What do we have now?
Officers acting without any discretion for fear of criticism by superior officers whose only interest is mugging the public for statistics. The right to arrest anyone for anything being used to raise the arrest figures to create a pretence of doing something useful, knowing full well that the same effort expended on serious crimes will cost too much whereeas several easy jobs will look much better on the statistics chart.
Senior officers bending over backwards to encourage criminals into complaining against officers who might just have said something that the criminal should have been told long ago, to provide a pretence of fairness.
Front line budgets slashed whilst senior officers in highly funded quango positions work to produce nonsense such as policy, visions, lean-processing, doctrine and other idiotic self serving rubbish that gives the public nothing. More is spent on advertising (SPIN) than on doing the job, under the guise of raising public confidence. What it actually does is conns poor unsuspecting, trusting working people into thinking their money is being well spent. The minute Labour are voted out, the happier tens of thousands of real officers will be, and the sadder a few thousand will be who have hidden themselves away in self made Empires, talking corp-speak, having “visions” writing near soviet style doctrine and generally having a whale of time not doing any real policing.
Parents are terrified to challenge their own childrens bad behaviour for fear of being branded abusers, real abusers get ludicrous sentences, home owners put themselves in the position of losing everything if they dare to do anything but cower in the closet whilst their house and possibly their family is ransacked by burglars, decent people arrested for nonsense crimes, for expressing an opinion – whats the saying? “I may not agree with what your opinion but I defend your right to express it.” Teachers who might as well sit back and watch the class bully knock everyone around because to actually intervene is to risk everything, police officers afraid to intervene for the same reason, ad infinitum.
The question is not will the conservatives do any better, but to accept wholeheartedly that no one could possibly do any worse if they actually tried.
If you dont believe any of the above, stop a constable and ask them what they honestly think (be prepared to show ID as they may fear you are sent by the internal affairs dept to catch them out and sack them for being “off-message” or somesuch twaddle.
Research. Visit some police websites, visit a main station and ask to have a tour then count up the number of officers in uniform and responding to calls, and the sheer quantity sitting around doing nothing more than trying to justify their comfy role and avoid exposing themselves to real work that would only end up with them risking complaint, injury and criticism from quangos.
I dont advocate voting for any party in particular. I will however vote conservative because no government should be in power for too long, they stop trying, stop listening and think they have the answers without the bother of asking anyone else.