Quote Originally Posted by boingy View Post
I don’t see any organisations being free of always having someone somewhere who will let you down. It’s going to happen. I have a friend who used to be in the police (retired now) and he did a lot of good for helping youths with bad family backgrounds which often translated to getting in trouble with the law. He volunteered to help me with the help line I set up and was a thoroughly decent human being. You will get police officers who mess up. You will get doctors who make a serious mistake. You will get politicians who fall short. It’s imperfect human nature. What gets me angry is when people call for heads of organisations to resign when in most cases they had either nothing to do with something or were totally unaware of something going on. You would always be sacking them. It’s best to just accept that the law of averages means it will always happen at some point. If there is something systematically wrong then fix it and if someone is directly culpable then yes make changes but don’t keep sacking people just because it feels good or makes you feel better that someone (even if totally not to blame) has paid a price.
It would be hard to argue that the Dick woman shouldn't resign. She has presided over one calamity after the next. So many of them with life changing consequences for people. The truth is, strong leadership is also about taking responsibility which is something she seems incapable of doing.

Back to Mick's original question; I was only saying to someone recently, my experience of fire crews and paramedics is nothing but exceptionally good. Police not so. The village where I live, there was a robbery at the village post office a few months back. I happened to go in (and left) just before it happened. As part of the Police enquiries, I found them quite bolshy, seemed to have a real chip on their shoulders, they spoke to people as if they were naughty school kids. To people who say respect the Police, I say respect works both ways. It has to be earned. It's not all, just some.

I also used to do a lot of work with a major UK Police force. We were warned before the contract started that we would see a lot of damage to capital equipment. The senior management used to joke and ask 'Is it Bobby proof'? We had people deliberately damage equipment, one incident caused the Police to open a crime scene. I could go on but the overall calibre of personnel in many cases falls well short of what we should be getting. There are societal issues as well of course but in isolation, my experience isn't good.