How town should look

From William Emslie.

AS a stakeholder in what acting police chief David Warcup calls our ‘night-time economy’, here’s what I want it to ‘look like’.

It looks like a town in which known trouble-spots are visibly policed by beat-bobbies. In which idiots who can’t drink without using their fists are arrested and, if necessary, excluded from licensed premises. In which those who launch into unprovoked attacks or carry weapons are taken off the streets altogether.

It does not look like a police state. It is patrolled by people, not CCTV and other intrusive surveillance.

It does not have riot squads enforcing Minden Place apartheid whenever there’s a footie match on.

But to tip a conciliatory nod at Graham Power, it is a society in which law-enforcement policy is driven by good old-fashioned, common sense policing, not by buzzwords and empty waffle.

Not an easy task, I know, but the principle’s hardly rocket science.

The men and women who, by and large, do a skilled job in keeping our streets safe must feel embarrassed to be associated with their boss’s fatuous psychobabble. I wish them the best of luck.