As the Powers of the Police Increase...

...It seems their authority actively declines.

Surrey Police detectives suspected that a local gypsy site was being used to store stolen goods. They organised a police helicopter to fly over the site and observe activity, as well as locating entrances and exits and where the goods might possibly be stored.

The helicopter flew over the site everyday for a week as the officers prepared their raid.

Yesterday, at around 10pm, a group of gypsies scaled the 4ft wall surrounding the Surrey Police helipad at Fairoaks Airport. They threatened control room staff before attacking the £5 million aircraft with axes and baseball bats.

Six windows were smashed and tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage caused. The helicopter is the only one covering Surrey's one million residents.

Police say that security at the site will now be 'reviewed', but they have no descriptions of the perpetrators.

I find this very surreal, and symptomatic of the lack of respect for the police in Britain. However, that respect is missing for a reason - the gypsies must have known the risk of getting caught was minimal.

Even if they are caught, what will happen to them?

This problem was touched upon yesterday when Jacqui 'Himmler' Smith, who calls herself the Home Secretary, addressed the Police Federation's annual conference.

The Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, openly mocked her. Its chairman, Paul McKeever, said that officers were 'sick to death' of seeing the same criminals over and over again.

Some studies estimate that around 100,000 career criminals are responsible for 75-80% of all crime committed in Britain.

McKeever slammed what he calls the 'hokey cokey' justice system - criminals go inside then come straight back out again:

'It's in out, in out, let all the prisoners out. In out, in out, shake the system about.'

He makes some very valid points. The politicians constantly change and reform the system, but their commitment to failed liberal ideas about crime and punishment stay intact. These tend to be found at the root of most modern problems, so it doesn't matter what you do to the system - the failure is systematic.

Therefore the outcome is always the same. A year or two ago, Justice Secretary Jack Straw was visiting a men's prison. One of the inmates told him that prison was too soft, in terms of conditions and as a punishment.

Straw, obviously, knew better and snapped:

"I personally feel being deprived of one's liberty is punishment enough."

Of course you do Jack - but you don't live in the real world. You don't come from a place where three meals a day, a roof, a bed and regular pool and television actually constitute quite a nice life compared to the one you have - provided you can look after yourself, of course.

We've spent forty years listening to what the likes of Straw and Smith 'feel' - and it generally revolves around treating criminal behaviour as a disease and putting more and more restrictions on the liberties of the rest of us in order to cover up the system's many shortcomings.

I'll leave you with some more quotes from Mr McKeever - who would make a fine Home Secretary:

During his speech, Mr McKeever branded the belief that constant modernisation and reshaping of the police will solve crime more effectively as a 'big lie'.
He said: 'We and the people we serve are being failed by the rest of the criminal justice system.
'A criminal justice system that isn't working and is seen by many people as being there to protect offenders' interests above the interests of law-abiding members of the public.

'Rather than addressing the real problem of ineffective sanctions, ineffective education programmes and ineffective rehabilitation the focus is on us, the police, to detect the same people more often and bring them before the courts again and again.'
Mr McKeever said the police are left in a 'constant state of flux' as politicians constantly demand change.

He added: 'This means we will never be left alone as we can never be seen as fit for purpose, otherwise politicians would themselves have to be answerable to the electorate as to why crime goes on being committed.

'In effect, in the eyes of politicians, the police are the problem that needs to be solved, when the reality is that it is the criminals who are the problem and we are the solution."as faced a tough time at the conference.