9:38am Thursday 29th November 2007
By Peter Luff
We’re lucky in Worcestershire that we don’t suffer from the levels of crime other parts of the country have to endure. But we do have a significant problem with
anti-social and threatening behaviour which really can blight people’s lives.
You will be familiar with the occasional urge to shake those who can’t see the blindingly obvious. I’m having one of those urges at the moment. The people I desperately want to shake into
reality are the Government – they can’t boast about increasing police numbers if they then prevent the police from doing their job. And I want to shake up the parents whose attitude to
their children so often leads to anti-social problems on our streets.
A police officer in Droitwich told me last week of his frustration after stopping a group of around 17 young lads on Halloween and reprimanding one of them for egg-throwing. He was then obliged,
together with another officer, to return to the station and fill in a foot-long form – literally – for each boy. A five-minute warning to a group of boisterous teenagers, who may not even
have realised their activity was anti-social meant two officers spent one -and-a-half hours each on bureaucratic procedures.
This is a ridiculous waste of time and resources. The three hours they spent on forms – insisted on by the Government – would have been much, much better spent patrolling the streets of
Droitwich.
Worcestershire’s police do a fantastic job, but their work is being made ridiculously difficult by bureaucracy. The stupid forms must be scrapped and local police forces made accountable to the
communities they serve, not forced to do the arbitrary bidding of national Government.
But we cannot expect them to end anti-social behaviour among teenagers if they do not have the support of parents. Too often, we turn to the police when we should be levelling the blame at parents
who give their 16-year-old children money to buy alcohol, or who turf them out for the evening for some peace and quiet, telling them not to come home before 11pm.
If we are to tackle anti-social behaviour – and I mean really tackle it, not just cope with it or move it around – then we have to wake up to the reality that the fundamental
responsibility lies with parents, and a fundamental duty of a government is to ensure the police are free to do their job.
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