The police

Its quite clear that last week was a public order disaster.

Its also clear that many people who thought the police would protect them were bitterly disappointed, whether a small shop owner who has their livelihood stolen or the women forced to hand over their wedding rings in restaurants that were terrorised by rampaging gangs.

Most commentators now accept that the TV images of the police standing by watching looting in the early phase of the public order disaster.

Clearly the police made mistakes, very big ones with consequences that have cost at least 5 lives and a massive amount of damage and theft.

But it doesn't seem to be the officers on the ground. They seemed to lack direction from above, not courage or determination.

Indeed their bravery is being used to hide behind for senior officers trying to deflect criticism. Some of the standard debating ploys are being used:

1. detail - you can always rely on using more detail to discredit your critics;
2. imply that your critics are armchair critics- that always works wheel, and ;
   
3. claim responsibility for the parts that worked ( in this case on the technicality that police commanders gave all the orders, ignoring the fact they did so under considerable pressure from politicians who returned from their holidays [ more on that in the next post ] ).

The senior police officers are also trying to have a good crisis of confidence by using it to avoid making efficiency improvements in the way the police are run.

The leadership of the police have lost the confidence of a very large section of the public. Those senior police officers who rose high in the ranks during the New Labour years appear to be the worse.

Clearly there needs to be new leadership to restore trust and reform the police. The government needs to make sure this happens. They must ignore the pleading interspaced with threats from those who served the old order instead of the people.