CARDBOARD POLICE - ESSEX NO! HUMBERSIDE - YES!

 30. Sep. 2010. @ 12:00:13 by TheJusticeofthePeace

There are some occasions when the phrase, “words fail me” sums up a reaction to what has been read, seen or heard. Bloggers by their very nature can`t afford to sit motionless at the keyboard paralysed into silence by the sheer lunacy of what information passes before them.

Exactly three weeks ago I mentioned in passing that Essex Police had abandoned the placing of cardboard cut outs of police officers outside shops and petrol stations around the county in an attempt to dissuade offending. Common sense, a faculty increasingly in short supply owing in part to the multicultural implications expressed at the top levels of what is common to eg a British born Caucasian might not be common to a foreign born person of a different ethnic origin, should have indicated the futility and contempt in which such actions would be held. The bosses in the county of the Capri and white stilettos have at least seen sense….eventually…….. and have removed such pantomime figures. 

One would have thought that that attempt at reducing criminal behaviour would not be repeated except perhaps at a Punch and Judy show on the beach at Weymouth if the “protect our children from violence” brigade have not banished it as “corrupting and liable to incite domestic violence”. But the example or lesson has not been learned by police in Hull. A BBC report of that force`s assertion that cardboard police have reduced crime makes interesting reading. I am not a statistician but to state that because two events happen simultaneously one is the cause of the other is sheer nonsense. But this is more than mathematically induced rubbish. It will bring the force into contempt when this play school experience is abandoned in the face of public ridicule. Police have through their own actions lost the position of respect they once held. Instead of looking for short term publicity when financial constraints are squeezing budgets dry Hull police should treat fellow citizens with respect and abandon such an idiotic practice.