Ducking the issue

February 23

Neighbourhood policing has reached Stitchland!

The leaflet inviting me to attend the first neighbourhood police public meeting arrived through the door last week and you could read the forced enthusiasm in between the lines. You could tell my beat officers were thrilled about being nailed to the patch for the next year or so.

And yes, I’ll be going, just to see them squirm in the public eye as they try to get my neighbours to behave like a community and listen to the majority complaining about speeding and litter. I remember when I had to face my first public meeting and I proudly told them how I had caught someone breaking into the school in the dead of night. Less than a minute’s gratitude to my heroics was followed by forty minutes of bellyaching about why we couldn’t do anything about the cars parked on the grass verge. I’m glad there are lots of keen young probationers ready to take on the community beat mantle.

It’s a little worrying though that some forces are giving speed guns to members of the public. I can just see it now. Oh, it’s OK, it’s Friday, my next door neighbour’s doing the speed checks. If he catches me, he’ll never get back that drill I borrowed. Next thing you know, they’ll be advertising for volunteers to man armed response vehicles.

Talking of guns in the wrong hands, there’s a rumour going round that the APA is offering to send the Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister on a fact-finding trip to the States. It looks like a very busy trip, but they’ve still managed to squeeze in a duck shoot with some of George W’s people. I’ll hold fire on that one for now – let’s see what happens.

I was a bit shocked to hear that in the US they get all desk bods to do a day a week in a marked patrol car…. in the highest crime areas. That has to be perilous for the citizen.

Especially our CJU sergeants getting caught up in anything more than threatening behaviour. I’m not sure I’d have the bottle to drive down the worst of our estates after 7pm, let alone get out of the car.

But it seems that we do have a lot to learn from America, and some of their zero-tolerance policies. There was a lot of support here for the Chicago ‘stand-up’ idea, although some of that did disappear when it was explained it was about alternative policing rather than alternative comedy. Even so, it could still raise a laugh. I’m sure we could find plenty of local residents who would take it in turns to go into the off-licence and complain about litter levels and lager louts; most of them are on ASBOs and banning orders barring them from all licensed premises, so this way they could do their bit for the community and buy a bottle of super strength cider while they’re at it.

Time to go; I can see the signals coming out of the chief’s office, and there’s very little reassuring about them.

As ever,

Stitch