Policing as if people mattered
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Instead of larger, merged forces, we need small local PDs and instead of the elected – will they really be – police and crime commissioners, or whatever they are going to be called, that are supposed to replace the Police Authorities in England and Wales, we need locally elected police chiefs – much like sheriffs in the USA. But government is not getting it, it would seem.
Once again, as some while ago, the merger of police force areas is on the agenda and many of them will be extremely large that, especially with view of the possibility of oil running scarce, officers may not be able to cover the area in any way properly.
What we will be seeing here is a green light for criminals and their activities. The bigger the area the less likely for the police to get there in time thus the criminals know that they can get away, at least.
Large areas also mean, more often than not, that officers sent out to an incident have no local knowledge and, therefore, take time to get to the place and then have no idea of the lay of the land.
The truth is that a completely new – well not really new – kind of policing is required. A completely local policing and, while the government in the UK may not wish to hear this, one that relies on local volunteer deputies.
Police work, I am afraid to say, does not necessarily need a degree from a university of high school but a great degree of common sense, knowledge of people, and local knowledge.
It does not work when the control centers are tens of miles away and officers sent to the scene are from other areas without local knowledge. Neighborhood specialist officers, once called local beat officers, will not always be the first responders today and thus making effective policing difficult already for lack of local knowledge.
This would become worse even still if forces are merged, making the areas larger in size and thus even more difficult to police.
With the possibility of fossil oil running out and with it the ability, also of the police, I should think, to run motorized responders the areas need to be reduced and more police departments created rather than the merger of forces.
Local PDs, with locally elected police chief and local officers, who, in my opinion, do not necessarily need to be officers that have gone through any police academy for however long but who are being deputized because of their integrity, will be much m ore effective in fighting local crime than large police forces.
When the end of the oil age has finally arrived, and signs are that it sill not be all that long into the future, policing will have to change anyway and the best way would be to do something about it right now. But that would mean, and I do not think that the governments have any intention of doing this, giving power, real power, to the people.
The other reason government will not countenance such moves to really permit the people to do the policing it that, shock, horror, it might actually do away with problems. And it would also do away with the overbearing young cops, of which we have far too many, who seem to think because they have been to police training and even have studied criminology and such in college and have a degree in policing, they are the law.
People police would be something that also would save money as every man and woman a cop, basically...
But, that would be something that the powers-that-be could not and would not countenance simply for the fact that to them the police is an organ that they can use with which to suppress and oppress the people.
If the policing would be in the hand of the people this could not longer be possible and thus – while this is the way it should be – we will not see this. Unless, that it, the people themselves wold stand for it and demand it.
People can quite easily police themselves and do not need to have it lorded over them from the likes of a Ministry of the Interior or such like, in charge of policing.
The American system of the sheriffs and sheriffs' deputies, with, like in the old days, sworn posses of local people, can work not just in America and the old West where it was used but could also work in all other cases, basically.
Policing as if people mattered is what is needed but will it be something that we would get from our governments. Hardly,, I should say, unless we make sure that we do and we must prepare to put such policing in place for after the event, such as the End of Oil, which could be upon us sooner rather than later, and the breakdown things as a result thereof.
© 2010
