Peter Hitchens: Scrap the Police and Start Again 

As ex Met officer, sadly he has a point

Back in the day, the police were an extension of parents and people in authority. Now they are awful.....not respect worthy.

Couldn’t agree more Peter the police don’t prevent crime anymore but they are a reactive force which isn’t much help when you’ve already been stabbed

Absolutely correct in every point. Back to being real "peelers" and "bobbies" is the only way to get respect back from the public.

I have said this for years..it was once the best in the world, breaks my heart..🇬🇧🇬🇧

They are no longer 'police'. They are mercenaries!

I retired from the police 25 years ago. I dont recognise the service anymore. They seem to hate the public theyre paid to serve. They dont deal with crime or engage with the community. Disband them. Not fit for purpose. They have no respect. Nothing but legalised thugs on ego trips.

I agree with Peter Hitchens but sadly it will not happen as its far too sensible.

Now an old man I remember all of that and can also remember resigning when the Police I joined stop being the Police the public deserved. It takes no skill to bugger something up, but a lot of skill to put it right..

Mr Hitchens looks very relaxed here!!! I could not agree with him more. These days when I think of the British police I am increasingly anxious for the future.

My father’s only ever interaction with the police was as the result of a traffic accident caused by the police speeding and then blatantly lying about it in court. Strangely I had exactly the same experience forty years later. In both cases, their perjury was proved but no further action was taken.

Needs tearing down to the ground and rebuilding with values and integrity from the top first

At this point, I just want to know when are the police coming to our homes to ask if we're hiding any anti-vaxers under the floor boards...

The bobby on the beat was during a time when the UK was, more or less, a high trust ethnically homogeneous society. You can have diversity or order. You can't have both.

I love the absolute bluntness of Peter Hutchins.

The Home Office have qualified criminologists; real experts that know well about amplification spirals, and yet policing again and again inflames matters rather than peaceably monitoring and serving the public. 🤔

Totally agree, the police must be disarmed, de motorized and be back in the their traditional uniforms and do what "Dixon of Dock Green" used to do. The military side of policing done by a combined force from our armed services and called the National Guard for example

Makes a lot of sense, start a new constabulary with new people and a completely new charter, put them on the street walking beats like they used to, then gradually have them take over the functions of the current 'service' as it settles in and grows.

I never see the police anymore, my local town closed the police station. I think they must be relying on CCTV these days?

We have Gestapo policing now.

Could say the same for a lot of institutions lately

Could not agree more with Peter every point makes perfect sense, especially the police stations, police living in the community, sloppiness and looking like Starship Troopers.

Whenever I see those armed police, I always feel the urge to drop my bag as I walk past. It would be interesting to see if I could pull off the jape without being turned into a tea bag.

I find myself applauding Mr Hitchens stance on many subjects on an almost weekly basis. His slot on Mike Grahams Talk radio show is much anticipated by my small team of fellow landscape workers. On some subjects i am firmly on his much missed brothers side but latterly he has been a breath of thought provoking fresh air.

He is spot on

Peter Whittle you are such a good and respectful interviewer which makes Peter Hitchens clearly seem at ease. He can sometimes come across as a bit constipated, but not here. A good interview. Well done.

Everything is policed in Britain today except crime.

Always enjoy Peter whittles channel, and really love listening to peter Hitchens on every level! Definitely. Need to reopen police stations and why were they shut anyway???? Thanks for sharing Paula in sussex

Right on the ball.

They swear an oath to the public not to the government.

If we had a 'New' proper Police FORCE, we would have to re-instate standards, no lowering these to allow for Ethnics, and short , fat women. No Black Police association either, one Police Force, to enforce one Law.

