I see there has been quite a bit of a fuss about the Post Offices in Norfolk that are going to be allowed to handle crime complaints over their counters - basically acting as a reporting point.
I actually can see some sense in this. In my own ward where they are trying to close Post Offices because of the decline in over the counter trade. I can't help thinking that if some of this joined up thinking had been applied earlier then perhaps we would not be in such a mess. I do think you would need to seriously consider what function the Post Office should then retain and also find what things the Council could equally provide through the Post Office network.
I see my own party is arguing that whilst this is fine it should not be seen as a replacement for police officers on the beat. I gather that David Blunkett has today announced he wants to recruit more community support officers. I have said this before but community support officers are great for a small and clearly defined set of priorities. They are good at building police/community relations and as a day time presence for kids to interact with. However, PCSO's do not operate at night. Some go into the evening but all are finished by midnight. They also have no powers of arrest.
Why is Blunkett increasing the numbers of PCSO's and not real officers? Probably because of the cost as they are considerably cheaper. My view is that we should not have cheap policing but good policing and visible policing. That means paying for more police officers; the Conservatives estimate we need another 40,000 police officers to really begin to tackle crime and start increasing the arrest rates.
....and when we have arrested them apparently David Blunkett says today that he wants to have weekend only prisons and part time sentences. Sorry, that is not good enough. Criminals need to be punished and no array of liberal nonsense will change my view of that. For too long we have been worried about the criminal and what we can do to help them. I am not saying we should not do what we can to rehabilitate prisoners but under this Government we seem to have forgotten about the ordinary, law abiding, citizen who has to put up with the anti social behaviour, burglary and violent crime.
3 comments:
Liberals will always have more pity on the offendor than on the victim. A fact that is both sad and true.
I agree with you. And of course there should not be additional enforcement of stupid speed limits and other silly highway rules because drivers don't want to break the law, they just sometimes have to in order to save some time. Let's get rid of the 2,300 speed cameras and have 14,000 more police officers to replace them. A further 14,000 could be employed to patrol areas where stupid councils have put in uncomfortable damaging and environmentally bad speed humps. With police officers instead of cameras and humps there will be much less chance of being caught or slowed down and we can all go about our daily lives that much quicker and happier.
If you don't want to get caught, don't speed. If you plan out your day and get started early enough, you don't need to speed.
Also, if you don't like the speedlimit, contact your city council and change it, don't try to rationalize that breaking the law is ok.
Post a Comment