Useless at their day job, it's time to end this experiment!

 

We've been living for 194 years under an experiment that is going horribly, horribly wrong.
 
So corrupted, in fact, that it requires us to look again at whether the resulting institution needs to be tamed, broken up, and started  all over again.

To what am I referring? To a centralised, 'professional' police force, that's what.
 
The entity founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 has grown into a liberty-destroying muscle-bound ogre. Facilitated by an ever-deepening list of illiberal legislation, including a great deal of authoritarian laws from recent Conservative Governments, the legitimacy of the Police is at an all-time low.
 
According to the 2020 Crime Survey of England and Wales, public confidence in the police has been on a downward trend for a number of years. Indeed, it had fallen to as little as 55% by 2020. And that, of course, was before police forces up and down the land started acting like state-sanctioned bully boys in imposing their interpretation of COVID19 restrictions.
 
I reckon that support for PC Plod is now shared by less than half – probably nearer a third - of this country's population.
 
In the last couple of years, a pitiless river of negative news about virtually all of England and Wales 43 forces has swept away any illusions many might have had about the benign nature of their role.
 
First of all, the Police are largely useless at their day job. Detection rates for most crimes have plummeted. If you get burgled or are the victim of thievery in this county, praying for a miracle is probably a better response to reporting it to Suffolk's 'finest'.
 
Nationally, according to Home Office data, just 5.6% of offences reported to the Police led to a suspect being charged or summonsed in 2021-22, down from 7.1% the previous year, and from 16% in 2014-2015.
 
Suffolk is comparatively fortunate in having a reasonably competent Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) in Tim Passmore. He does strive to hold the Chief Constable to account for her forces' many performance management failings.
 
Yet it is clear that the present central government administration is seeking to diminish the role of the directly elected PCCs, preferring their remit to fall within that of mayors. Some PCCs have been pushed aside; their role added to the responsibilities already preoccupying mayors. This is not a recipe for proper scrutiny and accountability. It will result in rubbishy police forces getting away with their uselessness as never before.
 
As with every state-funded organisation, the police have become bloated by bureaucratic processes and so-called ‘Spanish Practices’ and are distended by the sheer weight of the number of people required to feed their administrative machine.
 
As of September last year, just under 228,000 people worked for the police, of whom just over a third were actual officers. What on earth are the other 150,000 doing, except soaking up taxpayers' money in their employ?
 
Then there is the calibre of many of individual officers. The ceaseless reports of corrupt police, criminal police, police who are sex abusers, police who are misogynists, police who are homophobes, and police who are killers, makes real  law-abiding people like me frightened and appalled.
 
I know of friends who are advising their daughters (and sons too) NOT to call the police if they are out at night, in trouble and on their own. I don't blame them.

The rush to boost aggregate police numbers by 10,000 is not going to help improve the useless screening process that fails to identify candidates with dodgy backstories, dodgier personalities and other shady reasons for joining the force in the first place.
 
In recent years, the toxic combination of authoritarian legislation applied by individual officers who appear to lack any moral judgement, and are motivated by the thrill of controlling others, has resulted in cases where our liberties are being curtailed.
 
In short, most police have no idea of the difference between upholding and enforcing the law!
 
Who can forget those examples during the various COVID19 lockdowns when PC Plod fined people for walking together - suitably distanced - in the countryside, or intruded into people's homes on the suspicion that various pandemic strictures were being transgressed.
 
More recently, the hastily drafted and approved Public Order Act was used by the police in arresting otherwise peaceful demonstrators on the suspicion that they might theoretically cause a public disturbance during the recent coronation of HRH King Charles III.
 
What rubbish! The police claimed their actions were motivated by crime prevention. That's not crime prevention - it was another shocking removal of peoples' liberties.

As a monarchist, I disagree with the protestors' views. But as a libertarian I totally uphold their rights to peacefully articulate them. Ironically, the Plod involved were so consumed with their zeal to control others, that they also arrested at least one monarchist who'd come along to celebrate the event!
 
There is no point in reforming the police in this country.
 
So what do we do to legitimately protect ourselves, our families, and our properties?
 
In a fascinating article for www.libertarianism.org (https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/can-we-abolish-police), David S. D'amato puts it this way: "What will replace the police? The short answer is nothing. The police don’t need replacing and should not be replaced or recreated."
 
I'm not sure I'd go that far - at least not in one go. I'd look, instead, at least initially, to the situation prior to 1829. It may surprise you, that well before the first Peeler blundered his way onto the streets, many parts of the country had their own localised police force.
 
I believe we should return to just such a model. Following a reduction in the central government tax take for policing, councils should have the powers to raise local taxes, via the usual precept system, for local constabularies, subject to regular referendums based on the crime-fighting successes of their police force.
 
As ever, the free market would ensure the most effective allocation of resources. Defensive associations would compete with one another to provide protection against theft, murder, and other crimes that involve real victims.
 
It's time to stop the police experiment - before it's too late.

First published www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday, June 1, 2023