Essi Ahari, District Inspector for Colwyn Bay, and Dewi Roberts, his colleague in Ruthin, have drawn my attention to the new North Wales Police “Balance your Bobbies” website, which enables users to feed back their local policing priorities and see how well the police are doing in meeting them.
The site is easy to use, and fun, and I’d recommend you to give it a go.
The site may be fun and the idea a good one in principle.
The problem is that the politically correct police force has always insisted that any input to the police must be representative of public opinion. That is to say in terms of a spread of the population, ethicity etc.
This website cannot be shown to be representative because there is no way for people to signify their age, gender, ethnicity etc.
Therefore we may each show the balance that we believe is correct but there is no cohesion to the collective view.
To put it another way if the police are going to sway their policing priorities on the views expressed on this ByB website, then they should equally have swayed their priorities on some of the representations made at Police Authority public consulation meetings but they refused saying that such representations were not representative of public opinion.
I am willing to take part in this and have done so already but remain to be convinced about its’ long term viability for the reasons stated.
I too have completed the site’s questionaire and wonder about the represention of of all completing it. What a mire political correctness gets us into. Never mind about ethnicity etc., what about the burglars, drug dealers, graffiti “artists” and anti law and order types who will also respond?
How is it that the police still have no idea what the priorities of the public are and have to waste time on activities like this instead of getting out onto the streets and performing Police Duty as laid down by Robert Peel? Is this site an indication of how out of touch they are with the people who pay them?