I don’t remember the last time I saw a police officer strolling down my avenue. I mean a real police officer and not a lookalike community officer dressed to give the impression that the police are patrolling when it is only someone whose precise function I have never quite fathomed. If I do see the police, they are in a car and usually speeding along, lights flashing and siren blaring, presumably to avoid seeing anything untoward that is actually taking place. Near my house we have two police stations neither of which is permanently staffed. I needed some advice one evening and found one of them empty; the lights were on, but nobody was at home. Presumably, the criminal fraternity (or sorority) of Kingston upon Hull are considerate and time their activities to coincide with when these stations are staffed…or maybe they do not.
The other circumstances when I am aware of a police presence is the regular hovering of the police helicopter over my house doing goodness knows what. This is usually at night and very disruptive and I cannot imagine what it achieves. If I wanted to catch someone up to no good, I would sneak up on them from behind and catch them in the act. I certainly would not advertise my presence by hovering overhead, making a terrific racket and shining a huge spotlight on them. The local police force—Humberside Police of non-crime hate incident fame—have another toy and that is the equally intrusive fixed-wing survey plane which, while it doesn’t hover overhead, often circles around the area interminably. Again, I have no idea what it is up to but, given that I can pick up its transponder on the Flightradar app on my iPhone and track its movements, it cannot be beyond the wit of those being watched to know when it is on its way, and scarper.
The wonderful Peter Hitchens has long campaigned to have more police on the beat and I agree, but it wasn’t until his weekly appearance on Talk Radio this week that I realised what the problem was. According to Hitchens, this is what the police want. He reckons the UK police went to hell in a handcart in the television transition of police programmes from Dixon of Dock Green, the example par excellence of the local friendly bobby on the beat, to Z-Cars where the police sped about in cars. This, and the pervasive influence of American television cop shows where all manner of fast cars and aircraft are deployed, has had as much influence on the police as it has on the public they purport to serve. The fact is the police want all this tech and want to ape the style of their USA counterparts. Thus, these days they look less like the police officers of old and more like a cross between a mountaineer and a commando. To service their glamorous high-tech aspirations costs a fortune. Humberside Police spend £1.3 million annually on their chopper. A fixed-wing VULCAN Air P68—the type used by my local police force—costs approximately £250 thousand to buy and £250 per hour to fly and flies out of a £3.3 million base. And we wonder why there are no police officers on the beat.
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