Hats off (well, just slightly tilted, anyway) to Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Cheshire, for putting his head above the parapet on violent crime. "We cannot have a society where adults feel scared to go out and challenge youngsters up to no good," he said. "Every night of the week Cheshire officers are engaged in a constant battle against anti-social behaviour and alcohol-induced violence ... it breeds fear and isolation."
He proposed that drink prices should be increased, the legal age for drinking should be raised from 18 to 21 and drinking in the street be banned. He said "We are doing everything we can, within our resources and powers".
This comes after a 47-year-old father of three, Gary Newlove, was kicked to death by a group of young drunks. The company director from Warrington had tried to remonstrate with the group when he saw them damaging a vehicle outside his home.
In another incident on Monday, a 23-year-old Turkish immigrant died after being attacked by two hooded boys he argued with when they threw a half-eaten chocolate bar through the window of his sister's car.
Peter Fahy's comments were widely applauded in the media, and certainly struck a chord in the hearts of ordinary people if the response on radio call-in shows was anything to go by. The Government did not immediately respond to his suggestion that the drinking age be raised, and to be honest The GOS doesn't blame them. They can't stop 13-year-olds from drinking on a regular basis, so why should they think they'll do any better with 18-year-olds?
Tony Blair pledged a decade ago to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", and later pioneered the introduction of so-called ASBOs - anti-social behaviour orders - to try to control unruly youths. These have been an abject failure.
"Our young people drink more and take more drugs than others partly because they can," a researcher at the IPPR think tank said. "Young people need to interact with adults to socially develop, and those that spend time away from adults will more rapidly fall into bad behaviour, or very bad behaviour." There's some truth in this: in other countries, especially those with the strong family traditions common in Catholic societies, young people do seem to spend more of their leisure time involved with their older relatives and friends and consequently are better behaved. Gangs of young people roaming the streets until the small hours is a peculiarly British phenomenon. The Sun newspaper has suggested that parents should be forced to take more responsibility for their children's behaviour, even being arrested if their sons or daughters are involved in crime.
But there is a serious flaw in Mr.Fahy's outburst. The police are not doing everything they can. The unfortunate Gary Newlove's neighbours have been seen on television saying that there had been a problem with gangs in the area for some time.
It's not unreasonable to expect that a well-run police force should do something about this. An obvious remedy is to maintain a permanent police presence on the streets, not an occasional drive-through by a police car but regular foot patrols by officers whose job is to get to know the gang members. Effective policing could break the power of gang leaders who often commit crimes every day of the week, providing ample grounds for arrest and conviction.
And is fear of retaliation by unruly youths the only thing that holds people back from tackling them when they see a crime being committed? No, it's not. In recent years, the police have increasingly arrested and charged victims of crime for "taking the law into their own hands".
In Penzance in June the owner of a hardware shop tried to stop three youths from stealing cans of spray paint. One kicked him in the groin, which provoked him to punch and kick the youth in self-defence. The police arrived, gave the youths fixed penalty notices for shoplifting, then charged the shopkeeper with assault. He was advised to plead guilty by police officers who told him he could face six months in jail if he didn't.
In February, a Bridlington chip-shop owner had a similar experience, but luckily for him the crown court judge had more sense than the police. When a youth smashed his shop window, the owner and his son, a former Royal Marine, chased the boy, caught him and flagged down a police car. The boy lied to the police, who then arrested both men and charged them with kidnap, when all they had done was to detain the youth in their car until the police arrived. The judge threw the case out because he said a lawful citizen's arrest had been made.
In both instances the police were willing accomplices in the criminals' triumph.
In 1829 Sir Robert Peel laid down the "nine principles of policing". One says that the police should "maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen".
In other words, the police should remember whose side they are on.
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