Old fashioned bobbying will clean up appalling policing - Yorkshire Post Letters

What a shambles the current police service is today. Undetected crime. Stabbings, unsafe streets. Forces in special measures. Officers being charged with offences of a sexual nature.

The list of failings is endless.

Speaking as someone who served in four forces over a period of 30-plus years, I have to say I am shocked and appalled, and that is putting it mildly.

Let me make it very clear I am in no way criticising the members serving but successive governments who have allowed it to happen.

In my town we had an inspector, two sergeants and five or six bobbies plus five country beat men covering surrounding villages.

No longer do we see a bobby walking the town nor do we see officers patrolling the villages.

The service does not seem to be able to select enough suitable recruits and are far too intent on ticking boxes to get a real mix of ethnic and sexual minorities rather than whose are best for the job.

Training centres are a thing of the past and in force training seems inadequate.

The whole lot needs a new brush action and a return to old-fashioned bobbying where criminals were locked up and offenders punished.