[Mark Davies]

I know the family - perhaps enough said.

I think the difference in this case is that it appears to be a couple of the kids of the household who have come across an illegal firearm somehow and in playing with it one of them has accidentally been killed. A little different - we don't get too many of those, thankfully.

Terrible things in the wrong hands, guns.

 

[Mark Davies]

Clare, I don't think any of my comments are prejudicial in any way. I've no direct connection with the investigation and what I said is in the public domain in the local press already, which I guess you may not have been aware of.

Mr Harris, I take it you just don't like the police? Fair enough, some people don't, but in my experience that rarely seems to stop them picking up the phone to call us when they have a problem they want sorting out. Odd that.

The tag line is just what I tell people I do when they ask at parties and I'd rather not spend the rest of the night having to talk to them about what I actually do. It's close enough to the truth to satisfy my natural sense of honesty!

 

[Mark Davies]

Is there anything we can do to stop the way society is going?

To a very great extent Chris is right - violent crime is nowhere near as bad as some tabloids (and in particular the Daily Mail) would have you believe. Yes, recorded 'violent crime' is on the increase, but there is a very simple explanation for that.

'Violent crime' includes statisitcs for Public Order Act offences - which in most cases is nothing more than drunken idiots mouthing off in the street. Now there has recently been a veritable explosion of recorded offences of this type, but that is only because the police are under pressure from the Home Office to increase a statistic of 'Sanction Detections' - in other words people who are charged with an offence or issued with a fixed penalty ticket. That pressure is passed all the way down the line, from the Home Office to Chief Constables, from Chief Constables to Divisional Commanders, from Divisional Commanders to team Inspectors and from Inspectors to the troops on the ground.

The problem is it suits everyone along the line because all they have to do is ensure that sanction detections increase within their sphere of responsibility in order to look good and get promoted, and all they have to do to achieve that is put pressure on those below them. They don't have to do any actual work, don't need to address any real policing problems - they just have to bully their staff!

So, we now have constables everywhere under extreme pressure to meet detection targets. Now we are not talking about better detection rates - just more detections. So, an officer can either spend two months investigating your burglary to catch the offender and get one detected crime, or he can go out on a Friday night and in a couple of hours issue half a dozen Fixed Penalty Notices to some gobby drunks who at one time would have just been warned off and told to go home or taken to the cells for a night to sober up. The 'offence' of drunk and disorderly has disappeared - evryone now is charged with s5 Public Order - because that is a sanction detection. And that is the only reason why recorded violent crime is on the increase.

It's all part of a fiddle perpetuated by this government to make you think they are dealing with law and order, when in reality they are just destroying your police service.

And none of us are happy about it, but when your job is on the line it's not surprising that many 'collaborate' with the system. I refuse to and it has caused me no end of problems at work, and looks likely to continue to do so. However, I value my integrity and still police to the public's needs rather than the stats auditor's. I only hope that we have a change of government that leaves us alone to get on with the job properly.

So in conclusion, bottom line is it isn't becoming more widespread - however I will admit that the lawless sector of society is becoming more lawless; in the sense that they are committing more serious crime at an early age. That, I think, is down to a rather hands-off society that lets our kids run riot without properly challenging their behaviour. If we let them 'get away with murder' for too long it shouldn't be a surprise when they finally do commit murder, should it?

Anyway, we digress . . .