Police running the country now, are they?

I had a dream - or rather a nightmare - today, of all our elected representatives being booted out of Parliament after the expenses scandals and replaced by policemen. It seems my nightmare is part way to reality with the announcement from the Association of Chief Police Officers today that it no longer intends to monitor hunts, nor do hunts need to inform police of the time and place of their meets or their planned route.

So in other words, ACPO have taken it upon themselves to give a green light to hunting -legal or illegal - with the implied suggestion that they don't consider hunting a priority. Oh well that's fine then.

Whatever you may think of the rights and wrongs of foxhunting, many people fought long and hard to get the hunting ban put in place and surely the police should be finding ways to execute their responsibilities in this area instead of airily informing the public that they don't consider it a priority and don't intend to bother with it.



Instead they have told forces , on the one hand to rely more on anti hunt groups (getting someone else to do the police's job) and on the other to effectively distrust such information because of the emotional nature of the groups interest. So effectively they are telling forces to back off altogether.

Since when did the police acquire the right to ignore law made by our elected representatives , however slimy and fraudulent that latter group now appears? This really is symptomatic of the way the police regard themselves as another branch of government not servants of the people through the democratic will of parliament. It's not the first time the police have taken a unilateral high handed stance about what they will and won't prosecute.

Senior police chiefs have an important role in feeding their concerns to government and expecting those concerns to be taken on board. They do not have a right to effectively neuter an Act of Parliament by effectively removing its ability to function.

The government should seek an early meeting with ACPO and start hammering tables. ACPO should be left in no doubt that laws which are on the statute book of this country will be upheld and that it is an extremely arrogant position for the police to adopt to announce to the world at large that there is one law they see as pointless and , effectively, are closing down any resources dedicated to it. This position should not be tolerated.