Your correspondent Martin Roach (‘My confidence in the police is zero’, Your Views, January 29) has complained about policing in the London Borough of Barnet, but obviously fails to understand the ethos of contemporary policing by Barnet Borough Command. It has little to do with upholding the law and even less to do with protecting the public, as the prime concern is for police officers to make their ‘guv’ look good by helping him to present a truly impressive clear-up rate to an admiring public and to our gullible elected representatives. Then the ‘guv’s’ name will be put forward for the Queen’s Police Medal (QPM), an OBE or a Knighthood.

Meanwhile, what is happening in the real world? Example: A hungry, homeless man witnessed by police officers stealing a bread roll from a sandwich shop would be a dead cert for arrest and prosecution; but if you (a member of the public) report a crime committed against you, you will be told (a) “It’s a civil offence – see a solicitor”; (b) If the perpetrator lives within half-a-mile of where you live: “We’re treating this as a neighbour dispute”; (c) “It’s not serious enough to warrant much priority”; or (d) “We’ll take the details, but we haven’t got the resources to follow it up”, etc.

In my case, three years ago, a neighbour (who cannot be named for legal reasons) stole a quantity of paving materials from my garden. Two police officers responded to my 101 call, and one of them looked me in the face and said: “It’s a civil matter.” Excuse me, but hasn’t theft been a crime in this country since the Roman times?

Then, last year, the same neighbour (who in the interim had been committing numerous other criminal offences against me, all of which were duly reported to the police) attacked me from behind, knocked me to the ground and kicked me repeatedly to the head. When I was finally able to get away and make a 999 call, a total of four police officers turned up, and two of them kept me standing on my doorstep, in a very traumatised state and within sight and earshot of my assailant, while they interrogated me for one hour.

The police finally left without making an arrest and (as I subsequently found out) without even recording that a crime had been committed. Half an hour afterwards, I could have collapsed and died from a brain haemorrhage and the verdict would have been ‘misadventure’ because there was no record of a criminal assault.

However, things like this won’t stop Barnet Borough Command from presenting themselves as being on top of crime, with their posters bragging about the number of wide-eyed and legless drunks and the number of drug addicts, stoned out of their minds, that they have been able to arrest. Impressive! Put the borough commander’s name forward for the QPM!

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