I've lived in north London at the same address for 20 years, 15 of those I never had a robbery or an issue that required police. For the first five years I took pains to lock my upstairs door out of the fear i would be robbed. Once I realised this as basically a manufactured fear I stopped. One day i got a call from a neighbour letting me know I had intruders, they ransacked the house, made a ruckus and took only one thing. Luckily I did not need to call the police, they were the intruders. They had smashed in the communal door, despite my neighbours having a key and the landlord having a keybox outside. The smashed in the upstairs door, which as I said was unlocked. The took an unlocked lock out of said door, the only reason for which I can fathom is to cover the fact it wasn't mangled when the broke in, because the door was unlocked. If they had literally thought to reach out and try the door handle, something any reasonable person would do, they could have walked in. Their justification, I had blackout blinds and an air conditioning hose out the window. I also have family members with drug issues, guilt by association as its called. They found nothing of course. Despite a team of over ten with sniffer dogs. However even had I been running a grow house, what is the justification for smashing down a door without first trying it? I never got any type of compensation, I had to repair the door and frame myself, there is a battering ram mark in my front door to this day and I started locking my door after that no longer feeling safe... because of the people who are supposed to make me feel safe. The armed police/thugs as they are called should not be culled, they are/can be useful. They should not be patrolling though. They should be on show in key places but stationary, so we, the people they "serve" can avoid having to see what the world has forced them to become. I am certain their presence has deterred someone from a terrorist act. I am also certain I don't want them harassing some 20 year olds who get a little rambunctious on a night out at the southbank (I have seen this). As for the 15 police who do usually turn up, their numbers and general attitude tend to make such situations worse, not improve them. 15 police to control one or two 17 year olds is only going to raise the aggression level, its common sense/fight or flight in action. Again were there a visible presence of police on patrol, it would deter petty crime/reduce stats and numbers across the board. We do need true police though, not just anti terrorist special weapons. Community police do not count, again from experiences of those close to me/personal/word of mouth they are ineffectual and worse in most cases outright corrupt/not trained to police or to assist the community but in ways that seem engineered to cause issues. There was a time when a British booby was a symbol of law and order, now they are symbols of fear and ignorance.

I had an outbuilding broken into and reported it to the police. They told me straight away that they would take no action ; which I expected , but I wanted the crime to at least be included in official statistics. The infuriating thing , though , was that a couple of days later they contacted me and asked if I would complete a questionnaire rating their ` response `. I declined because it would have involved the use of too many profanities !

Stop all police pensions as well. Let them report the 'theft' of their pensions and get a crime number...

I agree with him.

Bravo Peter ! A Man with intelligence and common sense !

Excellent discussion. Just re-reading your book The Abolition of Liberty.

The screening process for recruitment also needs replacing. Too often the police are where bullies and malcontents end up to give themselves a sense of power over people.

Absolutely agree with everything you say

My house has been broken in to twice.phoned 999 no one turned up.the police phoned me the next day and asked if i had cctv i said no.and that was it couldent help me....

100% Peter. It's all about someone in high places having the spunk to stand up and implement what you have so eloquently stated. We've lost our way with the Police service.They were much more respected a generation ago.

The police are supposed to be ordinary members of the public deputised to deal with matters of law and order on the public's behalf, rather than having all and sundry upholding the law (which we're all actually entitled to do). The police are NOT supposed to be the Government's edict-enforcers controlling the public and imposing compliance. That they have lost their way is all too apparent and they need to be replaced.

The preeminent problem remains though that if the police service was hypothetically dissolved and we simply ‘started again’ those appointed to undertake this vital and considerable task would be, as Rod Liddle once deftly put it on this very channel, “seven degrees of Shami Chakrabati”. Inevitably there are already plans afoot amongst certain Democrat-controlled parts of the U.S. to ‘augment’ the police with a more ‘community orientated’ counterpart. This new service would be bestowed with a mandate to try and ‘understand’ certain elements of the criminal fraternity rather than arrest them. The pitfalls to this specious orthodoxy are obvious of course and if one considers the police to be inherently corrupt now, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet if the ‘People’s Militia’ come to be! Personally I’m amenable to a reconstituted police service but the ideologues must be kept _well away_ from their establishment. If not we’ll simply have the equivalent of a politically scrofulous paramilitary force, recruited from candidates most definitely _not_ selected for their honesty, integrity and proficiency, to (selectively) enforce law and order. A deeply troubling prospect to anyone that doesn’t read _The Guardian_ …. ;)

Sadly, in Canada the the situation is somewhat similar.

We need local Sheriffs accountable to the local population. You don’t protect and serve people, you get chucked out on your arse. This is the way.

As an ex officer who wore a uniform and walked a beat; dealing with problems as they arose, I have to agree with Peter he is so right. Police now are a poor shadow of what we were.

Peter hitchens my hero

Peter is bang on the problem with policing today, or at least, the utter lack of it.

The Police force forgot about community policing and have become a political establishment police force

If you think that the police, if scrapped, are going to be redesigned with the benefit of the people in mind, you are absolutely off your rocker.

The nearest police station to my village is about 15 miles away in a town that isn't even the nearest town to the place where I live.

When Robert Peel announced his intention to set up a met police force in London he faced massive public opposition because the Victorians believed it could lead to an unaccountable bully boy force and a police state. They were a smart lot, those Victorians. Until the police arrived the public relied on 'watchmen' - these were hand picked members of the public who were noted for their bravery and integrity. Maybe that's where a future model may lie.

