When I was a child, the police were respected. They patrolled our streets singly, wearing the traditional 'bobby's helmet' and carrying a truncheon. Their only link to their station was via the strategically placed police telephone boxes. They were helpful and friendly, chatted to passers by and gave everyone a feeling of security.
Today, many patrol in pairs, or more, and wear a frightening array of paraphernalia; all manner of protective clothing and a vast array of weaponry. They can call on assistance through their police radios and can monitor us all through their 'bodycams'. They appear unfriendly and distant, avoid the gaze of passers by and far from engendering a felling of security, engender feelings of threat and fear.
Despite this obvious increase in the extent of their personal protection, it's being reported that they are unhappy, feel under pressure and can't cope. Those who find themselves patrolling alone are complaining that they aren't safe and don't like it; most officers, according to a survey, complain that they've "been exposed at least one traumatic experience in their career", with 62% of those surveyed claiming to have had such an experience in the last 12 months.
Well, poor old them.
Policing has clearly changed over the years as our society appears to have become less respectful of authority figures and more violent. However, the change in the 'Bobby on the beat' has been even more profound. They do not engender respect and feelings of security, but fear. Their appearance as a sort of para-military force does nothing to render them approachable and the expansion of the number of laws for which the public can be hounded for breaking hasn't helped either. Yes, there are some nasty people out there - terrorists, drug traffickers, knife or gun wielding thugs - but they're a tiny minority of the population and are mostly confined to the larger conurbations. That the police in parts of London may need greater protection does not mean that those in rural Wiltshire have to dress themselves up in the same 'wild west' fashion.
As for having traumatic experiences, isn't that what being in the police, and the other emergency services, is all about ? Anyone who can't cope with a bad experience shouldn't be in the police. Actually, in what job aren't their the occasional traumatic experiences ? The sudden and unexpected death of a colleague, finding oneself under extreme threat for being loyal to your boss, being issued with an illegal redundancy notice by a bullying chief executive, losing a parent and sibling while trying to care for a distraught mother and hold down a senior position; these are just some of my "traumatic experiences" from a career in public service but I didn't whinge, I got on with it.
Somewhere in the past, someone talked about "getting back to basics". That is what is needed now. Stop the insane proliferation of laws, get rid of the body armour, pepper spray, tasers and the rest, and let our police go back to good old fashioned policing. Is that really too much to ask ?
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