Criminals must have a price to pay

I read with interest M Tinsley's letter regarding a lack of respect from the police (January 11) and must say I feel he or she has missed the point in many of the areas identified.

The amount of both verbal and physical abuse a police officer has to take from disrespectful people during a typical shift, particularly at night, is appalling, most of it taken without any retaliatory comment or action.

Yet West Midlands Police are required to have their name on the front of their uniform to make it easier for a drunken yob or burgling thug to identify them and make a complaint that he has been badly treated!

It is the job of the police to apprehend those breaking the law. The police do not put criminals in jail, they merely bring them to court, and it is my guess that many a police officer is as disgusted as you or I am at the unbelievably lenient sentences handed out by those courts, which often leave the criminal laughing as he's given a fine he knows he will never pay, or a community sentence he knows he will never bother to complete.

Only last week it was reported that two men dragged another out of his car following a minor traffic incident, beat him up kicking him in the head, and stole his car and set fire to it. They received a suspended sentence!

Imagine being the investigating officer spending hours putting a detailed file together for court on that case, only to see the two thugs walk out of the door.

M Tinsley says the police are afraid of the criminals. I can assure him they're not. What they are afraid of is the army of lawyers and bleeding hearts ready to say on behalf of the criminal, invariably at taxpayers' expense, that their poor defenceless client has been injured by a nasty policeman.

The increasingly violent thug of today fears only one thing – physical violence to himself. He has no respect for authority in any form, and generally speaking laughs at the hordes of social workers trying to rehabilitate him.

The very least we need is a return of corporal punishment so criminals are made to realise they are not invisible and that society can and will take its revenge on them.

Sadly, however, in the current political climate of almost denying that criminals exist (the Home Secretary regularly tells us serious crime is dropping year on year – where on earth does she live?), we all know the chances of such common-sense punishment returning is nil.

Until a more enlightened group of politicians appears, who have the safety of the public genuinely at heart, we must surely do all we can to support the police force, and not knock it.

Clive Potts, Summerhouse Road, Coseley.