I live in a town with a population of over 30,000 but the ‘Police Station’ is only open part time (4 half-days a week).

Recruitment policy, common purpose trained.

Well said Peter the public has completely lost faith in the police. Give the English people what they want. We want to respect the police and we want them to do our bidding. We are paying their wages.

Same thing Black Lives Matter were saying, we have more in common with each other than the ruling class

Absolutely brilliant concept Peter! Excellent analysis as always on this channel

We now have a *'State Police Force'* in the UK. They exist to enforce the political will of the government. In the past they protected the people, but now they protect the political policies.

The police stopped doing their job sometime in the 1980s

Good idea and his best since having the jab and becoming a hypocrite

Peter Hitchens - full of practical advice, eh?

A relative resigned & took early retirement as being white, male & straight he had no prospect of further promotion. He told me they have become an extension of social services & we all know the mistakes they have made, especially up north with all the grooming gangs.

Almost there Peter, almost there!

Agree, let's get a partition going.

Perhaps the police force is now not meant to protect individual citizens, but to protect the state against it's citizenry.

Nearly saying 'defund the police'. Once a Leftie ..

I'm not a fan of this guy at all but he makes a fantastic point the corporate police, heavily armed policy enforcers are not fit for purpose, they need to be taken back to the principles of Robert Peel not as a para military wing of which ever political party is charge .....

The rot in the modern police began with the closing of places like Hendon and doing away with section houses and local police stations. It was also a huge mistake to do away with certain standards in the name of equal ops.

Its happening in medicine too. Who do the doctors serve?

...with new uniforms by Jean Paul Gaultier. Or, if things go south dare I say Hugo Boss.

scrap the NHS and start again while we are at it.

" West Side Story " When you're a Cop, You're a Cop all the way From your first Busted skull To your last full days pay . If you're a Cop, When the shit hits the fan, You got bangers around, You're a Klan kinda man . You're never alone, You're never unprotected. You only fight for your own- When empathy's expected, Humanity gets disrespected! Then you are set With a capital $, Which you'll never forget Your the first to get paid When you're a Cop, You stay A Cop ! When you're a Cop, You're the top Dog around , You're the gold-medal kid With the heavyweight crown! When you're a Cop, You swing at the littlest thing. Little boy, you're a man; Little man, you're a king! The Cops are in gear, Our Steroids are a tickin' ! The Blacks'll steer clear, They know ev'ry Civilian could be Our next victim . Here come the Cops Like a bat out of hell- Someone gets in our way, Someone gets sent to hell ! Here come the Cops , Little world, step aside, Better go Quarantine , Better run, better hide! We're drawin' the line, So keep your opinions hidden! We're hangin' a sign Says "Freedom is Forbidden," And we ain't kiddin'! Here come the Cops- Yeah! And we're gonna beat Every last Fuckin' mutt On the whole Fuckin' street! On the whole-! Ever-! Mother-! Lovin'-! Street!

Wishful thinking from a nostalgic group of senior cits, I'm afraid, Peter! When the only people you can call on for help are the very people you wouldn't want to speak to, or approach, and are find hard to find when you want one because they are all in fast cars or behind riot masks, helmets, shields and weapons, then we have to help each other. The cops at demos for example wear M.P. helmets - military or militarised agents for the new state order...

Did you see the cop here in Australia who shirt fronted a 70 year old grandma, just standing there with a flag, knocking her backwards, smashing her skull on the ground and then he and his offsider sprayed her in the face with pepper spray from 2 foot away? Guess what happened to the cops, nothing

The sound quality is awful.

In fairness to the Police, for decades now everything has been made their responsibility. They simply cannot be all things to all people and that part of it is not their fault. But, yes, get back to the police proper. All the welfare, government boot-boys, pronoun awareness, mental health, etc… that’s someone else’s department and should be attended too, if needs be, by them and not the police.

Sadly after years of believing otherwise I conclude UK Police is unfit for purpose. Let down consistently by them.

Sounds good to me

What has appalled me of late, the police have taken political stands. Police should be politically neutral

Why does evryone refer to the Police Service when we want a Police Force.

