I originally posted this in a private Facebook Group, but one of my real-life friends (I do have a couple) suggested that it deserved a wider audience.
So, if you’re reading this for the first time, you can thank Dot.
Just a quickie before the Nurse comes to sedate me again, is it just me?
More and more and the past 2(?) years I have seen more PCs on the news, soaked in some poor kid’s blood, whose life they have either just saved, or tried to save before the experts arrived.
Never in my service did I see, or even hear about, so many fine acts of compassion and giving. Every day there are maybe 2-3 stabbings, frequently fatal.
Often, the first officers on the scene are required to, and do, administer emergency First Aid way beyond the Triangular Bandage that I used to struggle with, or the freshly ironed handkerchief.
Those magnificent officers will have to go back to the nick, go home, or whatever, quite often literally covered in someone else’s blood, explain to their families, and pacify them, and probably suffer who knows how many sleepless nights because they failed to save that life or are simply haunted by the trauma of what they have just dealt with.
Later that night they will turn on the telly box and have some opinionated t**t spout on about how the whole of the Police Service is corrupt and racist and should be ‘defunded’ or the newspaper they pick up will be full of the negative stories, some of which aren’t even news, and devote maybe a column inch to the fantastic life saving that seems to go on on an almost daily basis.
Apart from being totally unfair to the magnificent work being done on the streets by our successors, this does nothing more than severely dent the already drained morale, savaged by Theresa May, and, now she’s gone, the MSM seem intent on carrying on her ‘good’ work.
Well done to all of you still serving. Seriously, you deserve it, and Thank You.
You ARE appreciated, even by the dinosaurs amongst us.
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Well said that man we owe them so much Stretched to the limit two officers attended an incident i called them to they told me they were the only ones covering our area which I think is South and West Oxfordshire. That Lechlade Gloucestershire, to Henley-on-Thames in the south roughly 40 miles and all points in between including Thame. That is a massive area.
The front line officers are fine. The trouble starts further up with woke senior officers frightened of their own shadows. This is compounded by the nonsense sentences handed down to serious villains who are a real and present danger to the public.
In Hampshire, only graduates are now being recruited. Ex Forces, often with command experience, (NCOs) are now precluded, yet these people have experience of dealing with soldiers, frequently not the most refined of individuals, obeying orders, initiative, formulation of local plans and all of this perhaps in a foreign country with a very different culture and language.
Instead, we are to get students who have been indoctrinated by the left and are used to special rooms where they can go and cry if someone is beastly to them.
Government sets sentencing guidelines and while the judiciary claims to be independent, it is nonetheless driven by these guidelines. Woe betide the judge who starts dishing out maximum sentences, even if there is a 50% discount. It is all about the cost of jail, which these days is very expensive.
Sheriff Joe Arpiao of Arizona has the right idea. He built a new jail for under $`00,000 dollars. He set it up in the desert using Korean War surplus tents, beds and other equipment. The inmates are fed on a root vegetable bake all day, every day and have to endure desert temperatures. He even operates the only female chain gang in the world who spend their days cutting back brush which otherwise would be a fire hazard.
This is a miserable existence and Sheriff Joe’s response to complaints is refreshingly common sense. If you do not like it here, see to it that you do not come back. He is putting the responsibility on the inmates to sort their lives out once released. Their destiny is in their hands, nobody else’s.
We live in a blame culture, in that it is always somebody else’s fault, never mine. Drug users are seen as victims. Some are, but all of them have the choice to get themselves clean and must be helped so to do. That said, if they do not, they KNOW they will be facing a miserable future in jail where they will be forced off the drugs anyway.
Meanwhile, the woke do gooders whine about the term getting clean implies they are dirty and this is demeaning etc. etc. The ARE dirty. They are filling their bodies with illegal filth from unscrupulous criminals. They have no idea of what is in the drug or under what hygienic circumstances it was made.
Wherever there is a market, there will be suppliers. Some people dream up all sorts of stuff and persuade us that we need it. Just watch TV adverts. The fashion business springs to mind here. So it is with drug dealers. By giving out a few free fixes, the victim is hooked. If they are rich, they can afford it. If they are poor, they get sucked into trade.
Naturally, the dream is to catch Mr Big. Look no further than Al Capone during Prohibition. He was suspected of bootlegging, murder, assault and general violence, but there was insufficient evidence to nail him. He was finally caught on tax evasion, arguably a white collar crime, a long way from racketeering. The current Mr Bigs are just as clever and cautious as Capone.
Therefore, one must look at the problem from the other end. Users must face really stiff penalties right from the start while dealers, especially small time ones, must also be hammered. Robustly tackling street level distribution will dramatically reduce this scourge on our streets. I am a great believer in the 80/20 rule, created by the Italian mathematician Pareto.
If we can reduce drug related crime by 80%, the rest ceases to be too much of a problem. To do that, the problem must be removed from the streets and relocated to jails.
The cost will be high. Large amounts of money can be saved by abolishing ineffective punishments but there will still be a shortfall. Following Sheriff Joe’s approach, the cost need not be as high as one might expect, but even so, our civilisation is under threat and is being eroded year on year. This is war and therefore, in waging this war, the budgets must be more than generous.
This will require political will. So far, there is sign of this happening.