I AM sure that I am not alone in having little faith in the police service for they fail to carry out their fundamental duties. The primary one being the protection of and to serve the general public in all their needs in accordance with the laws of the country, not to pick and choose which crimes they will investigate and ignoring the ones that do not suit their own agendas, which seems to be the case these days.

However I do have sympathy for them. At times they risk their own personal safety to catch a criminal only for some self opinionated judge or magistrate to pass a derisive sentence that is totally inadequate for the crime. It must be most disheartening. It must make them think “why bother “.

We read of many cases where repeat criminals are given suspended sentence after suspended sentence or worst still incredibly lenient ones. Ones that the general public wince at in desperation. Then you get violent criminals being released halfway through their sentence. It makes the public lose faith in the justice system

The old adage that “the law is for the protection of the people” , no longer applies. If anything it is the complete reverse. Today the law has become the plaything of the judiciary. These people prefer to dispense justice based upon any obscure interpretation of the law they can find in their law books rather than using a common sense approach, that most people understand and feel is appropriate to the crime committed.

The Government has to do something to bring this out of step judiciary to its senses and make it interpret the law so that the man on the street feels that justice is being served otherwise the public, as I have already said, will lose complete faith and trust in the law, if they haven’t already.

Is there much hope? I doubt it. The judiciary, like the civil service, think they are untouchable and above the law. Just look at the case of our Home Secretary who has problems with the civil service as she tries to bring them under control. Who remembers the TV series Yes Minister?

They do say that “truth is sometimes stranger than fiction".

John Armstrong

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