Crime and Neighbourhood Policing

I have just been reading about Amy Newlove, daughter of Gary Newlove and her question to Gordon Brown about why her fathers murderers were given such soft sentences.
(See Link)

The Prime Minister, speaking at the event organised by Key 103, a Manchester radio station, said crime had fallen but there were now more people in prison, which showed sentences had got tougher.

He added: 'I think, in the longer term, neighbourhood policing is the better thing for all of us. We want to see a visible presence of police on our streets.'

I have a point or two to say about what Gordon Brown said.

He says that crime has fallen and that there are more people in prison. Yes there are more people in prison, but Gordon you are letting other criminals out early so the new ones, or those ones you let out early who re offend return to the prison.

Crime hasn't fallen, it has just been reduced by putting certain crimes in a different category, and by using the crime survey and not the proper crime figures.

With all the crimes reported in the news, locally and nationally, the politicians must be hiding the real crime figures. I think it would be frightening to know what the real figures are.

What will happen when we have another murder like that of Gary Newlove. What will their sentence be?
There have been other murders like this before and there will be others in the future. It is obvious that there needs to be stronger sentences for these type of murders, and murders in general.

It doesn't help when we have this Human Rights, 'for criminals', Act, which only seems to help the low life criminals and not the victims and the innocent people of this country.

Gordon says 'neighbourhood policing is the better thing for all of us.'

Gordon i hate to tell you this, but we had neighbourhood policing years ago, but over the years there have been less and less police walking in our communities.

When i was a lad i saw a policemen nearly everyday walking through town and the surrounding areas, and we had a police station in nearly every town. Policing has become centralised, due to a number of factors. One being better communications, and less money, so they think they won't be needing all the police stations scattered around the country.

Now we have these PCSOs who we see out in our towns. PCSOs can only do a fraction of what a fully trained policeman can do. I would rather have 5 fully trained police than 15 PCSOs.

The police, the courts and sentencing has to be radically changed so the general public can feel safe in our homes and our streets again.