It is always revelatory to read my favorite Neo-Conservative thinker, in the pages of the ultra-respectable Financial Times. That frame of respectability seems a bit more tarnished each time I read the attenuated but, as always, complex little fables that Mr. Caldwell constructs, to make concrete his authoritarian world view. His column dated August 12, 2011 is based on his assumption that the Bobby is an outdated anachronism in the civic life of London, given the wave of riots that has swept that capital in recent days. But Mr. Caldwell fails to mention an important bit of information that might be of interest to his readers: the city of London is monitored by more than 12,000 live video cameras which adds what to the crime fighting potential of the Bobby?(The Bobby could be considered the very most important link to the very successful practice of community policing.) That is a good question. According to the Evening Standard of September 19, 2007 80% of crimes go unsolved with the cameras, at a ten year estimated cost of 200 million pounds.
Here is the link: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23412867-tens-of-thousands-of-cctv-cameras-yet-80-of-crime-unsolved.do One might conjecture given these statistics,if they are correct, might leave the Bobby as the main source of convictions? Where does Mr. Caldwell find his model for effective police work? Chicago 1968, hardly surprising given the conservative romance with the jack boot. The dismal history of political collusion between Mayor Daily and the Chicago police to suppress dissidents at the Democratic Convention, of that year, is well documented. But this is a minor matter in the larger question of how policing of a society should be thought of and conducted. Mr. Caldwell is a firm believer in the power of the fear of the police, as a deterrent to the natural criminal tendencies of it's citizens, all very Hobbesian in its cultivated paranoia about the governed. Mr. Caldwell does not even broach the subject of the epidemic of police violence that afflicts American communities: it is, in fact, no concern to a thinker and writer whose absolute faith in authority figures is unshakable.
Eternal Skeptic
Here is the link: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23412867-tens-of-thousands-of-cctv-cameras-yet-80-of-crime-unsolved.do One might conjecture given these statistics,if they are correct, might leave the Bobby as the main source of convictions? Where does Mr. Caldwell find his model for effective police work? Chicago 1968, hardly surprising given the conservative romance with the jack boot. The dismal history of political collusion between Mayor Daily and the Chicago police to suppress dissidents at the Democratic Convention, of that year, is well documented. But this is a minor matter in the larger question of how policing of a society should be thought of and conducted. Mr. Caldwell is a firm believer in the power of the fear of the police, as a deterrent to the natural criminal tendencies of it's citizens, all very Hobbesian in its cultivated paranoia about the governed. Mr. Caldwell does not even broach the subject of the epidemic of police violence that afflicts American communities: it is, in fact, no concern to a thinker and writer whose absolute faith in authority figures is unshakable.
Eternal Skeptic
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