You are of course correct, but we also see, usually highlighted by the BBC news, really stupid incidents where the Police are very obviously wrong and instead of calming the situation realizing they are wrong pull batons and make things far worse.
I know retired coppers and they all say training and selection is not what it was, the downgrade in uniform has not helped and the lack of a local bobby who knew the area and the people in the area he/she worked, gained trust from law abiding residents and got good intel from them is a mistake.
Take the incident with the 10 year old and the knife, they came sirens blaring, there was no need for traffic reasons, did not leave the car and all they had to do was call the number used to report the incident and they would have been told where he was hiding.
Not doing so and not following up at all with me after reporting the incident, seeing exactly what they did, completely gave me the impression that making a report is a waste of time. I would probably not bother again.
The Police need to find a way to regain respect from law abiding citizens, interact with them when reports are made and actually look like they are interested in dealing with any report made. Otherwise like me people will lose interest in reporting crime.
There will undoubtedly be incidents where the coppers are wrong or simply being a bit useless (it does seem to be the younger ones, experience goes a long way in policing).
But of course across the country there'll be thousands of instances every week where kids get pulled up, and many of them will be Black, especially in city centres. You'll never see any of those many incidents where kids talk back/ignore/insult the coppers because they don't get recorded by the kids (or at least not put online).
You'll only get to see the ones where a copper 'messed up' in some way. The other thing is that if a copper finally loses his rag and says something stupid, you won't get to see the preceding five mins where the kid was being a disruptive pain in the arse, you'll only see the 'money shot' of the copper being a fool.
It seems to me that with some kids, if a copper quite legitimately or for the best-intended of reasons, pulls up a kid to have a word, the coppers instantly get a load of attitude or even verbal abuse. Frequently their job must seem pretty impossible. You rarely get to see that plastered all over the evening news.
It's ended up being a Mexican stand-off, there needs to be work done from
both sides, and communities need to take some ownership of problems within them, not just turn a blind eye because it's
probably the fedz wantin' to fuck up their shit.Your own experience of coppers not following up something you personally witnessed, which might end up being on the news in a few weeks for all the wrong reasons, is simply not good enough on their part. I would urge you to follow that up, perhaps even escalating it to your local police & crime commissioner? Good luck and stay safe
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