Police -Faulty Thinking

We are forced to realise that the police decision making process is currently in some disarray, since the blindingly obvious mess they made during rioting recently. And it wasn't just in London. The other forces may moan that a lack of resolution in London's initial response, led to copy cat attacks in their area. But it doesn't explain their lack of resolve.

The groupthink in police circles today is clearly common and faulty. Indeed, it seems that as the force has become more 'intellectual' it has also become mired in a 'process block', where it cannot make a decision but rather spends time 'thinking about it'. A bit too much 'what would Marx do' I feel.

I'm not entirely sure what conclusion a 'risk assessment' would come to when considering confronting rioters. And maybe you shouldn't be sucking the end of a ball point pen, trying to fill out the forms, whilst the riot is happening. At Waterloo, Wellington knew he had to choose the ground and deploy his forces to best advantage. After that it was going to be down to the old basics; shooting and local command.

In a police deployment they rarely get to choose the ground, but they also ignore the basics; they don't want to be horrible and use force (even with rioters) and they certainly don't hold with local command. Not while CCTV, helicopter cameras and radios are available, for nice, warm, safe control rooms to 'control'. Though, when acting in support of politicians, attacking a peaceful march by farmers and middle and working class people (Blair - 'they won't vote for me anyway'), they seem completely at ease with force and local control.

No, there has been a fundamental change in the role of the police since it raised its proportion of degree qualified officers. And nowhere is this more glaring than with guns. There is a shooting, people desperately need help and the police won't attend, for their own safety and the civilians saying the gunmen has left, may be being forced to say that. Which could be true, but what would people say if they weren't under duress and the gunman had actually left?

Then we have police officers shooting dead a man with a chair leg in a bag, because a member of the public thought it might be a gun. This unconfirmed, unqualified opinion became fact in the minds of the police. And that is, quite simply the most dire faulty thinking. If it wasn't so serious, we could only otherwise conclude that their training was supplied by Baldrick.