Having been a police member pre the new millennium for some 25 years, and specialising in team policing and prosecuting in the courts, I know that when this new style of policing gangs was mooted by the Government, police commanders’ faces would have screwed tight with frustration. They would have been saying: “Oh hell no! Not again!”
Getting tough with the gangs is not a new political ploy — just as “we will put more police on the beat” was and still is, from one general election to the next.
Police are as human as the rest of us, and knowing just how much a patch ban will negatively affect the policing environment, there will be a mad scramble to leave the front-line for more sedentary duties — or to quickly claim promotion, so they can at least “lead the charge” from the rear . . . who could blame them?
There are many gang leaders who are quite intelligent, and it does not take a genius to figure out the many ways such legislation could wear down and disrupt policing.
Imagine if on a weekly basis, gang leaders arranged for 100 gang members to stage a sit-down in different locations, perhaps even blocking roads or shopping malls. The police would have to attend in large numbers. Gang members would be instructed to offer only passive resistance and would have to be carried from the scene. They would have been instructed to plead “not guilty” if charged in the courts — thus jamming up the court calendars for years.
