I REALLY don’t know the quality of detective work in Cheshire Police, but their PR is in urgent need of attention.
When Mark Worthington’s jewellery store was raided just a few hundred yards from Wilmslow police station, it took 24 minutes for an officer to arrive on the scene, an almost identical response to the raid on jeweller PR Jones situated a couple of hundred yards from Macclesfield police station.
A Cheshire Police spokesman said: "There is a lot of police work not visible to the victim."
The only measure the public have for this ‘invisible’ work is its effectiveness in detaining criminals, which, in both cases, it failed to do.
To imply there was not a single officer available to reassure traumatised victims of an armed raid almost next door to the police station for 24 minutes will comfort no one.
Either Cheshire Police don’t understand the importance of a swift appearance at the scene of a violent crime, or they do but just can’t make it happen.
The ‘invisible’ work clearly hasn’t produced results and I doubt the victims feel reassured in any way.
These gangs obviously have no fear of daylight raids in close proximity to our police stations, so what does that tell us about their understanding of police response?
Short of raiding the actual police station, they could hardly make it easier.
Modern day policing is a demanding and difficult task and Cheshire Police do an awful lot of good work, then shoot themselves in the foot with one PR disaster after another.
You don’t need a degree in criminology to know that traumatised victims want two things:
A. An arrest.
B. A bobby on the scene pronto.
If A cannot be achieved, then B certainly can.
The views expressed on this page are Vic Barlow's and not necessarily those of the Express
