AFTER the NHS, the greatest British iconic hero must be the Bobby on the Beat. It gives us a warm feeling to think of the policemen of yore – nice old fashioned uniforms, batons swinging as they stroll down our High Streets. “Evening all,” as Dixon of Dock Green used to say. “Mind how you go now, Sir.”
Z Cars, then The Sweeney brought it a bit more up to date, then The Bill, Lewis, a Touch of Frost, and so many more. We love our coppers, even if our mental picture of them may well be at some variance with the reality on the ground.
What a magnificent operation the Newcastle Police carried out in catching and then convicting a large number of people smugglers, modern slavers, pimps, groomers, child rapists. Call them what you will. ‘Scum of the earth’ will do for me. I personally support the £10,000 given to the convicted paedophile for the extensive information he was presumably able to provide. The end really does justify the means if his information has led to dozens of these people being taken off our streets, despite the bad taste it may leave in our mouths. The policing skills and methods needed for that kind of operation are well away from anything we have seen on TV.
Closer to home, however, I very much regret the recent announcement that the police stations in Calne and Malmesbury are to close, to be replaced by some kind of ‘police touchdown point’ whatever that is supposed to mean, and in Royal Wootton Bassett there will be a ‘Community Police Team Hub.” (Why can’t these people just use ordinary old-fashioned language which the average reader would be able to understand? They might meet less outrage if they did.) 
Whatever they may be, they just won’t replace that comforting blue light outside the Police Station. But there again, the good old Police Box, beloved of Sergeant Dixon is now only remembered as the Tardis in Doctor Who, and I guess that technology must mean that policing methods constantly move on.
Perhaps Wiltshire Police resources would be a bit less stretched if they were not wasting £2 million and 18 full-time officers on a pretty pointless investigation of allegations made against the late Sir Edward Heath. He’s dead, for goodness sake, and the case against him seems pretty flimsy to say the least. They’ll be looking into Jack the Ripper or Henry VIII who had a nasty habit of chopping off his wives’ heads next. What a waste of time. I have made my views known in very plain terms to the Chief Constable, and I hope that he will take steps to wrap up this idiotic waste of public money with no further delay.
We all have the highest respect for our policemen and women, and they do a magnificent job. But there are too few of them; officers are under constant stress and strain; and it is my view that the scarce resources they do have are sometimes quite wrongly directed by senior staff and officers. 
Maybe it’s time to get back – just a little – to community policing. And who knows? Perhaps a bit of Dixon of Dock Green and The Sweeney would do law and order locally an awful lot of good.