What do our Chief Constables spread on their toast?

Peter Fahy 

  

 

           Mike Craik   

             

Bernard Hogan  Howe

I sometimes wonder just what our Chief Constables are spreading on their toast at breakfast time.

  One result is that the synchromesh linking their synapses and vocal chords is in desperate need of repair.

Last year the top cop in Cheshire, Peter Fahy suggested some solutions to  under-age boozing.
Increase the  tax on booze; stop supermarkets from the aggressive marketing of alcohol and  increase the age at which it lawful to supply drink. But then he stepped completely out of reality by suggesting that under- age drinking was a "child protection issue" and parents must take action to stop it or face "sanctions" from the care system.  Though passing through the care system is one way to ensure that  children booze, take drugs and end up before the courts.  There the Magistrates are only too willing to warehouse them in Young Offender Institutions where they will get their hands on more drugs and return to society more competent criminals.

Rather than coming out with this sort of drivel Fahy ought to be looking at the piss-poor clear up rates- about a quarter of all reported crimes are "detected" in his bailiwick!

On to  Northumbria's Chief Constable Mike Craik.

Last month his solution to anti- social behaviour was  bright suggestion that anyone who breached the provisions of an ASBO, however trivial,  must be locked up. Those who were subject to the orders were, according to Craik, in the "last chance saloon". A barmy idea. Not only because it would add thousands to our already disgracefully full jails, but that such suggestion would remove from the court the ability to sentence each case on its merits. Bad in principle and bad in practice Mr Craik.

And now last week Chief Constable of Merseyside Bernard Hogan Howe came up with this piece of nonsense.
What he wants is the European extradition warrant, which facilitates  the speedy extradition of suspects within the European Union, to be extended to allow European police officers to extradite for questioning.

At the moment, there's nothing to stop any police officer travelling within the EU and invite the local police to assist in questioning a suspect without hauling him or her back home. Mr Hogan Howe seems to have forgotten that by 2010, the European Evidence Warrant will make it easier to transfer evidence within the EU.  But the idea that English police officers will be able to put their size sixteen boots on German soil remove a German citizen, "render" him back to the UK for interrogation just isn't going to happen.
It seems to me unlikely that other EU members would agree to legislative framework- protocols as suggested by Hogan Howe are not good enough-to allow their citizens to be taken to a state that over the past decade has stripped it's citizens of too many rights.
And on the flip side. Can you just imagine the Sun's  headlines when  a couple of doctors are  hauled off for questioning to say Portugal over the death of their daughter?
And by the way Mr Hogan Howe's,  clear up rate for all crime, at 29%,  is hardly better than his Cheshire colleague .