chief constable alone.' Or as James Anderton,
Chief Constable of Greater Manchester and ACPO President, put it (in
May 1987): 'We are accountable, I suppose, essentially to ourselves as
a responsible body.'... "


From then on things have steadily gone downhill. We have policing by
police who do not live in the area they police and are not accountable
to the people they police... and tax.

Getting more like East End London and the Krays every day.