The family of an armed robbery victim make the same mistake as Tony Martin in claiming that the solution to rising crime is more police.
In days gone by, [Ms Bates, whose mother was shot] said, “there was a bobby on this street. He would come in and have a cup of tea with us”.
Right… “Put down your guns, or I’ll arrest you with this hot cup of tea!”
Mr Blunkett, she said, “needs policemen that are approachable on the streets of Britain … We should not have to live like this. A policeman is a deterrent. That deterrent has gone.”
I’ll tell you what else is a deterrent: A high probability of having a 12 bore shoved in your face by an angry jewellery store owner. Of course, Big Blunkett is happy to go on perpetuating the myth that there can ever be enough police to protect us all.
Mr Blunkett said he wanted lessons learned during Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police’s campaign against gun crime in the black community, and initiatives in south Manchester to be spread across the country.
“The reality of the moment may well be the challenge of guns,” he added.
“But it will not be the reality tomorrow if this Labour government succeeds in getting a third term in office to carry forward our agenda.”
Mr Blunkett also confirmed that police numbers had reached a record high of 136,386, breaking the government’s target by nearly 4,000 six months early.
So everything will be all right as long as we keep voting Labour. They will fix everything! But wait, doesn’t the fact that there are more police and more gun control than ever while still people are being shot in their jewellery stores tell us something?
More police may help, but there can never be enough police. Criminals aren’t stupid. They tend to attack when there aren’t police around. This means that until everyone has his own twenty-four hour personal armed police guard, there will always be a chance that he can find himself under attack and defenceless in some dark or remote place.
People need to be allowed to take responsibility for their own safety. When they stop demanding that others protect them, they will be closer to that goal.
The twin problems of too few police and a lack of gun-toting victims have a quite simple solution. Since nobody complains that the police are all tooled up, all one needs to do is designate everyone without a criminal record a ‘close protection policeman’(their mission being to protect their own person), they can then carry an MP5, CS spray, sidearm etc to protect themselves.
Excellent idea — it might just work if we phase it in gradually over a number of years. Step one: arm the police. Step two: designate a small number of “volunteers”. Step three: Designate more volunteers… On the other hand, step one could prove a bit scary.
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