Our police force needs recruits

and they are not going to get them. They will certainly not get good recruits under the present system.

I often wonder why people want to enter the police force. It seems to be a very negative sort of job. You are there to "serve and protect" as they say in another country but you are also there to enforce the law.

Last week an eighty-eight year old friend of mine was stopped by the police as she drove home from her daughter's house. W... was not doing anything wrong. The police were simply breathalysing people who were driving past. W... did not mind. As she is teetotal she was almost amused by it. I was reminded of the occasion on which the same thing happened to the Senior Cat. One of those doing the breathalysing recognised him as a fellow magician and knew the Senior Cat was strictly teetotal. When the Senior Cat asked if he had to blow into the bag he was told, "No, don't bother. It would be a waste of time." That sort of thing does not often happen.

Police are more likely to be dealing with people who are, at best, irritated by being stopped at a breathalyser unit. There will be people who will try to avoid the unit. There will be people who will get agitated because they have had some alcohol and there will always be the fools who have been drinking and are over the limit. It is one of the essential but largely negative tasks they do. 

They are dealing with speeding, with road accidents, with theft, with arson, with domestic violence and other forms of violence. They have to give death messages. There are occasions on which they need to try and get through traffic where drivers fail to give way to emergency vehicles. They have to deal with "protests" and try to put a halt to trouble before it even starts. 

I have had occasional dealings with them. Those who were fellow magicians or members of Neighbourhood Watch groups and came to visit the Senior Cat sat around the kitchen table with mugs of tea or coffee. I have made sandwiches for them because they have not eaten for hours and this is a short break before going back to all the negativity. 

They do all this and get poorly paid for it. They do all the paper work and go into court hoping that someone will really get punished this time. The guidelines given to the courts mean that nothing happens or there is a meaningless "good behaviour bond". 

Is it any wonder they cannot get recruits to the force? They have dropped the entry standard twice in this past year. Some police are not what I would consider "literate". They cannot cope with the roles they are placed in but there is nobody else to do the job. 

Perhaps if those who demand so much "understanding" of the law breakers would get out of the way and let the courts actually punish the law breakers then policing might not be so difficult.