Good to see that a senior officer has criticised target-driven policing which is sometimes allowed to replace common sense. Peter Fahy (Chief Constable for Cheshire) says police should concentrate on real offenders rather than getting ticks in boxes by dishing out easy cautions. He says that minor playground incidents are sometimes ending up with criminal charges when in former days they would have been dealt with informally or ignored altogether. Another senior officer is reported as saying "the only league table that really counts is what people in our communities think of their police force".
A recent Policing Review by Sir Ronnie Flanagan mentioned a child being arrested for throwing a slice of cucumber from a tuna sandwich at another child. And a peacock damaged a car by pecking at rubber seals. I don't think peacocks can be arrested in this country but the form-filling and box-ticking must have taken up time which would have been better spent elsewhere. The owner is lucky it was a peacock and not a newt (or at least a great crested newt). In that case our nature conservation quangos would have demanded a 100 yard no-go zone cordoned off around the car until the newt had eaten the lot or gone off to find a better home.
