deanol
LE

I wonder if there will come a point when people will start bypassing the police and courts, turning instead to some kind of vigilantism for protection and punishment.I've had thankfully few dealings with Peel's finest, I've never been arrested and the only thing I've had ever was a speeding fine back in the 80s.
When I was a victim of crime, not that many years ago, I lost all faith in them. I was called mate several times when I had to go to a police station to prove who I was ffs. No, they can kiss my puckered starfish as far as I'm concerned. People say the problems are with the senior officers, that may be the case, but from my perspective many of the ones much lower down the tree are ******* useless.
I don't want to romanticise the Krays and their ilk, but it isn't hard to see the appeal of turning to people like that for protection and to keep their communities safe for regular people. Paying for protection might not seem very wholesome but if they keep the pikeys, joyriders, and drug dealers away then it will appeal to many.
I'm sure some of the police officers on here will accuse me of naivete, of believing the cliche of it being safe for your grandmother to walk the streets after dark and so on. But the reason it became a cliche was because it contained some truth.
If the police and criminal justice system can't take criminals off the streets to protect the public, then the public will turn to something that can.