To some extent, Peter Hitchens is asking for the type of police we have in the United States, at least in parts of the United States. What he wants is not like the US insofar as he wants mainly unarmed police. But it is similar in the sense of police having local units and each small town or suburb running its own police system. In the US, the so-called reformers seem to want it the way they apparently have it in Britain with a nationalized system, which would be very much like a military occupation. In the US, of course, the real problem arises in what we call our "inner cities", the high crime areas with numbers of killings similar to what might go on in other countries during a civil war. It seems that a fairly large percentage of our population, and perhaps populations in all modern societies, no long even tries to respect individual rights, human life, property rights, or personal boundaries. If you want something, take it. If the owner objects, kill him. That seems to be the new normal in many places and I am not sure that any police system can handle that well. And, of course, we have a huge number of weapons, probably more than one gun person in the US. Though it is true that guns do not kill people, we do pay enough attention to the question of whether some people are unfit to own guns. In our smaller towns and cities there is much less of a problem. But for our big cities, we probably should apply some of Hitchens' logic. Break up the huge city police departments and have semi-independent neighborhood run units so that they would be more like small town.

There is the issue of escalation. Because the police, over the years, have expanded their arsenal of equipment the criminals have done so too, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to compete. Had the police stuck to the old fashioned policing, ie preventative policing, there would be the need for all the equipment and arms…

What do the police actually do? I see them on TV sometimes (taking the knee and standing around as people vandalise statues), but I haven't seen a police foot patrol in my life.

So far made sense

We should keep the police and get rid of the political left

U would also need a justice system replaced

Boris will do nothing he is impotent.

Police ? Gestapo, comes to mind !

Peter Hitchens is so sensible...probably why i never see his views on the woke BBC...they'd rather interview Greta Thunberg.

and politicians...

I thought they disbanded after Sting left to pursue a solo career.

County Constabularies are positively Victorian and outdated. Each Constabulary doesn’t share info with other Constabularies. Too much brass, poor training on the law and very costly. Total reform needed.

Great idea! Pay me off (they'd have to, as well as change the law to be able to) I retire early, and emigrate to Canada (where I originally hail from). What's not to like?

The vast problem with Hitchens is his total and utter intolerance and ignorance around the subject of cannabis. He has opinions from the 1950s on this most important issue, which is also a test of one's reasonable-ness. No-one should want the proverbial pendulum to swing too far the other way - there are plenty of nasty types who would be cutting people's hands off for minor offences very quickly. Things did not 'go wrong in the 1960s with all that permissive behaviours' - this is how tinpot armchair generals frame the argument as they drink themselves to death. The rot is far deeper and far more morally challenging for, what I find to be, a rather one dimensional and small minded man. But then, he was dumb enough to be a revolutionary Marxist when he was young, and that sort of folly is rarely transcended. So no, let's not 'start again'. Good policing is not some sort of mystery or dark art, we all know what is wrong. Remove this mind virus, and get back to normal policing as we had before the woke-revolution.

bring the ex military into the police

Yes I agree,but what do we do in the meantime while the new force is being formed and trained. If you recruit new ones before the old ones go the old ones will just corrupt the new. I was in the police in the 1970s . In those days every crime was attended and investigated by the CID ,uniform kept the peace ,dealt with accidents , domestic situations ,nuisance etc. We paraded 12 Constables ,mainly men, 8 patrolled the town on foot and 4 were in two cars ,one for the town area ,one for the area outside the town precincts . It worked. We were inspected at parade,were told about all the outstanding incidents,stolen cars etc. There was strict discipline. If an inspector above came in to the parade room we stood up. If a senior constable above sergeant rank was met on the street we saluted. If we were not on our beat there would be explanations required. All premises were checked regularly. Any car travelling in the early hours was stopped ,we went into road ,held up our hand and checked it out. Sometimes we did point duty,directing traffic . We stayed on the street until clicking off time . If we wanted our refreshments or to do paper work we had to contact the control in the station. Any trouble on the streets was stopped quickly because the patrolling copper was there,and help was in a street nearby, or the town car. Before finishing duty we had to make sure that every thing we had been sent to had a result. If you went home without leaving a result ,you were called back. Every report of crime or incident was entered in the occurrence book, the result was entered on the opposite page. Yes there was less crime but partly that was because there was a strong police presence. No tattoos on show, no military look, helmets unless in a car , no sunglasses unless driving , no hands in pockets . It was a good police force and it worked. Most forces were like this,even the Met was respectable.

Just listening to his brother’s voice makes me miss Christopher

the older the dafter

Lol how’s that supposed to work then? Mind you they might as well not exist anyway; they’re just spectators at best.

Regretfully, Peter is probably more than 50% right - and losing 50% of a police force etc is bad.