DIDDUMS

It is an all too regular event for the police to take a bashing for something they’ve done or haven’t done,  often justified but sometimes not.

An example of the latter is repeated criticism of London’s finest for the preponderance of black youths targeted in Stop and Search exercises. The  facts are that a high  percentage of murder victims in London are  black – 46.7% – and the perpetrators themselves black. Motives are frequently drug related.

Who are the upholders of law and order going to stop and search for knives and guns. Little old white ladies with walking sticks and shopping baskets?

On the other side of the coin has been the policing minister Kit Malthouse justifiably hauling some forces over the coals for not doing enough to investigate burglaries.

Such criticism was a fair cop but the Minister might ask what else the police are up to which reduces their numbers available to carry out their basic functions of  crime prevention and detection.

A few days before Mr Malthouse was sounding off, there was a particularly horrifying murder of a young girl and a uniformed Superintendent was giving a press conference. One of the first things she said was that “highly trained officers” were with the victim’s family helping them cope with their shock and stress.

She actually said that this was one of her priorities and endorsed this belief by giving out the information ahead of detailing other activities her force was engaged in with relation to the murder, like solving it.

The disturbing reality here is that not one of the assembled hacks asked why some of her officers were mollycoddling the distraught family whilst their thin on the ground colleagues were trying to find out who done it. Well, they wouldn’t ask would they.

IN NEARLY EVERY SIMILAR CASE THE POLICE SAY THAT  OFFICERS, ALWAYS DESCRIBED AS “HIGHLY TRAINED”,  ARE PLAYING DIDDUMS WHILE THEY SHOULD BE  CONCENTRATING ON BRINGING JUSTICE and press, public and politicians now accept this as par for the course.

No one is suggesting that it is wrong for grieving families to be comforted and, indeed, the police should offer all the sympathy they can when it is they who, so often, are unenviably the first to have to break bad news to loved ones.

But, having first ensured that these shocked relatives can cope and having also taken all the steps they can to get close friends or family to attend, they should get on with the job we all want  them to do in such cases and for which they have been very expensively trained, and that is to catch villains.

Endit