Bowing.

I am confused: is "Bowing to Public Pressure" a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

Modern Britain has accepted that we police officers are here to Serve the Public. Blandshire Constabulary embraces this mission wholeheartedly and I think you will agree that the results speak for themselves:

• We now produce a fleet of statistics each year that show things the public love, such as evidence of our inefficiency and racism.
  
• We have put more and more bobbies and quasi-bobbies out on foot, which has had a noticeably Reassuring effect on the public: whereas seven or eight PCs used to be ready to respond to a caller, now they have one Personal one.
  
• We have enforced more and more laws targeting Antisocial Behaviour and other modern buzzwords, becoming specialists at rearresting people who have just been released with no sentence by the courts.

Yet as a modern Service we also recognise those times when we should NOT bow to public pressure and stand up for our values. These include:

• Calls for us to do less paperwork.
• Calls to stop terrorist demonstrations.
• Plans to Name and Shame paedophiles.

It is a tricky business for forces to identify those times when they should Bow to Pressure because that is what our Customers WANT, and the times when they should not give in to Out-of-control Vigilante Pressure Groups Who Don't Understand the Law.

Here is a simple test your force can use to establish the right course of action:

1. Can the thing called for be fulfilled by legislation?
2. Will fulfilling it make a pressure group go away?
3. Does it mean making easily-Detected offences Recordable?
4. Can officers be trained to do it Online without the need for a classroom input?
   
5. Can it be achieved via email?

If the answer to all of these is Yes, Bowing to Pressure is a Good Thing and your force should do it.

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